The Intrigue Of Netflix’s Dark

Netflix’s Dark is a German sci-fi horror that leaves viewers baffled until they finally reach a conclusion. Dark weaves a complex narrative; it is less about where, who, or how, but when. Time is the obsession, with endless loops and hidden truths. With forces beyond common perception and understanding, Netflix’s Dark tells a complicated story in a very compelling way.

The story and concept are unique, with three seasons of grand design and mystery every step of the way, making it very binge-able. The mind-flipping horror story is the first original German series for the Netflix platform.

Adam And Eva

Time is used as a religious metaphor in the series. Time travel is used to exert power overall throughout the series and the SIC MUNDUS group begins a war with time and God. There are numerous biblical reference characters in the series. The most obvious are the two characters — Adam and Eva — actually Jonas and Martha, who represent the biblical Adam and Eve.

In Netflix’s Dark, however, instead of being the origin of life, Adam is best described as having a connection with the origin of the time loops. Another basic metaphor could be the lightness and darkness aspect. There was a time of light before all the chaos ensued, and there was the darkness of the storyline after the apocalypse when everything went wrong.

33-Year Cycles In Netflix’s Dark

In the small German town of Winden every thirty-three-years there are specific incidents that occur after the show begins. These events lead to a young boy going missing with no trace thereof, the discovery of another dead boy’s body somewhere in the woods, dead birds falling from the sky, and the power and lights flashing on and off during that specific moment of time.

There are twenty characters of four generations connected from the past and future, with more than one beginning and ending, in the thirty-three-year cycle of trauma. The three grim main cycles that interconnect and tell the story of the sci-fi complexity of the town of Winden are 1953, 1986, and 2019. The story begins in 2019 and the apocalyptic future we view at the end of season one sets the precedent. The storyline reaches all the way back to 1888 and as far into the future as 2053.

“Things are not quite what they seem here..”

-H.G. Tannhaus, the narrator and Clockmaker in Dark

Eye-Opening Truth Of Dark

Let’s start at the very beginning for some insight. The main character Jonas’ father committed suicide in the first episode. He left a note, which Jonas quickly discovered and digested, suggesting there was a pathway to a cave, in Winden, that led to another place… more specifically, another era. The circumstances surrounding his father’s death were actually thrilling, and Jonas began to understand the complicated horror surrounding the town of Winden and what was to follow.

Around the same time as his father’s suicide, a small boy named Mikkel goes missing in a cave near the nuclear power plant. Days later, the body of a young boy around the same age as Mikkel was discovered, however, it was not Mikkel. Mikkel’s father, Ulrich, is a policeman that is continuously searching for Mikkel, when thirty-three years ago, coincidentally, his younger brother Mads went missing. The younger body was immediately recognized by Ulrich as his younger brother.

Next, Mikkel somehow found his way through the cave. Mikkel wakes up in a hospital in 1986. Soon after, he meets a young lady named Hannah. The young Mikkel was forever stuck in that era, ended up marrying Hannah, and had Jonas.

His name changed from Mikkel to Michael over time, and he went back to the caves to figure out what happened as he grew older. Michael eventually retraced all of his steps and constructed a map, with a few other items, that told the tale of the caves. This is the prominent aspect of his suicide letter, the one that led Jonas to figure out the rest of the story.

The Travelers

Jonas is the main character of Netflix’s Dark, a young boy, who has a total of at least three versions of himself that he sees and communicates with who plays major roles in the show. Not only is he the young boy, Jonas, but he is also known as “The Stranger,” a middle aged time traveler; and Adam, the leader of Sic Mundus, a much older gentleman who bears the many scars all over his body and face from the time traveling itself.

SIC MUNDUS

While you will have to watch the entire series of Netflix’s Dark to understand the origin of it all, as part of a compelling story-telling factor, we discover in season three, Adam, the oldest version of Jonas, the leader of the group essentially responsible for trying to control everything, can be seen as the Good Guy at the end. The prominent “SIC MUNDUS CREATUS EST” on the doorway entrance to the cave means “beginning,” “and the world was created like this.”

The carving is located in the doorway of a cave used for time travel that led to the previous cycle, presumably 1953, and the previous beyond. This SIC MUNDUS group has all different ties to each era with basically the same individuals of different ages belonging to each specific era involved. It seems very confusing, and it definitely can be, but once you understand the entire story, it makes sense.

Déjà Vu

Early on in the series of Netflix’s Dark, the viewer uncovers that there is no specific right or wrong road, simply just which path you are on, begin to take, and are able to follow. In season two of Netflix’s Dark, we see two worlds connected by a knot of time. By the end of season two, there are now three worlds, perpetuated by this endless knot. Adam wants to destroy the knot and put an end to all of the suffering and misery, and Eva wants to preserve it — at all costs. Many of the alternate universe characters make their way to the original worlds because of Eva, and it becomes a knotty catastrophe.

Given that we soon discovered there was a loophole between the two knots which Eva knew about, and sent people away to do her bidding, manipulating, and murdering. When the first and original apocalypse occurred, time stood still in the two original universes. The apocalypse occurs in each of the worlds about two or three days apart. At the moment of each apocalypse, the viewer can acknowledge the notion that any possibility for change was predetermined, and was not set in stone in the endless loop that drives the series forward.

“Our thinking is shaped by dualism. Entrance, exit. Black, white. Good, evil. Everything appears as opposite pairs. But that’s wrong.”

-H.G. Tannhaus

Netflix’s Dark is full of many paths, many different eras, and sequences on the timeline, with every action somehow interrelated to another. Many of the secrets that unravel are completely unexpected and heady — which you must pay attention to and follow. You may root for certain characters and specific events to unfold, yet once again there is more story to tell that changes the entire course of the series — specifically at the end of each season and onto the next. There is plenty of inner turmoil within the characters to finally come to a resolution and solve the mystery of the caves themselves, prevent the bad things from spiraling out of control, and the complicated becoming more complicated in Netflix’s Dark.