Headscratchers / Dark (2017)

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• The series of events that lead to Mikkel time-traveling to 1986 seems extremely unlikely. The kids are standing near the cave when they hear noises coming from somewhere in the vicinity and run away from the cave. Yet when Jonas and Mikkel get separated, for some reason Mikkel runs back to the cave, i.e. towards the noises they were escaping from, and decides to go inside the cave without a light source or anything. Then, instead of going just a bit deeper into the cave and hiding there until the noises go away, he decides to walk the long and complex route to the metal door, go through it and through the other door to find himself in 1986. How does any of that make sense, even for an 11-year old?
  • It's not clear whether Mikkel actually went through the passage in the cave. It's possible that he simply fell through a rift opened by the experiment with Mads.
  • All of that is explained in season 2. A Jonas from 20 Minutes into the Future was instructed by Old Claudia to take Mikkel back into the cave and through the tunnel.
• It's mentioned several times than Winden is a fairly uneventful town with few serious crimes, so when kids start disappearing, everyone thinks back to the events of 1986, when Mads Nielsen went missing. So how come no one brings up the events of 1953, when two dead children were found in roughly the same area where Mikkel, Erik, and Mads went missing, and another kid was beaten half to death? Even if the cops in 1953 pinned the murders on Ulrich, you'd think such a gruesome case would've stayed in collective memory (especially since there are elderly people alive who still remember it), inviting comparisons and making the 2019 cops discover that the bodies found in 1953 were mutilated the same way as the 2019 body? It's only after Charlotte starts suspecting time travel and figures out the 33 year cycle that she discovers the 1953 events, and it doesn't seem anyone else had brought them up before.
  • The events of 1953 was not children going missing but unknown children found dead. People might remember those events but not make a link.
  • Also, the cops are investigating the events of 1986 because its realistically possible that a child abductor/murderer who was active back then might still be active 33 years later. But a child abductor/murderer active in 1953 cannot possible still be active in 2019.
  • Not only that, but Bernd in 1953 claimed this was some kind of sabotage to try and stop the power-plant from being built, it's entirely possible he might have paid the police to cover it up as much as possible so it didn't affect his business. They caught the 'killer', why bother making a sensation out of it? Just throw him in a cell and forget about him, let the power-plant go ahead unmolested and forget anything ever happened
• Similarly, the 2019 cops are tasked with going through the events of 1986 with a fine comb, with Ulrich especially being obsessed with it, for obvious reasons. How come no one discovers a police report stating that a strange kid with no known parents appeared in Winden soon after Mads disappeared? Besides the police report, it would seem likely that the authorities would have made the case public and released Mikkel's photo for the newspapers to print, so that his parents could be found. Yet no one in 2019 seems to be aware of the case, nor does anyone discover any photos of Mikkel from 1986.
  • If I remember correctly, they were asked to look for child disappearances. Maybe they're focusing on that kind of event and don't want to lose time searching other unrelated things.
  • The events of Season 2 though does put another wrinkle on it. The police should have been aware of another attempted child abduction that happened in the 1980's (namely Old!Ulrich's failed attempt to take Mikkel back to 2019). The fact that the child who was abducted back then, Michael Kahnwald, committed suicide a few months before the latest spate of disappearances should have raised some red flags. Of course, its possible that Ulrich's 'abduction' of Michael simply didn't become a big case and was written of as the actions of a lunatic - with the 2019 generation of police officers possibly not even being aware of it.
• In "The White Devil", there is a scene where older and younger version of Noah are standing next to each other, and the older Noah is cleary 10 centimeters or so taller than younger version. How is that possible? The younger Noah doesn't look like a young teenager who would still grow so much in his adulthood.
  • Not everyone grows to their full stature in their teens. It's not uncommon for people to continue growing into their mid-20s.
  • Young Jonas is slightly shorter than Martha but adult Jonas is slightly taller than her. Adult Unknown is noticeably taller than Old Unknown. Teen Magnus is a full head taller than teen Franziska but only a few inches taller than her when they're both old. You could also go into how Jonas has a mole beside his nose as an adult, but not as a teen, which gets acknowledged in season 3 when we see an older but not quite adult Jonas suddenly have a matching mole there. Actors were never going to be a perfect physical match.
• In season 2, both the middle-aged and young versions of Jonas want to stop the apocalypse from happening and save Martha. Why, instead of trying to merely protect her (which they both fail to do), doesn't either one of them think of going to the Winden nuclear power plant and trying to stop the whole disaster? Even if they don't know about the exact reason why it happened, they know the God Particle inside caused the apocalypse, so they could at least go there and try to do something to stop it. Or, even better, why don't they travel back to the 1980s and remove the material from the plant so it can't implode in 2020?
  • By the time the day of the apocalypse arrives, neither version of Jonas is particularly interested in stopping the apocalypse. The younger Jonas in fact plays a part in causing it, because Old!Claudia has convinced him it's necessary to maintain the loop. The older Jonas knows this, and doesn't really want to stop the apocalypse anyway - his primary focus is preventing Martha's death...until the letter young Noah gives him changes his mind about that.
• In season 2, why does Helge talk to Egon about the "White Devil"? Given the revelation of who the White Devil is, Helge shouldn't know that name or who it refers to.
  • It is said that Noah tells him about the White Devil and how not to trust her during the six months he spent in the bunker in the 1980's. It's implied before, and confirmed in Season 3 that Noah suspected Claudia correctly of foul play, and incorrectly thought she had kidnapped his infant daughter. It can be assumed that Adam supported these views to get Noah to trust him, leading to Noah perceiving Claudia as the actual force behind everything that goes wrong.
  • But if Noah wants to warn people about Claudia, why doesn't he do so by using her real name, instead of a weird nickname that no one knows to connect to her?
• What exactly was the reason for kidnapping all those kids in season 1? In that season, the implication seemed to be that Noah and his co-conspirators (revealed to be the Sic Mundus group in season 2) were trying to build some kind of rudimentary time machine in the bunker, and they were using the kids as test subjects. But in season 2 it's revealed Sic Mundus already has a much more refined time machine powered by the God Particle, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the bunker time machine. So why were they doing those tests with the kids?
  • This is explained by Adam. In order to ensure the existence of the advanced dark matter time machine in 1921, the rudimentary bunker time machine needs to first be developed. Without the bunker time machine, the later versions of the machine wouldn't have been developed.
  • Then there's also the fact that the abductions themselves play a vital role in shaping the tangle of loops. Mads Nielsen's disappearance shapes Ulrich Nielsen's life, leading to him becoming a police officer. And Erik and Yasin's disappearances drive his and Charlotte's investigations, culminating in Ulrich going back in time and disfiguring Helge. Erik's disappearance is also what triggers the chain of events that leads to Mikkel going back in time, ensuring Jonas' (and thus Adam's) existence.
• In season 2 Michael finds himself in the same house as his original and still young self, Mikkel. It shakes him, which is understandable... if this really is the first time they meet. But in a place like Winden would that be possible when Mikkel is at least 12-13 by his appearances?
  • There is nothing in that scene which implies that this is the first time they are meeting. It's clear that the Kahnwalds and Nielsens have long been friends and know each other socially. Michael was clearly suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown, probably triggered by the fact that he was getting close to the date when his younger self went back in time. Seeing himself, mere months before his younger self was 'scheduled' to vanish into the past, exacerbated his condition and caused him to freak out.
• Martha goes to some extreme lengths to ensure the existence of her child, but other than that she doesn't seem like a very good mother, considering she seems to treat him more like a tool, doesn't show any affection and doesn't even bother to name the poor kid.
  • That's because she didn't fight to keep him alive, she wanted to keep alive all the people she lost in the apocalypse, and the child is the means to achieve that. That is her whole thing - she wants to have her family and friends back for a short moment. If you see the two worlds as two different expressions of grief, and Jonas and Martha as personifications of that, Jonas/Adam is the one who gives up and succumbs to depression and suicidal ideation (Adam wants nothing but to end it all), while Martha/Eve forces everyone to endlessly repeat their suffering because she is unable to move on from her loss (which admittedly is tremendous, Bartosz and Elisabeth are the only ones from her world who survive.).
• Can we assign any meaning to Martha's scar on her cheek continuously switching from left to right and back in season 3? It's unlikely that it was a blooper that slipped the makeup crew as well as the actress.
  • This confused me for a bit too, specially because Jonas notices it, mentions the Martha that rescued him had it, but fails to mention it's on the other side. A later scene helped me realise they are opposite, mirror-ish worlds, so things are switched up like in a mirror. In her world Martha cut her right cheek, but on Jonas' world we see the cut in the left. This applies to scenery, too: Jonas' house has the main entrance and the beggining of the stairs on the left, but this Martha's house has them on the right (you can see both in the same episode).
  • You can also see it more clearly with the Unknown/Cleft-lip Man: His cleft lip is either on the left or the right of his mouth, depending on which world he is in. This helps keep track of when characters do world-jumps.
• Did the series imply that the Unknown/Origin had actual super powers? Is that the explanation how he was able to travel with two different versions of himself constantly? Because I thought he was just using conventional time travel loops, but then it was established he somehow was able to father the line of Ulrich in both realities which is frankly impossible even if he made two separate trips, somehow had sex at the precise moment with the same partner. It's still a different sperm which would result in a different offspring. What everything we've been shown, the Unknown is unique and there is only a single instance of him existing between the two worlds (or is there an infinite number of them infesting the Multiverse whose job is to go around to all the realities and do their duty?). He must be supernatural and able to be in two different locations at the same time, and perform identical actions with the exact same result. Maybe that's why Adam felt he needed the harnessed power of two apocalypses to kill him. The guy is divine, or at least has the unique ability to produce identical offspring every time he has sex.
  • Where was it established that the Unknown man fathered the family line of Ulrich? I don't recall anything like that happening in season 3.
    • Its stated in Season 3, Episode 4 ("The Origin") that the Unknown is the beginning of the Nielsen family line. Also, Eva's family tree shows Tronte as the son of Agnes and the Unknown in both worlds. On the official website, it is stated that the Unknown slept with both versions of Agnes, fathering Tronte in both worlds. The genetics of this are never explained...but bear in mind that this is the same series where two women are both mother and daughter to each other. Real-world logic when it comes to genetics doesn't necessarily apply.
    • Here's a crazy theory: Word of God notwithstanding, maybe the two Trontes weren't actually doppelgangers at all, but identical twins. The same Agnes actually gave birth to both of them, but Adam (who would have known this in advance) took one from her to be raised by the other. Admittedly it still seems a bit unlikely that they'd have more-or-less identical lives after that (to the point of fathering the same kids), but given that the entire family line basically runs on Stable Time Loop with a side helping of Because Destiny Says So, it's not completely implausible.
  • I don't think anything about the Unknown requires some unexplained magical ability to make sense. Remember that they work for Eva, who has access to fully functioning time machine. Having multiple instances of himself at the same time requires no other ability besides using that time machine to travel to the same point in time (and from then on, to stick together and travel as a group), before presumably splitting apart at some point to live out their lives and become their older versions and die. As for them fathering Tronte in both universes, there is nothing indicating that it has to happen "at the exact same time" (this doesn't need evidence but the fact that the same people exist in both universes despite a significant butterfly effect supports it). But even if it was, it's a trivial thing to accomplish when you have access to time travel.
• In the first episode of season 3, when the teenagers in the alternate Winden are looking for the missing kid in the woods, at one point Martha hears a creepy voice calling out her name and sees a vision of a mysterious woman◊ covered up in some black liquid. What the heck is that about? Nothing in the following episodes seems to explain the appearance of this woman.
  • It mirrors a nightmare that Jonas has in season 2 about his father Michael appearing to him covered in the same black slime. I don't recall the exact timing, but it probably foretells Jonas's impending discovery that Michael was Mikkel. The "mysterious woman" in Martha's dream might be Martha herself. It's hard to tell. In that case, it's probably some sort of warning about the multiple versions of Martha out there with goals counter to the young Martha doing the dreaming. The black ink is probably just to emphasize that the figure is scary and that the impending revelation will be upsetting.
    • I think these visions have something to do with foretelling loss - Jonas sees his father, whom he obviously misses very much. The figure Martha sees is (I'm almost 100% sure) herself - she is wearing the white dress she wore in season 2 when she and Jonas go to her room after Katharina and Ulrich's party (a scene which follows their beach kiss). Although Alternative Martha, who is seeing this vision of inked-up first-world-Martha, did not experience those things, since Jonas does not exist in her timeline, the vision is an echo to what she has lost - namely, a childhood/youth with Jonas. In that way it is similar to the vision her child self has of Jonas in the closet (which happens at the season 3 finale).
• In one scene in season 3, we see Older Jonas burn the letter she got from alternate universe Martha, but in the scene that immediately follows, Adam is shown reading the same letter. What is that supposed to imply? That Adam went back in time, stole the letter from Older Jonas, and then at some point went back and returned it to him, so he could burn it? Why would Adam have done that, since he already knows what's in the letter?
  • Stranger-Jonas burns the older version of the letter. However, Stranger-Martha delivers the letters freshly-written 'younger' version to him. This letter remains in Jonas/Adam's possession for the next 33 years, until he passes it on to Noah, to deliver it to his younger self...who will eventually burn it.
• I am wondering about the status of Aleksander and Bartosz at the end of the story. It seems that Aleksander and Regina never met or at least, didn't get together, and Bartosz doesn't exist. This is strange in the sense that Bartosz's ancestry is entirely disconnected from characters that were part of the Knot (even though he was the ancestor of some that were), yet still his existence is erased. Likewise, there is nothing in Aleksander's past that was influenced by the Knot, so it's reasonable to assume that he still committed murder, changed his identity and fled to hide in Winden. Am I missing something? Or are we just meant to assume that due to the changes in Regina's life, she never met or fell in love with him?
  • And what about Peter? Helge's life was so shaped by time travel. How did he happen to father a child by the same woman at the same time?
    • Here's the thing - Helge meeting Ulla Schmidt and fathering Peter is something that happens in the origin world. The two 'looped' worlds of Adam and Eva are twisted reflections of the origin world in many ways. So despite Helge's life being so different, against all odds he still ends up having the same relationship he had in the origin world that leads to Peter being born. This also explains why Katharina is still called 'Katharina' in the origin world, despite her name being a Stable Time Loop in Adam's world (and possibly Eva's world as well). Katharina was named that by Helene in the origin world anyway, with no influence from Hannah or any other traveler. But in the looped worlds, that name was inspired by a time-traveling Hannah.
  • Boris met Regina because she was bullied by Ulrich and later found work at the power plant. With no Ulrich and no power plant, the reasons why he would met Regina can't be there in the original world. It's possible that he found another woman and had with her a son who would later be called Bartosz, but that's just speculation.
• How can Martha take Jonas to her world without that also creating a timeline where Jonas just disappears?
  • She does create a timeline in which that happens; it’s just that whatever happens in that timeline isn’t important to the plot. Also, note that due to how quantum entanglement function, these timelines can overlap with each other, meaning that Jonas may have never "disappeared" at all.
  • Jonas never "disappears". From a sequential perspective, this is what happens. 1) Martha rescues Jonas from the Kahnwald house before the apocalypse and takes him to her world. 2) Bartosz then arrives and alters events by stopping Martha from entering the house and rescuing Jonas. Event # 2 'overwrites' Event # 1 on the timeline, but the Jonas and Martha present during Event # 1 'already' traveled to Martha's world and so weren't overwritten and continue their independent existence. But from an external observer's perspective, Bartosz stopping Martha from saving Jonas, and Jonas hiding in the bunker is what really happened (as we see at the end of the 'recap montage' of the loop towards the end of 3x07).
• What happened to Adam and Sic Mundus in all the previous loops?
  • In the final episode, we see Adam confront Eve. According to her, all the previous cycles had him kill her, thus inspiring her past self to become radicalized. But she doesn't say what happens to Adam after that (and we don't see what happens, because this is the loop in which Claudia and Adam change their fate). So in all previous loops, how did Adam eventually die?
• 1987 Claudia disappears the same day her father turns up dead in his home, and nobody thinks to link the two events? Seems like Occam's Razor should point in that direction.

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