Claudia reveals to Adam how everything is connected – and how he can destroy the knot.
Tropes:
- Apocalypse How: The two divergent worlds are wiped from existence.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jonas and Martha from Eva's world prevent the accident that would have lead to Tannhaus's family dying, causing the two timelines (and everyone who were connected to the time travel loops) to disappear. On a much sweeter note however, the characters not connected to the time travel loops live much healthier lives and seem more mentally well, albeit Winden is still considered a terrible place to be in. And judging from the dialogue of the Origin World Hannah, there's a possibility that Jonas (and maybe the others of the loops) could get a second chance in this original timeline.
- Determinator: The entire series is Claudia and Tannhaus's attempts to save their children from death, and both even succeed in their own ways.
- Disappears into Light: Once the accident that killed Tannhaus's family is averted, the Stable Time Loop is undone, and those that could only exist because of it begin to crumble into particles of light.
- Distant Finale: If Claudia is to be believed, then the Stable Time Loop has been going on for many years infinitely, and this is her very first time succeeding to meet Adam.
- Empathic Environment: It's implied that Adam's and Eva's Worlds are full of misery because their creator, Tannhaus was wracked with guilt for driving away his son, pain and misery of losing his family, and were the reflection of that. Jonas, Martha and their child the Unknown were possibly attempts of the broken worlds to 'relieve' Tannhaus's pain of losing his family.
- Face Death with Dignity:
- Initially Eva attempts this when Adam comes to kill her, even pulling the trigger herself, only realizing Adam has already taken out the bullets, meaning the cause and effect between the two worlds has finally stopped.
- Tronte and Claudia take the fact that saving Regina eventually will undo their existences pretty well.
- Jonas and Martha (as well as themselves as Adam and Eva) face oblivion calmly together.
- Fading Away: After Jonas and Martha prevent Tannhaus' family from dying in the original world, both divergent worlds and the characters in them fade away.
- Flash Sideways: Hannah from the original timeline recalls a dream from the previous night where she dreamt that the world ended.
- Foreshadowing: Claudia says it's better that Tronte isn't Regina's father, because Regina will survive the loop being undone. Her father turns out to be one of the few men in the story unrelated to the Nielsens, who are all Ret-Gone — Bernd Doppler.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- Ulrich in Eva's World bludgeons Adult Helge instead of Child Helge, and in turn dies to Old Helge in 1986.
- Averting Tannhaus's family's accident averts the formation of the two worlds and the convoluted Stable Time Loop, and everyone who could only exist because of it fades away.
- Grand Finale: Of the show.
- Happily Married: Torben and Hannah are this in the Origin World, and are expecting a child.
- Bernd and Claudia Doppler are also happily married and raised their daughter Regina together.
- Heel–Face Turn: Adam abandons his destructive methods and actively helps his younger self to end the suffering of both worlds and return the Origin World to as it was.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jonas and Martha prevent Tannhaus's family from dying so that their worlds wrought with suffering ends for good.
- Hot-Blooded: Tannhaus's son Marek, so much that Sonja promises he will back to normal. It probably is also one of the contributing factors in his accident.
- In Spite of a Nail: Even in the Origin World, Jonas will eventually be born to Hannah, signifying the (perhaps eventual) reappearance of all the characters in the Knot, even if-name-only.
- It Works Better with Bullets: Adam confronts Eve and she eagerly pulls the trigger of the gun he is pointing at her. However, for the first time there are no bullets in the gun and she doesn't die which confirms the fact that the link between the two worlds has been broken.
- Mama Bear: Claudia's sole motivation to end the time knot, so that Regina gets to live her life in the true and whole world, where she can't get cancer.
- Eva's entire reason to perpetuate the Knot is to protect her son from his father.
- Mercy Kill: In the end, both Adam's and Eva's Worlds in their endless suffering is undone, meaning the pain, miseries and tragedies never occurred in the first place.
- Regina is killed by Tronte to relieve her of her own suffering, under her mother's request.
- Oh, Crap!: Eva does this once Adam spares her, meaning the Knot is undone.
- Papa Wolf: Tannhaus's sole motivation for inventing time-travel is to save his family from dying in a tragic accident.
- Paradox Person: The majority of the main cast ie. Jonas, Martha, Mikkel, Magnus, Ulrich, Mads, Tronte, Agnes, Noah, Silja, Charlotte, Elisabeth, The Unknown (and even Bartosz due to Ulrich playing a role in his birth) were never supposed to exist, and only did because of Tannhaus's attempts to change the past, which broke his world into Adam's and Eva's Worlds. They are aptly Ret-Gone once Jonas and Martha undo his reason for attempting to build a time machine.
- Practically Different Generations: This episode reveals Regina and Helge are half-siblings on papernote ; Regina is about the same age as her nephew Peter.
- Ret-Gone: The individuals who are shaped by the Knot (and time-traveling as well) are erased from existence.
- The Reveal:
- Adam's and Eva's Worlds are the corrupted outcomes of the time-travel experiments in the Origin World, which Tannhaus attempted to save his family.
- Turns out Adam was kept alive this entire time was to kill Eva, and perpetuate Martha's Start of Darkness.
- Bernd Doppler is Regina's real father, not Tronte, meaning she was outside the Knot the whole time.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The whole nexus of causal loops were triggered by HG Tannhaus' attempt to do this. In the original timeline, Tannhaus' family was killed in a car crash in 1971. He spent the next 15 years building a time machine to go back and prevent their deaths. But when he activated his machine in 1986, it ended up splitting his world and creating the two alternate universes in which the events of the series took place. Ultimately, it is Jonas and Martha who Set Right What Once Went Wrong by going back and stopping the deaths of the Tannhaus family, thus removing his reason for inventing time-travel and creating their worlds in the first place.
- Stable Time Loop:
- Ulrich from Eva's World would bludgeon Adult Helge, and he will eventually kill Ulrich once old.
- Tronte kills Regina under Claudia's orders, so that she would do everything to undo her death, for which she will request Tronte to help her.
- Adam kills Eva while trying to get at her younger self and their child, which Martha discovers and turns her into the ruthless Eva hellbent on doing everything to thwart Adam and his nihilistic plans. The fact that this does not happen for the first time means the loop has been broken.
- That being said, the end of the episode means all the stable time loops in both worlds finally undo for good.
- Title Drop: To the series, in fact. Claudia admits to Adam she kept both him and Eva 'in the dark' so that she could finally figure out how to end the Knot.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The scenes with Tannhaus in the previous episode is revealed to be the Origin World.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tannhaus accidentally split his universe into two while experimenting with his time machine, forming Adam's and Eva's worlds and the cyclic annihilation that follows.
- Wham Shot: The power plant not existing in the Origin World, meaning the Wormhole and the Apocalypse can't happen in that world.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- We never learn about Agnes, Magnus and Franziska's fates before they cease to exist.
- The status of Bernd, Claudia and Helge in the Origin World is also left up to air.
- Wistful Amnesia: A heavily pregnant Hannah gets an odd feeling when she sees a yellow coat (her Ret-Gone son Jonas frequently wore a yellow raincoat), and describes a dream she had of flickering lights and the end of the world. She also says she's thinking of naming her son Jonas.
