Series / Dark (2017)

aka: Dark

Everything.

The beginning is the end.

The question isn't how the topic will be described, but when.

Welcome to the beautiful, quiet town of Winden, Germany, circa 2019. There's a 98% chance of rain in the forecast. The nearby nuclear power plant is still in operation. Children are disappearing. Again. The police have no leads. Again. And the birds are falling from the sky. Again.

Jonas Kahnwald, a teenager struggling with his father's sudden and unexplained suicide, explores the forests and caves of Winden with his friends. But there's something else going on in the wilderness, and soon they will stumble into a conspiracy far darker than anyone could have imagined.

Meanwhile, it's up to chief of police Charlotte Doppler and investigator Ulrich Nielsen to figure out what's going on. And they can't help but think that the strange events happening around them in 2019 are awfully similar to what happened in Winden when they were kids in 1986.

The first German-language Netflix series, Dark is a science fiction/paranormal thriller that shares likenesses with other shows such as Twin Peaks and Stranger Things. The best way to go into this show is to look at it as the spiritual antithesis to Twin Peaks, and an exercise in Germanic Efficiency. The show itself doesn't lie to you, but the characters might. Everything shown onscreen is true — it's just piecing it together that's the hard part. Every single character and plotline has a purpose, every piece has a meaning, and as the poster says, "Everything is connected."

The show premiered on December 1, 2017; its second season arrived on June 21, 2019. The series concluded with Season 3 on June 27th, 2020. The creators reunited for 1899, which released on Netflix in November 2022.

Not to be confused with the video game Dark.

When are the tropes?

A to F

• Above Good and Evil:
  • Adam definitely sees himself this way, as he monologues about it, lies, manipulates, and kills multiple times on screen, all in the name of his goal.
  • Eva thinks this way as well; she manipulates others into assisting her, including her younger self, to ensure the survival of her child. (And she has her own death squad/dragon in form of the time-looped Unknown.) She too is into monologues.
  • Claudia keeps the Stable Time Loop going by letting everything happen as it always does, including Mikkel's and her father's death, to preserve the secret of time travel.
• Adam and/or Eve: Adam, Jonas' older self, and Eva, the alternate Martha's older self. Neither bears much resemblance to the biblical characters, but a painting in Erit Lux's headquarters shows the original couple. Both names were assumed, perhaps inspired by the painting. Those two characters' plot function as the source of so much evil ties into the series' use of Gnostic imagery. Furthermore, similarly to how the biblical characters were the ancestors of all of humanity, Adam and Eva's child is the ancestor of much of the family tree in both worlds. Their influence on the loop also means that some characters who aren't their direct descendants exist because of them.
• Aerith and Bob: Most of the cast have common German names like Ulrich, Michael, Claudia or Franziska, but then there are characters with names like Magnus, Tronte or Bartosz that, while not unheard of, are comparatively rare, especially among teenagers. That most of these teens share a disproportionately large chunk of the show's screen time only makes their names stand out even more.
• Affair Hair: In season 3, Alternate Hannah gets suspicious of Ulrich when she finds a blond hair on his hoodie. She also notices a scent which she later confirms to be Charlotte's perfume. This scene mirrors another in Season 1, where Katharina begins to suspect Ulrich is cheating on her when she smells Hannah's perfume on his hoodie. Both women test their suspicion by hugging the woman in question - and in both cases Hannah brings something to eat over as an excuse to be around.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Applicable to many characters in Winden.
  • Initially, we have Jonas, Martha and Bartosz. Jonas and Martha were attracted to each other and had a brief romance, only for Jonas's friend Bartosz to start going out with Martha after Jonas suffers a personal tragedy and spends time in a psychiatric facility. And though Bartosz truly loves Martha, she still loves Jonas and eventually chooses Jonas over him.
  • Ulrich, a married man, and Hannah, a widow, are having an affair. Hannah has loved Ulrich since she was a young girl, but Ulrich never truly returns her feelings and is ultimately more devoted to preserving his family. It's also revealed that Hannah even maintained her attraction to Ulrich while still in a loving marriage with her late husband Michael Kahnwald, ironically beginning her affair with Ulrich on the night Michael would commit suicide.
  • A similar case is Ulrich's father, Tronte Nielsen. Tronte's wife Jana always loved him even after realizing that the woman he truly loved was Claudia Tiedemann. But even after a precocious romance in their preteens and an extramarital affair during adulthood, Claudia was largely dismissive of Tronte. Though Tronte spent years believing he was the father of Claudia's daughter Regina, it was actually Bernd Doppler, another married man who had an affair with Claudia.
  • Helge Doppler apparently harbored a schoolboy crush on Claudia Tiedemann from childhood to middle age. Claudia seemed to recognize this, but never acknowledged it or took it seriously. As a child, Claudia only had eyes for Tronte and, unbeknownst to Helge, she eventually had an affair with his much older father, Bernd.
• All There in the Manual : Following the final season's conclusion, Netflix updated the show's website into the entangled family tree connecting the four families together. The website provides some additional information on the characters not fully given in the show, and also names some characters who are Unknown Characters in the show, those being Ulla Schmidt (Helge's wife and Peter's mother) and Leopold Tannhaus (H.G. Tannhaus' father).
• Alternate Universe:
  • Season 3 introduces a parallel version of the world the audience has come to know. Changes include:
    • Mikkel never travelled through time, and as such never married Hannah and fathered Jonas (who doesn't exist in this timeline).
    • Hannah (who presumably was never married) ultimately managed to break up Ulrich and Katharina, and married him herself. Only to have him cheat on her as well.
    • Peter is a minister instead of a psychiatrist, and Bernadette is a cisgender man known as Benjamin. The official website does state that they are still both secretly in a relationship, however.
    • Charlotte cheats on Peter with Ulrich, while in Adam's world Peter was the one who cheated on her.
    • Franziska is the deaf Doppler sister instead of Elisabeth.
    • Regina succumbed to cancer in 2019.
    • Mads's time-travelling corpse was discovered by the kids and not the adults (and as consequence the enigma around his disappearance was uncovered a lot faster, since nobody actually tried to cover it up).
    • Helge didn't get his head caved in as a kid in 1953, but as an adult in 1986; and didn't lose his ear but his eye.
    • Other characters have noticeably different appearances as well. For example, Martha has dark hair and bangs, Magnus is also dark-haired, covered with tattoos, and is punk instead of a stoner, Katharina wears glasses, Peter lacks a beard, Elizabeth has pigtails, Aleksander has a beard, Bartosz has longer, wavy brown hair, and Wöller didn't lose his eye to some undisclosed accident, but instead his entire arm.
    • The passage in the Winden caves doesn't connect 1953-1986-2019, but instead connects 1986-2019-2052.
    • The apocalypse occurs on November 8th, 2019 rather than June 27th. 2020; also, most of the main characters from 2019 are killed (excluding Bartosz, Hannah and Elisabeth), as opposed to Adam's world, where Martha was killed, but most of the kids, Hannah, Charlotte and Katharina survived.
    • Instead of Sic Mundus, led by Jonas' future self Adam, the secret society manipulating events on this world is Erit Lux, led by Martha's future self Eva. Its members are Eva, Martha's middle-aged self, the young Martha, Noah, Claudia, Egon (who is seemingly not accidentally killed by Claudia), Bartosz and the Unknown.
    • The post-apocalyptic Winden in 2052 is very different as well. In Adam's world, Winden and the surrounding area has been left a ruined, dull wasteland. However, many structures and trees are still standing, and survivors continue to live among the ruins. In the alternate universe, however, nothing is left except for a sandy, barren desert. The only things remaining are the caves, the bunker and Erit Lux's headquarters, and there is no life sans Erit Lux's members.
  • The finale introduces another universe, which is revealed to be the original universe that was split into Adam and Eva's universes. Changes include:
    • The Winden Nuclear Plant doesn't exist.
    • Tannhaus' family is alive and safe.
    • Jonas, Martha, Mikkel, Magnus, Ulrich, Mads, Tronte, Agnes, Noah, Silja, Charlotte, Elisabeth, Franziska and the Unknown don't exist due to the loop not existing. Bartosz doesn't exist as well due to Regina and Aleksander never meeting (which happened due to Ulrich's interference).
    • Regina and Katharina didn't marry, but are alive.
    • Erik Obendorf and Yasin survive due to never getting involved in the experiments.
    • Hannah is friends with Regina, Katharina, Peter and Bernadette, is Happily Married to Wöller, and is expecting a baby, which she wishes to name 'Jonas'.
    • Peter is in a relationship with Bernadette.
    • The characters have different appearances as well. For example, Katharina has short hair, Regina wears her hair long, Wöller's eye is injured but not completely lost, and Bernadette is blond.
• Ambiguous Ending: The third and final season ends on the same note as the whole show: bittersweet ambiguity. Jonas and Martha sacrifice themselves and their entire realities to break the temporal cycle of misery they live in and save Tannhaus's family, seemingly successfully. In the final scene we see some of the characters who weren't Ret-Gone (Katharina, Wöller, Peter, Hannah, Regina, and Bernadette) leading seemingly much more adjusted and happy lives and having a cordial dinner together, with Hannah being pregnant. During the dinner, the lights go out (malfunctioning electric equipment being a common sign of time travel) and Hannah stares at a yellow raincoat exactly like Jonas's while talking about her dream of the end of the world. After the lights come back, Hannah states she wants to name her unborn son "Jonas". Were the lights going out sign of further time travel or just a power outage? Were the name "Jonas" and the dreams of the end of the world signs that the cycle has not been broken or just echoes of dead realities? Will Jonas get another chance or is the unborn baby a different person with the same name?
• Apocalypse How:
  • Season 2 revolves around Jonas's attempts to prevent an apocalyptic event in 2020 (which turns out to be a World-Wrecking Wave of dark matter caused by the opening of the barrels in the power plant) that kills most of Winden's residents and turns Winden and much of the area into a barren, apocalyptic hellscape. It is elaborated in Season 3 that the event threw the earth's rotation off-balance, leading to global power outages, devastating tidal waves, and drastic climate change. The apocalypse in Eva's world is shown to be even worse, turning what was once Winden into a seemingly lifeless desert.
  • In addition, Adam's ultimate plan turns out to be nothing less than the eradication of the entire multiverse, and the series ends with two parallel universes being wiped out so that a third can continue to exist.
• Arc Number: The number 3 is of great significance in the story. It even extends to a meta level, with the show itself having three seasons.
  • Three kids are kidnapped and experimented on to create the prototype time machine, and the more advanced stages of the time travel device each have three extending cylinders.
  • Tannhaus notes that "nothing is complete without a third dimension" to explain his theory that a wormhole connects the past, the present and the future, and uses the triquetra symbol, which is composed of three intersecting parts, to illustrate this. True to his claims, the wormhole in the Winden Caves connects three points in time, which, due to being in synch with the lunar-solar cycle, are 33 years apart.
  • Both Adam and his alternate universe counterpart Eva claim that a person "lives three lives," of which the first ends with the loss of naiveté, the second with the loss of innocence, and the third with the loss of life itself. Fittingly, both of them, as well as their son the Unknown, are seen as youths, as middle-aged adults, and as Evil Old Folks.
  • Season 3 reveals that three versions of Jonas and Martha simultaneously exist due to quantum entanglement.
  • And finally, there are three universes, of which only one survives.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The silver pendant featuring Saint Christopher, the Patron Saint of travelers. It shows up with various characters across all timelines.
  • The triquetra, which appears on the door of the gate in the Winden caves, the leather notebook, and the Emerald Tablet.
  • The Emerald Tablet, a famous alchemy text that contains the line "Sic mundus creatus est". It appears as a tattoo on Bartosz's chest and Noah's back, on a print in the hospital in the 80s, and on an album cover in the teenage Ulrich's bedroom.
  • The infinity symbol, representing Eternal Recurrence.
• Arc Words:
  • The words "Everything is connected", which represent the central theme of the entire show: how everything in Winden is connected.
  • Variations of the phrase "The question is not how/who/where, but when" are repeated whenever a character refers to time as the crucial element that binds everything together.
  • "The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end", referring to the cyclical nature of time and the time loop that connects both worlds.
  • "We are a perfect match. Never believe anything else" is the overarching phrase for Jonas and Martha's relationship, and also the last words he says to her Alternate Self before both of them are erased from existence.
  • "Sic Mundus Creatus Est" ("Thus the world was created") is the religious creed of the eponymous Apocalypse Cult, who believe that by destroying the time loop, they will create a better world for humanity.
  • In Season 2, Egon is warned of the "White Devil" by young Helge and puzzles for decades about who this devil could be. It is eventually revealed that the White Devil is his daughter, Claudia, who accidentally causes his death.
  • Season 3 has "We/You are wrong here" whenever someone ends up in another universe. In addition, the words "In your world as in mine" are repeated several times to underline that key events in one universe also inevitably occur in the other.
  • And finally, the words that describe the idea that kicked off everything: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants. This describes Tannhaus, who - despite originally merely being a humble watchmaker - after years of relentless work manages to accomplish the greatest feat in the history of science: building a working device that unravels the fabric of time and space, something which by all means should be utterly impossible. But he only did it because he had the insurmountable desire to undo the death of his family.
• Artistic License – Geography: In 1986, it is clearly established that Winden is a West German town, but the ruins of the housing blocks in 2052 are clearly East German.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Construction for the first nuclear power plant in Germany began in 1958, five years later than in the show's timeline. It seems the writers altered history a bit so that it would fit the 33-year time travel cycle.
  • In 1986, Ulrich wears a shirt of the Swedish Metal band Morbid. The band was only founded at the end of 1986, and only achieved recognition posthumously, several years later, particularly for the involvement of their singer with the more popular and infamous band Mayhem. There's no way Ulrich would have their shirt in 1986.
• Artistic License – Law Enforcement: German police are the responsibility of the Land, not individual municipalities. While people may call the local police the "Winden Police", the uniforms would still show the Land's coat of arms, not Winden's.
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: A corpse is highly radioactive. The coroner attributes this to exposure to radiation, postulating that the person may have been an X-ray technician. Needless to say, X-rays, or even gamma rays, do not turn a person radioactive. That requires physical exposure and absorption of radioactive material. This may be an In-Universe error, as it's only 1954 and the coroner's knowledge of radioactivity may be spotty.
• Artistic License – Physics: While it's hardly reasonable to complain about realism in a series about time travel (invented in 1986 by a solitary scientist at that), the references to "the God particle" and "dark matter" are clearly intended to remind viewers of discoveries in contemporary physics and cosmology, but neither (probably) have much to do with time travel. Also, in reality, the "God particle" (the Higgs boson) is researched in huge, expensive, specialist particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider; a civilian atomic power station is unlikely to conduct research in fundamental particle physics, even by accident.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: In the final two episodes, the aspect ratio switches to widescreen when the origin world is focused on.
• As the Good Book Says...: Many lines from the script and names of episodes are references to passages from the bible. The 10th episode is named "Alpha and Omega", a reference to Revelation 22:13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End."
• Attempted Rape: In post-apocalyptic Winden, Elisabeth almost gets raped by a burglar but her father arrives just in time to interrupt the assault.
• Autopsy Snack Time: While dissecting a dead sheep's brain, the local coroner talks about a Yugoslavian dish his wife is preparing for the weekend.
• Awful Truth: The alternate Martha is visually shaken when Adam tells her that she and Jonas are the cause of the apocalypse because of the child they conceived together which builds a bridge between both worlds. What Adam doesn't know at this point is that the real origin exists outside of their two worlds. He later gets his own awful truth served to him by old Claudia.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Serial homewrecker Hannah gets pregnant by Egon Tiedemann in the 1950s. Due to the hopelessness of the situation, she decides to visit a back-alley abortionist. However, while waiting for her operation, she changes her mind upon talking to a young Helene Albers.
• Bad Future:
  • A major plot point in the second half of season 3 is that both universes are diverged from an origin universe, and the apocalypse happens in both universes, unlike in the original world.
• Bad Habits: Noah pretends to be a priest to have a reason to hang around at Sic Mundus' headquarters - which are under a church - in 1953/54 and 1986/87; the same is the case for the Unknown.
• Bait-and-Switch: When both Charlotte and Peter are late to pick up Elisabeth, their younger daughter, from school, she decides to walk home by herself. Peter arrives to find her already gone, and Charlotte finds her fox hat on the forest path. She gets home fine, Noah just made her late by engaging her in a cryptic conversation and giving her a watch that used to belong to Charlotte. Her friend Yasin, on the other hand, is not so lucky when he decides to walk to school by himself the next day, and ends up disappearing.
• Battle in the Rain: Bartosz and Jonas have a fight in the rain in the yard in 1888 after Martha revealed that Jonas was Adam. This is a Call-Back to their earlier fight in the rain in Season 1, after Martha confessed that she kissed Jonas while already with Bartosz.
• Beta Couple: In contrast to Jonas and Martha's spacetime-traversing romance and eventual enmnity and the parental generation's topsy-turvy interpersonal relationships, Magnus and Franziska are always a pair and even grow old together along with Adam from 1888 to 1921.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Adam and Eve in Season 3. While Adam wants to end the world and all existence out of frustration over his repeated failures to save Martha or anyone else, Eve wants to sustain the cycle (and all the misery it brings) simply because it's the only way how she can keep her loved ones alive at least for a while.
• Big Damn Reunion: Between Mikkel and Ulrich in 1986 with the latter having endured 33 years at an asylum to see his son again. The reunion is short-lived though as authorities quickly drag the old man back to the institution.
• Big Fancy House:
  • Bernd Doppler and his family live in a huge, fancy mansion, befitting the guy who is responsible for opening the power plant, the lifeblood of the town.
  • Aleksander and Regina Tiedemann live in a large and fancy home made of stone and glass. They run the power plant in 2019 and the town hotel, respectively, making them likely the most successful couple in town.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family:
  • The Nielsens, mostly. It all began with Agnes ditching her son on her own to rejoin Sic Mundus, as well as multiple affairs in each generation. Then it gets worse.
  • It's later revealed that all the four main families are interconnected by blood, and with the Nielsens, with an alternate universe as well, taking this trope up to eleven, as all major and minor antagonists eventually turn out to belong to the same family.
• Big Secret:
  • Pretty much any character who finds out about Time Travel starts behaving secretively and would sound crazy if they tried to explain, bringing them under suspicion of the child abductions and murders. Characters hiding this secret include Tronte, Peter, the Stranger, Ulrich, Charlotte, and eventually most of the cast. In addition, many characters are hiding secrets that are unrelated or not directly related:
  • Tronte, Peter, and Ulrich are all hiding extramarital affairs.
  • Ulrich, Peter, Claudia and Tronte are hiding that the body discovered in the forest is Mads's.
  • Bernd, Claudia, Aleksander, Torben, and Bernadette are hiding barrels of nuclear waste from an unreported accident at the power plant. At least one of these characters is also hiding the fact that this secret enables Time Travel.
  • Franziska is secretly selling hormones.
  • Hannah is secretly seeking revenge on Ulrich for rejecting her, first by falsely accusing Ulrich of rape and later by blackmailing Aleksander.
  • Aleksander is hiding his true identity, apparently having committed a murder in 1986.
• Bilingual Bonus: Winden is both the name of a real town in Germany, but can also mean "to twist" or "to wiggle".
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Hannah has a mild personality to everyone's face, but she is extremely manipulative, conniving and spiteful throughout her life.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jonas and Martha rescue Tannhaus' family, preventing him from destroying the original world through discovering time travel, saving the world from the apocalypse and the characters from a never-ending loop of misery. However, this causes Jonas, Martha, and all other characters whose existence depends on time travel to cease to exist. The remaining members of the cast seem happier and better adjusted, and the final line implies that Jonas (and potentially other characters) might get another shot in this "fixed" reality.
• Blood from the Mouth: Both Noah and Martha have blood running from their mouth after getting shot in the chest in the Season 2 finale.
• Book Ends:
  • Season 1 begins with an overhead shot of the Winden forest and a bunker with photos of the characters, in what we later discover is the year 2052. The very last scene of the season finale is Jonas arriving in the aforementioned bunker and discovering that he's in the year 2052.
  • The earliest scenes of Season 2 show us the post-apocalyptic Winden of the 2050s. The Season 2 finale ends by showing us the apocalypse in 2020 that creates that Winden.
  • Season 3 begins with Alternate-Martha bringing Jonas to her world (as is later revealed, under orders from Adam). The final episode has Adam himself saving Jonas from the Apocalypse and bringing him to Eva's World, even using some of the same lines that Alternate-Martha spoke to the first Jonas.
  • The first actual scene of Season 1 is set in the Kahnwald house in the Present Day, with Michael hanging himself. The last scene of Season 3 returns us to the Kahnwald house, albeit in an Alternate Universe where new versions of some of the characters are having a dinner party.
  • A more character-specific example in the Season 3 episode "Life and Death". We get to see a teenage Peter Doppler first arriving in Winden in 1987. The same episode also shows us his death in the post-apocalyptic Winden of 2020, bringing his story full circle.
  • Both the first and the final episode of the series end with Nena's "Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann." The first time, it's a case of Soundtrack Dissonance, as the song's upbeat melody stands in stark contrast to the disturbing sight of Erik being killed in a scientific experiment. In the final episode, the song replaces the droning, gloomy end credits theme, with its hopeful lyrics underlining the story's Bittersweet Ending.
• Cassandra Truth: In season 3, when Martha of Eva's World tries to confess to her brother about the impending apocalypse, he thinks she's gone mad.
• Catapult Nightmare: Both Jonas and Martha do this when waking from bad dreams.
• Central Theme: Determinism. Is it possible to alter past and future events? And do humans have free will or are we slaves to desires that are causally determined?
• Child by Rape: Helge. His mother - who doesn't feel much love for her son because of that - implied as much when talking to Noah; and the information available on the show's website do confirm that Helge is indeed not the son of Bernd Doppler, but of Anatol Veliev (presumably a Soviet soldier who raped his mother towards the war 9 years prior).
• Cliffhanger:
  • Season 1 ends with aged Helge going back to 1986 and driving his car into his past self to stop him working for Noah, incapacitating his past self and killing his present self in the process; Stranger Jonas's and Claudia's plan to cancel out the black hole failing for reasons that remain unclear; Hannah plotting to continue destroying Ulrich's life and blackmailing Aleksander/Boris with her knowledge of his true identity; and Jonas getting stuck in what seems to be 2052.
  • Season 2 ends with the Apocalypse happening when a nuclear waste barrel is opened in the power plant and forms the God Particle portal that exists in the future; some characters being saved in the bunker and some arguably killed by the activation of the God Particle; Stranger/Future!Jonas taking Bartosz, Magnus, and Franziska to an unknown timeline to form Sic Mundus; young Jonas witnessing Martha die at the hands of his future self Adam, who needs Martha's death to occur to secure his own timeline; and another Martha from an alternative dimension taking Jonas with a new compact portable device.
• Clock Punk: Appropriately enough, devices built by clock-maker Tannhaus tend towards this aesthetic.
• Conceive and Kill: In season 3 episode 5, this is the fate of the Jonas who entered the alternate world. After having sex with and, what neither of them know yet, impregnating,this world's Martha, he has fulfilled the purposes Eva needed him for, so he is promptly shot by a slightly older Martha. As the following episode shows, there is another Jonas who is alive however.
• Connected All Along:
  • Jonas is related to the entire Nielsen family due to his father being Mikkel, Ulrich's youngest son who disappeared in 2019.
  • Charlotte is Noah and Elisabeth's long-lost daughter, and via the former as revealed in Season 3, distant cousin to Jonas, Tronte and Claudia, due to Noah's mother Silja being Egon and Hannah's daughter.
  • In Season 3, it is revealed that everyone in the 4 main families are connected to each other in family lineage as well, with the Tiedemanns being ancestors to the Nielsens and the present generation of the Doppler family, with Bernd Doppler directly being an ancestor to the all the four families on lieu of being Regina's real father.
• The Conspiracy: Adam has spent a lifetime in various times building a cult dedicated to ending the world. Eve's faction is less tortuous, but still quite conspiratorial.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Adding up all the monologues about the intertwinement of past, present and future would probably amount to a full episode.
• Corpse Temperature Tampering: Discussed Trope. On the 5th of November 2019, the police found the corpse of a teenage boy who died around 10 hours ago. The policeman Ulrich Nielsen then begins to theorize that this might be his own brother, who has been missing since October 1986, and that the corpse was somehow conserved for 33 years. When he asks the coroner about how something could be possible, she shoots the idea down. As it turns out, it indeed was Ulrich's brother but little they knew that there was Time Travel involved, too. And as season 3 shows, the same thing happened in the alternate world too.
• Cosmic Deadline: In season 2, the number of characters who know about Time Travel rapidly approaches 100% during the week leading up to the Apocalypse.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The series veers into this with the reveal that the time loop predetermines each of the characters' actions and decisions, keeping them trapped in a never-ending cycle of suffering. The realization that there is no escape from this fate plays a huge part in Jonas's transformation into Adam and his desire to destroy time itself.
• Crapsack World: Winden is referred to multiple times as a "festering wound'', and it's telling when the collapse of the space-time anomaly wipes out the town in the future and later, the end of both Adam's and Eva's Worlds feel like a Mercy Kill. To delve into the specifics:
  • In 1953 Winden is a hopeful young town with a nuclear power plant about to give its economy a major boost, but it's also a place where birds are falling from the sky, and children are showing up dead in construction sites. The townspeople still hold dark secrets among themselves.
  • In 1986, a false rape case and a missing child have put the town on edge, turning the inhabitants against one another. Livestock and birds die in droves, and the power plant and the people still hold their secrets...
  • In the present day, Winden is a town full of depressed, pathetic, paranoid, secretive, violent, and spiteful people. Children go missing, and the power plant is rumored to be unstable. And then the conspiracy kicks off and sets everyone against each other.
  • In 2052, the collapse of the space-time anomaly at the power plant has led to the devastation of Winden and seemingly much of the world as well. The surviving inhabitants are now scavengers straight out of Mad Max. There are giant wasp nests everywhere, something that is predicted by global warming.
  • In the end, it turns out there are two crapsack universes with so much suffering and misery at the heart of their very existence that the heroes agree that wiping them out and erasing most of the cast is the best course of action.
  • And yet, even after the two universes are wiped out and the survivors manage to live out happy lives, Winden seemingly remains a place that brings misery to its inhabitants. When one of the surviving characters wishes for "a world without Winden", everyone else quickly agrees.
• A Day in the Limelight: The third episode of Season 2, "Ghosts", focuses primarily on Claudia and her relationships with her acquaintances and family members (particularly her father) throughout various time periods. It also qualifies as A Death in the Limelight, as it ends with her old self being shot dead by Noah.
• Dead Guy Junior: In the finale Hannah from the Origin World is pregnant and while experiencing some sort of resonance from the erased universes muses that she likes the name Jonas.
• Dead Guy on Display: In 2052, Jonas walks through a forest where bodies are hanging from the trees.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The scenes set in the 1950s contain some of this: besides vast amounts of smoking, and Egon Tiedemann and Daniel Kahnwald being casually sexist, there's the way the police discover the bodies of 2019 timeline kids, one of them of Middle Eastern descent, and both wearing clothes labeled as "Made In China". The cops look like the only way they can wrap their heads around these details is to conclude they must be from some sort of Bad Future. Additionally, the coroner's description of one of the corpses is worded in a way that would make him appear like a hardcore racist in contemporary Germany.
• Died in Ignorance: Over the course of season 2, Egon begins to understand that Time Travel might exist and it's somehow connected to the caves. When he tries to alert the police, he's interrupted and accidentally killed by Claudia, before he could learn that he really had the right idea.
• Dimensional Traveler: If all the Time Travel stuff wasn't complicated enough, it turns out that there are two different universes, each with their own slightly different chronology. Small spherical devices allow people to hop between the two dimensions. It's ultimately revealed that they're both offshoots of a third, original universe that can only be accessed through special circumstances.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Or you might end up in another time period. The trope is more invoked by implication than anything else, but Winden is surrounded by a lot of woodland, as the camera periodically reminds us. This isn't a supernatural or especially dense forest, but characters are still forever wandering through it and encountering dark secrets and threats. Surprisingly, despite the fact that two children (Erik and Mikkel) have gone missing in the 2019 timeline and a dead one has appeared, the forest is still not made off-limits to children, leading to more abductions.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Zig-zagged with Jonas and the alternate-Martha. Jonas clearly seems to develop feelings for her, which culminate in them sleeping together. But its clear that the one he really wants to save and be with is the Martha from his world - a fact which angers alt-Martha. Nonetheless, in the series finale, a version of Jonas and Martha who had feelings for other versions of each other (Jonas for his world's Martha, and Martha for the Jonas who came to her world) share a tender moment.
• Double-Meaning Title: Season 1 episode 4 is called "Doppelleben" ("Double Lives"), referring to various instances of adultery, deceit, etc, occurring in Winden, but it is also the first episode to focus on the Doppler family — the Doppler lives. Non-German speakers may not notice the pun.
• Dramatic Irony: Too many instances to count with the time travel as people meet their relatives or associates out of chronology and react to them in unusual ways. One of the most prominent examples is seeing Katharina bully Mikkel in 1986 while she agonizes over his disappearance in 2019.
• Dramatic Necklace Removal: Adam rips Martha's pendant from her neck before using her to incite the apocalypse.
• Drone of Dread: Can be heard on the soundtrack during tense scenes in the forest or in the cave.
• Dysfunction Junction: Everyone. Even the more reasonable characters like Charlotte and Jonas, have some sort of angst. Most of the rest have far worse problems than mere angst.
• Emergency Temporal Shift:
  • This is how some of the characters in the season 2 finale evade the impending apocalypse. As season 3 shows, Adult Jonas, Franziska, Magnus and Bartosz arrived in 1888, Katharina went through the passage to 1987 and Charlotte has been transported to 2052.
  • In episode 6 of season 3 likewise, Erit Lux rescues Bartosz and Hannah that way from the apocalypse of their world, combined with the Extradimensional Emergency Exit that the golden orb time machines allow.
• Epigraph: A couple of episodes, like the pilot and episode 8, start with a famous quote. The Season 3 pilot starts with a title card reading "Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills."
• Establishing Character Moment: In the first episode, Franziska reveals that she's beaten the rest of the teens to Erik's stash, showing that she's bold and independent. Bartosz simply shoves her on her ass and steals the stash, showing that he's a dick.
• Eternal Recurrence: Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence — the idea that all events in the universe repeat themselves in never-ending series of cycles — is referred to in a conversation between the Stranger and Tannhaus and turns out to be one of the series' central themes.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: In the end at least two versions of every single character have been killed or erased from existence. Only the ones existing independently from the time loop are left, and only the versions of the original universe, the ones we followed for three seasons are erased with the rest of them.
• Everyone Is Related: To increasingly absurd degrees due to all the time travelling, this happens to the main cast. By the end of the series it turns out that a huge part of the central four families is descendant of Jonas and a second version of Martha in two worlds. And the characters who aren't are still related by marriage or adoption. Unfortunately, this means that, in the universe where they don't exist, most of the characters we've come to know never existed either.
• Everyone Went to School Together: In spite of the felt Small Town Boredom, the generation who were teens in 1986 seemed to universally stick around and raise families in Winden. Clausen notes how strange this is.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In the third season, the major characters have subtly different hairstyles (or other appearance tics) to indicate they are the alternate universe counterparts of the characters we've come to know. Magnus and Martha have dark hair, Aleksander has a beard, Charlotte and Bartosz have longer hair, and so on.
• Extradimensional Emergency Exit: In the Season 2 finale, when the Apocalypse begins in Winden, an alternate version of Martha shows up to save Jonas, bringing him to the Alternate Universe that she originated from. However, it's later revealed that due to quantum entanglement — which allows for the creation of overlapping Alternate Timelines — Jonas simultaneously doesn't get rescued, but nevertheless survives the Apocalypse by diving into his basement.
• The Extremist Was Right: Adam in the end. Regardless of how insane his plan and how callous and villainous his actions may seem, his omnicidal goal to destroy the universe (and therefore the loop) for good was necessary, because the reestablishment of the original timeline depended on it - he just missed a few crucial details to make his plan work. Fortunately for him (and everyone else trapped in the loop), Claudia ultimately provided him with the missing pieces.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • The older miner in the opener of Season 2 knows that he's about to be killed but doesn't resist the attack by young Noah.
  • Claudia knows she's going to die by Noah's hands, but isn't afraid and doesn't stop Noah from killing her.
  • Michael doesn't hesitate when Claudia informs Jonas Michael has to die in order to keep the loop stable, knowing that it will ensure his son will stay alive and not be erased.
  • In season 3, as the apocalypse goes down in the alternate world, Franziska and Magnus are sitting by the lake and facing the impact with serenity.
  • All characters Fading Away in the finale do so in peace.
• Fading Away: Happens in the season 3 finale to the characters from the two dissolving worlds.
• False Rape Accusation: Hannah accuses Ulrich of raping Katharina after seeing the two of them having consensual sex, for no other reason than getting revenge on Ulrich for choosing Katharina over her. And then she lets Regina take the fall for it.
• Fantastic Romance: Jonas and Martha. Jonas' first romantic overture towards Martha occurs when he travels back in time to the summer of 2019. Their relationship only begins because future Jonas already has feelings for her and initiates their relationship, creating yet another paradox.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Ulrich travels to 1953 in search of his son, attacks the young Helge Doppler, and is kept by the police as the prime suspect in the case of the dead children. He gets beaten up multiple times in prison by the guards, then transferred to a psychiatric clinic where he is kept until his death. His escape attempt to save his son Mikkel in 1987 is foiled. He is visited by Hannah in 1954 who abandons him knowingly. In 1987 Katharina shows up, promising to save him before she is killed in trying to do so.
  • Jonas tries to kill himself during Season 3 only for it to be revealed that he cannot die and must always become Adam. This is only changed after it is revealed that events can be changed during the Apocalypse moment, which Jonas and Martha use to eventually eradicate both time-looped worlds as this is preferable to all this suffering occurring over and over.
  • Adam tries to eradicate pregnant Martha (and her offspring) from existence by focusing the energy of the Apocalypse in both worlds on her. Since the two universes constantly regenerate each other, it doesn't work as she is not the origin and cause of the time loop itself.
• Fiery Redhead: Franziska Doppler is a strong-willed, aggressive and independent red-head. Even in the second universe, where she's mute, she still has a forceful personality.
• First Girl Wins: As well as the gender-flipped version. For some reason, the people in Winden seem to permanently end up with their partners (and be in fairly dysfunctional relationships with them) they were or started dating 33 years ago. It's the case for Hannah and Michael, Ulrich and Katharina, Regina and Aleksander, Charlotte and Peter, Jana and Tronte, and Magnus and Franziska.
• Flash Sideways: Several characters experience this in season 3 when facing a character they would know in the concurrent timeline.
  • E.g., Martha expresses her feeling of familiarity with Jonas even though they never met before.
  • In the season 3 finale, Hannah recalls a dream from the previous night where she dreamt that the world ended.
• Fleeing for the Fallout Shelter:
  • Over the course of season 2, it becomes evident that on the 27th of June 2020, the apocalypse is going to happen. In the final episode of the season, most of the characters find refuge in the bunker or escape by travelling to another time.
  • However, episode 6 of season 3 reveals that Jonas, who was previously shown as being saved by Extradimensional Emergency Exit, has been duplicated. The duplicate isn't saved by anyone else, and therefore has to find refuge anywhere he can; he runs for the basement of the house he is in.
• Fold the Page, Fold the Space: Tannhaus uses a rolled-up sheet of paper to demonstrate time travel via wormhole to The Stranger.
• Forced into Evil:
  • At the end of the first season, Hannah blackmails Aleksander into ruining Ulrich's life by threatening to make public that he has been living under a false identity for the last 33 years.
  • Adam attempts to do this to his past self, Jonas. Jonas doesn't accept it. Not at first, anyway.
  • Noah's past self is another example, but only because Noah is killed by Agnes after he's fulfilled his purpose.
• Foreign Language Title: It's a German production with an English title. The German word is dunkel. Episode titles are in German, though.
• Foreshadowing: A key element throughout the show, mainly due to the fact it comes up afterwards as vital or a factor in the time loops.
  • There are three photos of characters that will appear in the series shown in the opening scene (except some those haven't been revealed yet, like Adam and Stranger!Jonas or Old!Ulrich), and there are two photographs for a few characters. It turns out there's a reason for that...
  • Claudia stresses to Jonas why he needs to exist in the grand scheme of things when he argues that bringing Michael/Mikkel back to 2019 would erase Adam from the timeline (even if it means he would stop existing), commenting that she's seen a reality where he doesn't exist and it's not a pleasant one. Cue the final episode of the second season revealing that alternative realities (later revealed to be an actual universe) will play a factor in breaking the cycle.
  • Tannhaus admits to Charlotte that he wanted to turn back time to save his family who died the day Baby Charlotte was given to him to raise but didn't after deciding to focus on raising the baby. As the final episode reveals, the very reason the two worlds (and therefore the entire series) was created because of the paradox resulting from Tannhaus' attempt to save his family, which fractured his reality.
  • Adam ordering Noah that the apocalypse must happen is this when it is revealed the apocalypse is the only way the Knot can be undone.
  • The heavy focus that the series gives to the number 3 (see the entry for Arc Number above) foreshadows the revelation that there's a third universe, so even though there were very few obvious signs of this it makes sense. Claudia mentions it was only by observing both universes she came to realise neither should have existed but that must mean they were created from another world that should exist.
  • In season 2, Wöller has a What Does She See in Him? opinion of Hannah and Michael's marriage, expressing that Hannah was beautiful enough to land anybody she wanted. In the season finale, he and Hannah are together and expecting a child.
• Free-Range Children: Everyone in 2019 is remarkably chill with kids running around all by themselves, even after multiple disappearances and one dead body. For example, when Elisabeth's school day ends early, there is no teacher watching to make sure all the kids get picked up safely, which leads to Elisabeth walking home by herself and running into Noah. The same goes for 1953, with even worse consequences.
• Future Copter: Seen patrolling the area around Winden in 2053.
• Future Me Scares Me: Adam is a middle-aged Jonas Kahnwald, a man who gave up on all his ideals and is behind the kidnappings and murders of children in Winden from 1986 to 2019, in order to break the Stable Time Loop plaguing the town which also basically guaranteed his own existence in the first place. Naturally, Jonas is horrified when he learns this.
• Future Self Reveal:
  • Midway through the first season, Jonas receives his father's suicide note in a package. Reading it, he discovers that his father, Michael, was no other than young Mikkel Nielsen, who unknowingly time-traveled back to 1986 on November 4, 2019 and never came back, growing up as Michael Kahnwald.
  • In the first season finale, the grizzled, mysterious time-traveling stranger who has been popping up around Winden is revealed to be the future self of Jonas Kahnwald, who is taking steps to keep the Stable Time Loop in order. The latter is not happy when he is forced through things his future self has already lived.
  • In the second season, the mysterious, scarred old man seen in a luxurious house is revealed to be the future self of Jonas and the Stranger, Adam, who is manipulating both of them, as well as a host of other characters, to ensure his endgame.
  • A downplayed instance of this is the man who young Noah kills with a pickaxe in 1921 at the beginning of Season 2. Only in the penultimate episode is it revealed that this man was Bartosz, who is Noah's father. This reveal is never directly regarded in the show, however.

G to O

• Gambit Pileup: In the first season we get hints of conflicting factions trying to outsmart one another; this starts growing more and more and by the middle of the third season a flowchart explaining the plans would probably require a few square miles of paper. A big factor in this is the fact that many of the characters' goals are in direct conflict with the goals of their past selves, so they must deceive them (which is fairly easy considering they already had all the interactions from the other perspective), and there are several versions of each character. Adam and Eve in particular are so far ahead in the game that they are constantly lying to their subordinates/past selves to lie to other people and so and so in order to ensure their own existence, and then some more to further their plans.
• Garden of Eden:
  • The machine Eva and her followers use to jump across universes and further their agenda against Adam looks like an apple.
  • Jonas and Martha become Adam and Eva. Their relation across two alternate universes (and the child they have together) is the source of existence for all the people who did not exist in the original, third universe.
  • Eva isn't subtle about this, either. The Adam and Eve painting by Cranach the Elder is the centerpiece of her evil lair.
• Gone to the Future: In Season 2 when Claudia time-travels to 2020 from 1987, she discovers a world in which she disappeared mysteriously 33 years ago. In Season 3 it turns out the same happened to Charlotte during the apocalypse: she traveled from 2020 to 2053.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Déjà-vus indicate the existence of time travel and alternate realities. Jonas refers to a déjà-vu he had as "a glitch in the matrix" in reference to the Trope Namer, and in Season 2, his older self uses the same phrase to confirm his identity to Martha. In addition, Season 3 reveals that Jonas himself and an alternate universe version of Martha are "glitches in the matrix" around which the time loop that connects their two universes revolves, and whose existence must be erased to restore reality to its natural state.
• Gratuitous English:
  • The series itself has a Foreign Language Title: Dark.
  • "My only aim is to take many lives. The more, the better I feel," lyrics from Kreator, a heavy metal band Ulrich likes. Egon quotes the line to Ulrich as part of his suspicion that he's part of the kidnappings, but only because Ulrich said those words to Egon in 1953.
  • Magnus in the second universe has a lot of English-language punk mottos displayed on his bedroom wall.
  • Season 1 features many instances of a 1986 TV commercial for Raider bars. Its German-language jingle includes the English line, "It's a powerful snack!"
  • Benni has neon signs reading "Welcome" and "Love" in English on her trailer.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: By the end, no one will know about the existence of 2 alternate universes, Time Travel being real, and Tannhaus himself will never know he indirectly saved his family due to the witnesses being Ret-Gone.
• Happy Marriage Charade: Charlotte and Peter's marriage has been slowly falling apart ever since Charlotte found out that Peter was seeing a transgender prostitute behind her back. However, they refuse to split up for the sake of their children, and outwardly pretend to be a happy couple (which, as pointed out by their daughter Franziska, only makes things worse for her and her sister).
  • Tronte and Jana in the 80s, due to the former's affair with Claudia Tiedemann.
• Hard-Work Montage: Season 3 has a montage of Tannhaus in the 1970s building his lab in the bunker.
• Have We Met Yet?:
  • In Season 1 an aged Helge in 2019 seems to recognize Ulrich and is terrified of him. After this encounter, Ulrich travels back in time to 1953, meets Helge as a child, and brutally assaults him... which explains why Old!Helge was so terrified of him during their earlier (from his perspective) encounter.
  • In Season 2 both Jonas and Claudia meet versions of each other who have already met their future selves.
  • Another example from Season 2. Middle-aged Claudia in 1987 meets an aged HG Tannhaus who already knows her, even though she's never met him...because, as seen in Season 1, her older self traveled back to 1953 and met his younger self.
• The Hero Dies: In the Grand Finale, both of our main heroes Jonas and Martha as well as anyone whose existence is dependent on the time-knot ceases to exist because of its undoing.
• History Repeats:
  • In Season 2, young Claudia in 1953 tells Tronte that she doesn't have a good relationship with her mother and proclaims that she won't do the same mistake with her children. Skip 33 years ahead, Claudia is now Married to the Job at the power plant with an estranged daughter just like herself 33 years before.
  • In Season 3, it's revealed that the four generations of Nielsen-Kahnwald heads, i.e. Agnes, Tronte, Ulrich and Mikkel/Michael have all slept with their ancestors.
• Holding Hands: Martha 2 does this with her boyfriend in their introductory scene in Season 3. Bartosz is giving this act a Disapproving Look.
• Hollywood Law:
  • By German gun laws, only the military and the police are allowed to possess and carry automatic firearms. The Winden nuclear power plant is privately owned, and if you had your private security wield submachine guns in plain view of a bunch of cops, their search warrant for your power plant would be the least of your worries, but the cops in the show don't bat an eyelid.
  • It is highly unlikely that Ulrich, a man with a rape charge on his rap sheet, would ever be allowed to join the police force regardless of whether the charge was later dropped or not.
• Homage:
  • Martha stars in a play called Ariadne and has a poster for it pinned to her wall. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was a princess trapped in her father's palace, under which was the original labyrinth, while Martha and the rest of the characters are trapped in an endless loop in a place with caves underneath. The allusion is repeated musically in season 3, episode 4, which features Asaf Avidan's "The Labyrinth Song", which is addressed to Ariadne and has lyrics summing up much of the series:
    Can it be that all us heroes have a path but not a plan?
  • The whole series plot, and Adam's philosophy especially, seems to be an homage to Gnosticism and Manichaeism, belief systems which saw the material world as an evil prison, to be transcended, which emphasized the conflicting duality of darkness and light, and in which material desires are a source of evil.
• Hot Men at Work: Season 2 starts with a presentable scene of two shirtless miners at work.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: The warp/pinch scene transition effect used from season 2 on when transitioning from one world in the knot to the other.
• If I Can't Have You…: Once Hannah realizes that Ulrich has no intention of leaving Katharina for her, she decides to completely destroy his life in retaliation. Her counterpart in Eve's world does something similar when discovering that Ulrich (now her husband) cheats on her with Charlotte - she decides to destroy Charlotte's life.
• Immediate Sequel: Season 3 begins exactly where the Cliffhanger from the previous season left off.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: In season 3, Katharina's mother has to take a sip from a bottle after she killed Katharina's older version and sank her body in the lake. She then looks at her hands in horror and frantically tries to wash the bloodstains off them.
• In Spite of a Nail: Zigzagged to hell and back in season 3 without Mikkel going back in time many details change, Helge loses an eye instead of an ear, Wöller loses an arm instead of an eye, Ulrich has divorced Katharina to marry Hannah (and is cheating on her with Charlotte) instead of cheating on Katharina with Hannah etc. However, many things remain the same, including all the time loops that enable the existence of characters, and of course the apocalypse, although it happens earlier than in Jonas's universe.
• Interrupted Suicide: In season 3, when Jonas tries to hang himself at the same spot where his father did, he is interrupted by young Noah who explains to Jonas that any attempt at killing himself would fail because his older self is alive and according to Stable Time Loop theory the future cannot be changed.
• It's All About Me: Bartosz is apparently very hurt by the fact that Jonas stood him up for Bartosz meeting his drug dealer in the middle of the woods at night for a small bag of weed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Martha is having a nervous breakdown in front of half the town over the fact that her brother is missing, and he's nowhere to be seen.
• It Works Better with Bullets: In the final episode of season 3, 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.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The story features so many paradoxes and interwoven timelines that it is almost impossible to keep track of. The show begins in the present day, with several strange presences and events, and as characters begin to travel backward and forward in time, the audience gets to learn the causes of many of these events.
• Kid from the Future: Several characters travel back in time and meet their parents when they were younger.
• Kids Are Cruel: Children and teens are shown to be just as messed up as adults.
  • Charlotte's young daughter Elisabeth steals from her older sister and bluntly admits that she doesn't care about Mikkel's disappearance, calling him "a showoff and an idiot."
  • Hannah accused Ulrich of raping Katharina out of pure jealousy when the three of them were still teenagers in 1986.
• Killed Off for Real: The ones whose existence is dependent on the time-knot cease to exist in the finale because of its undoing.
• Killing Your Alternate Self: In season 3, Claudia kills her alternative self with a Boom, Headshot! in order to further Adam's plan of annihilating both worlds. She believed this was the only way to prevent the eternally recurring suffering for her daughter Regina.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Both competing factions of time travelers state that there is a war between "the dark and the light," and that their own side is the Light Is Good side. This concept provides the title of the series.
• Light Is Good: The competing factions always refer to the other as the darkness or shadow, and themselves as the morally right light. The motto of the second universe's faction is Erit Lux: "Let there be light."
• Love Triangle: Each generation has one.
  • The teens of the '50s: Claudia, Tronte, and Jana. Claudia and Tronte have Puppy Love that grows into a relationship in adolescence while Jana moons over Tronte. Tronte grows up to marry Jana, but has an affair with Claudia.
  • The teens of the '80s: Hannah likes Ulrich, who becomes High-School Sweethearts with Katharina. In 2019 Hannah is The Mistress to Ulrich, who avoids definitively committing to her. The alternate universe where Ulrich left Katharina for Hannah adds Charlotte to the mix as Ulrich's new mistress.
  • The teens of the 2010s: Jonas, Martha, and Bartosz. Bartosz is dating Martha, but she and his best friend Jonas had already consummated their feelings for each other before Jonas left.
• Mama Bear: Throughout the series we see a lot of mothers go to extreme lengths to protect their children:
  • Katharina goes to the '80s and stays there for months, refusing to go back home without her son.
  • Claudia's ultimate goal is to ensure Regina lives she's so motivated by it that she is able to outsmart everyone (no easy feat in this story) and figure out the origin of the knot, finally leading to the destruction of the universes.
  • Eva's prime motivation to perpetuate the Knot and the miseries that follow is to protect her son from his father, who is hell-bent on killing him to wipe out the two worlds.
• Maternity Crisis: Hannah is shown as near-term pregnant at the beginning of the third season. During the apocalypse, we see her with blood on her clothing, possibly indicating a miscarriage. Not that it mattered much at this point.
• Matricide: In Season 3, Katharina attempts this, but doesn't finish the job properly and her mother kills her instead. Although, of course, since this is an adult Katharina who had time-traveled back into the 1980's, her mother doesn't know whom she killed. Also in Season 3, an older Jonas (who is in his early stages of becoming Adam) smothers his mother Hannah to death.
• May–December Romance: Claudia and Bernd. They have an affair at some point, and the result is Regina. In the origin world, Claudia and Bernd end up getting married and raising Regina together.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The name Winden taken as a verb means "to twist", which makes sense considering the show's endless twisting between 1953, 1986, and 2019. If applied to a person it can also mean "to struggle," implying to be under duress, as most inhabitants of the town seem to be, or to be elusive in answering an uncomfortable question, also a common behavior in the series.
  • Adam and Eva are not only pseudonyms Jonas and Martha took on later in life, their names also hint at the fact that many of the people in Winden are directly descended from them (like a biblical Adam and Eve), though in this case including themselves.
  • H.G. Tannhaus, like H. G. Wells, is the creator of the time machine.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: The show tracks the progression of time across multiple time periods, each 33 years apart, but generally tracks these time periods concurrently, so events in each episode take place on the same calendar day across the time periods. This means that what happened in 1986 in one episode takes place before what happens in 1986 in the following episode. Sometimes, however, this pattern gets broken, usually to reveal a new twist on something we've seen before.
• Mid-Season Twist:
  • Season 1: Michael Kahnwald is revealed to be Mikkel Nielsen, the boy missing from the first episode.
  • Season 2: The series' Big Bad Adam is none other than a very old Jonas.
  • Season 3: Jonas and Alt!Martha's kid is the Unknown, and the one tying both worlds. Their kid is also Tronte's father, hence the Nielsens are their own ancestors.
• Missing Child: The series begins with the disappearance of one boy, but it becomes apparent that Winden has a long, gruesome history of dead or missing kids. By the end of the first season, six children across time have vanished, though Erik, Mads, and Yasin are murdered, whilst Helge, Jonas, and Mikkel were displaced.
• Mistaken for Insane: Towards the end of the first season, Ulrich Nielsen travels to 1953 in an attempt to kill the child self of Helge Doppler, the man he suspects of having been involved in child abductions and murders as an adult. Ulrich actually manages to severely hurt Helge and locks him in a bunker. Due to Ulrich's suspicious behaviour — he talks about changing the future, refuses to give his name, and insults a police officer — he is Mistaken for a Murderer and arrested. Season 2 reveals that he was been committed to an asylum and is still there 33 years later.
• Mistaken for Undead: Katharina ends up on the receiving end of this, in a really nasty way. Long story short, during a visit to the past she tries to mug her own mother for an access card to the asylum she worked at. Helene, harassed by a middle-aged woman who refers to her as her mother, unlimately figures this is the ghost of her long-aborted child who's come to torment her from beyond the grave.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: More subtle than in other stories, but still present:
  • When Erik awakens in a mysterious room, the first clue that he has time-traveled is the TV playing "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive, a quintessentially 1980s song.
  • The opening scene of episode 3 is a TV ad for Raider, a candy bar that changed its name to Twix after the 1980s. Later in the same episode, Mikkel walks into school while gawking at the 1980s fashions while a New Wave song blares on the soundtrack.
• Montages: Usually at least Once per Episode, reminding the viewer who the characters are and what they are up to. The montages are overlaid by either a sad song, or a narration by (in series 1) H.G. Tannhaus or Ariadne or (in series 2) Noah or Adam. They often come at a Darkest Hour and include themes such as Contrast Montage, Failure Montage, Happier Times Montage, Hard-Work Montage, Lost Love Montage, Loved Ones Montage, Montage Out, Opening Monologue, Progressive Era Montage, Really Dead Montage, Right Now Montage, Sad-Times Montage, Sex Montage, Travel Montage, etc.
• Most Writers Are Adults: The kids and teens in the series talk too eloquently for their age. Some of their lines are stilted as you would expect from a Classically-Trained Extra in a Shakespeare drama. (Ironically enough, the school seems to have a robust students' theater programme to provide the Classical training.) E.g., this is Franziska in the gym's changing room who Talks Like a Simile when lamenting about her parents being Dead Sparks:
  "Their marriage is over, but no one will say it. Instead, this big fat secret is always with us at the table. It eats our bread rolls, the butter and the homemade jam. It gets fatter and fatter until there's no space left in the room. Until you can't breathe."
• Mundanger: Despite all the paranormal elements, the show leans heavily into realistic fears. Marital breakdown and infidelity show up frequently, and it doesn't get much worse than your children disappearing without a trace, possibly to be abducted, mutilated, and killed by fanatics. (Especially if they end up back in the past 33 years ago, alive if they're lucky, dead and mutilated if not.)
• Murder in the Family: Due to the nature of the show having the worst and most convoluted Big, Screwed-Up Family in TV history, it runs the whole gamut from Matricide and Patricide to Offing the Offspring and also includes lots of betrayal and antagonistic relationships, partially over multiple generations and with the people involved not even being aware of their relations to one another.
  • Hanno kills his father Bartosz in 1921.
  • Jonas kills his mother Hannah in 1911.
  • Claudia kills her father Egon in 1987.
  • Katharina's mother kills Katharina in 1987.
  • Noah kills his grand-nephew Mads in 1986 due to time-travel experiments.
  • Egon locks up his descendant Ulrich (via his illegitimate daughter Silja -> Agnes -> Tronte -> Ulrich) and also (Claudia -> Regina -> Bartosz -> Agnes -> Tronte -> Ulrich) in an asylum where he ultimately dies at some point after 1987.
  • Noah kills his great-grandmother/aunt Claudia in 1954.
  • The Unknown kills Bernd Doppler (among others) in 1987, who is his ancestor (via Claudia -> Regina -> Bartosz -> Agnes -> Tronte -> Ulrich -> Mikkel -> Jonas)
  • Tronte kills his great-grandmother Regina in 2020 (Regina -> Bartosz -> Agnes -> Tronte).
  • Technically, both Adam and Eva killing each other's younger version counts as either since they both are their own ancestors as well as descendants.
• My Future Self and Me: Due to the inversion of Never the Selves Shall Meet, various characters do this with their past and future selves.
  • Helge from 2019 to his 1986 self when trying to talk him down from obeying Noah.
  • The Stranger actually adult Jonas, when helping or guiding young Jonas to navigate through the Stable Time Loop.
  • Noah regularly interacts with his teenage self from 1921 as a mentor.
  • Claudia talks to her 1987 self that she helped Gretchen come back to her, and requests her to stop Adam.
  • Adam, the leader of Sic Mundus Creatus Est is truly Old Jonas, ravaged by his reckless Time Travel, when explaining to his younger selves about the necessities of the Apocalypse, and tries to convince them to join his side for good.
  • "Unknown" Jonas and Martha's son always acts as a three-man team: his childhood, adult and elder selves.
  • Katharina briefly confronts her teenage self in 1987 when she and Ulrich mock the old man (Ulrich himself) for attempting to kidnap Michael.
  • Bartosz in Eva's world is saved by his adult self from the impending Apocalypse.
  • Charlotte and Elisabeth from 2053 help in the former's kidnapping when she was a baby from her parents, due to orders from Adam in the year 2041, in order to let Tannhaus in 1970s take care of baby Charlotte and in order to let her grow up with her 'future' peers Ulrich, Katharina, and others, to maintain the Stable Time Loop of Elisabeth's and her sister Franziska's births, which would have not been possible otherwise, and to fool Noah into looking in the wrong years.
• Mythical Motifs:
  • An ouroboros ring is present in the Winden caves near the wormhole, fitting with the show's theme of Eternal Recurrence and the liminality of time.
  • In season 1, Martha stars as Ariadne, the heroine of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, a story that has strong visual and thematic resemblances to the plot. Similarities include the labyrinth, lives lost over a regular interval, and a red string meant to show the way.
  • A medallion of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, is a recurring motif for the various time travelers.
• My Own Grampa: There are two families in Winden that are essentially closed ancestral loops. Normally, both would be ontological paradoxa; however, the ending of the show implies that they're just the result of Tannhaus dabbling with time travel — the original universe (and actual reality) was split in two, and both "bloodlines" (and the three people who form their respective cores) came into existence, presumably to replace those three people Tannhaus had lost.
  • In Season 2, its revealed that Elisabeth Doppler is not only Charlotte's daughter, but her mother as well. This means that the trope literally applies to both of them.
  • Episode 4 of Season 3 ("The Origin") reveals that this applies to the entire Nielsen line. Jonas and an alternate version of Martha have a child, who in turn fathers Tronte Nielsen - Jonas' great-grandfather and Martha's grandfather. This means that the nameless child, Tronte, Ulrich, Martha, Mikkel, Jonas...all are their own ancestors.
• Never a Runaway: The series begins with the teenager Erik Obendorf being missing without a trace for weeks. Ulrich Nielsen, the local police chief, seriously doubts that actually a crime happened and Erik just ran away, as he has already done that a few times before. Only after Ulrich's own son is missing too and the corpse of another boy is found, he and the police in general start investigating seriously. As it turns out, while Ulrich's son is still alive, but traveled to 1986, Erik actually was abducted and died in a failed time travel experiment.
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer:
  • In 1888, when Martha asks Bartosz if they told the old Tannhaus about being time travellers, he says he has to show her something and leads her to the secret study room.
  • Towards the end of season 3, when Aleksander Tiedemann leads Charlotte in the second universe into the power plant to show her the barrels, she asks what this was all about to which he replies she'd better see for herself.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet:
  • Most of the plot of the series is based on time travelers meeting their past or future selves and exchanging information with them, even killing each other on occasion. (Also they become each other's ancestors.) In spite of this, people stranded in the past often seem to die conveniently before meeting other versions of themselves or their time-traveling friends - which keeps the time loop stable.
  • Partially played straight when Charlotte in 2020 and Elisabeth in 2053 touch through the god particle portal which triggers the Apocalypse. They are different people but they are each other's mother. It is not explained why this paradox triggers the Apocalypse when so many others do not.
• Next Sunday A.D.:
  • The "present" timeline in the show is set in 2019, two years after the show was actually created. The reason for this seems to be the 33 year lunar cycle informing the show's time travel plot, as the previous year in the loop is 1986, the year of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Chernobyl acts as an important background event to several of the scenes taking place in that year.
  • And in Season 2, released on June 21 2019, the "present" timeline is set in June 2020...beginning exactly one year after the date of release.
  • Season 3 was released on the day of the Apocalypse i.e. June 27, 2020.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Ulrich's venture into 1953 ends in a complete disaster, as he's arrested by the police after trying (and failing) to kill a young Helge in order to prevent the future murders. To make things even worse, it's implied that the brain damage Helge suffered from Ulrich's attack is what made him more susceptible to Noah's influence. And it's implied that Egon hates Ulrich so much that he came close to jeopardizing Mads Nielsen's case as well as Hannah's False Rape Accusation by framing Ulrich as the perpetrator in both cases was because he has already met Ulrich once before, where Ulrich all but convinced the law enforcement that he was a child murderer, and wanted to subconsciously stop him before he could get around to committing those deeds.
  • Noah claims Stranger's a.k.a. Future!Jonas' attempt to destroy the Time Portal is what led to its creation in the first place. In addition, Katharina choosing that exact moment to call Ulrich's phone (which had been repurposed by Tannhaus to control the Apparatus) may have been what disrupted Jonas' plan to destroy the wormhole.
  • Jonas's attempt to go back to 2019 to stop Michael from committing suicide gave him the idea to commit suicide, as Michael had no suicidal thoughts at all despite being stuck away from his true timeline for 33 years, but Michael decides to do this anyway to prevent Jonas from getting Ret-Gone.
  • At the end of Season 3 we learn that Tannhaus destroyed the original world while trying to develop time travel to save his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter from dying in a car accident.
  • It's ultimately revealed that each and every single action taken by every character except Claudia, including all actions taken to try and change the timeline inevitable lead to the perpetuation of the same timeline and the only way to stop it is to scrap both universes completely.
• Nominal Villain: This can apply to any character who has the intention to either end the suffering inside the knot or save their loved ones, in particular Noah, Claudia, Adam and Eva. All of them are okay with deceiving and murdering people for their goals but don't show other motivations like cruelty. Even the Unknown is just doing what he and his mother consider necessary to keep the loop stable and doesn't act out of personal malice.
• Not Helping Your Case: After being arrested by Egon Tiedemann in 1953 while covered in blood, Ulrich proceeds to make himself look as crazy as possible, ranting about time travel and even quoting the lines of a song that talks about how much he enjoys killing.
• Offing the Offspring:
  • In Season 3, a time-traveling Katharina is killed by her mother, Helene Albers — though the latter was completely unaware of their relationship.
  • An interesting example of this is Adam killing the alternate-Martha and her unborn child, again in Season 3. Biologically speaking, he's the father of the child, though the child was actually fathered by another version of him. Also, he both does and doesn't succeed in fulfilling this trope, since another version of alternate-Martha continues to survive, and the child is eventually born.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Martha 2 and Jonas share a Big Damn Kiss in the third season in Martha's room and Next Thing They Knew they conceived a child in a one-night stand. Adam later calls this moment the "Origin".
• One-Woman Wail: Can be heard on the soundtrack during emotional scenes.
• One-Word Title: Dark.
• Opening a Can of Clones: Many characters die but don't actually stop appearing due to alternate selves in different timelines, thus we still get to see more of them. Some examples include Helge, Jonas, Martha, Egon, Claudia, Bartosz and Noah.
• Opening Monologue: The first episode opens with a monologue informing the audience that time is not linear. Many other episodes also begin with different monologues by various narrators.

P to Y

• Paradox Person: By the end, it turns out that no less than fifteen of Winden's residents ^specifically Jonas, Martha, Mikkel/Michael, Tronte, Ulrich, Mads, Magnus, Bartosz, Silja, Agnes, Hanno/Noah, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Franziska and The Unknown were never meant to exist in the first place, and do so only as a result of the temporal anomaly caused when H.G. Tannhaus tried to change history in order to save his family, inadvertently splitting the universe in two, dooming both sides to destruction and the town's inhabitants to an endless cycle of misery caused by their own efforts to prevent it. Ultimately, Jonas and Martha manage to change history so that Tannhaus' family survive, preventing the anomaly from occurring and saving all those not "part of the knot", but do so knowing that they and all the others will be eliminated from existence. Effectively (because things aren't complicated enough), every Paradox Person falls into one of the following four categories:
  • Group 1: Generally possible (just doesn't exist in the original timeline): Only one person is in this group: Bartosz. He could exist in the original timeline, since nothing fundamentally speaks against Aleksander and Regina ever running into each other - his absence in the ending implies that this just never happened.
  • Group 2: Impossible, but not an ontological paradox (1st degree): This group consists of Silja. While she's the product of the union of two people who are part of the original timeline (Egon and Hannah), the two meeting and having children together hinges on the existence of time travel.
  • Group 3: Impossible, but not an ontological paradox (2nd degree): Agnes and Hanno are in this group - they are those characters whose existence not only hinges on the existence of time travel, but also on the existence of people who are the product of time travel. In their case it's their parents Bartosz and Silja, who never existed in the original timeline in the first place.
  • Group 4: Impossible and an ontological paradox on top of that: This are all those people who are the products of closed genetic loops, i.e. the descendants of Jonas and Martha, and those tied to the Charlotte/Elisabeth-dyad ^specifically Elisabeth, Charlotte, Franziska in one group and Jonas, Martha, Mikkel/Michael, Tronte, Ulrich, Mads, Magnus, and The Unknown in the other.
• Patricide:
  • In Season 2, Claudia inadvertently does this when she knocks her father Egon to the floor during a struggle, and then makes the decision to let him die rather than call for medical help, in order to preserve the secret of time-travel.
  • Season 2 begins with a younger version of Noah killing an unknown older man in 1921. In Season 3 we learn that this unknown man was the future version of Bartosz, and that he was Noah's father, making the killing an example of this trope.
• Place Beyond Time: When Martha and Jonas want to access the Origin, they end up separated in a place beyond time and space, including meeting younger selves of each other looking at them through the cellar door and the dresser, respectively. Sound seems to travel poorly in this space, it seems to be entirely composed of particle trails, and when they walk backward they bump into each other at the junction between the three worlds.
• Plot Armor: It's explicitly stated in season 3 that since Adam exists, Jonas cannot die. Any attempt on his life, even from himself, will inevitably fail. It simply cannot be done. Quantum-entangled versions of Jonas are fair game, though.
• Plot-Triggering Death:
  • Jonas initially thinks his father Michael's suicide, seen in the opening, is the trigger that caused all this mess. He attempts to travel back to stop it, only to realize that it's another facet of the Stable Time Loop — Michael, formerly Mikkel Nielsen, realizes his death is necessary for Jonas to continue existing, and decides to take his own life. Indeed, the alternate universe where Mikkel never traveled back and Jonas doesn't exist is still trapped in the loop.
  • Season 3 reveals that the real plot trigger was Tannhaus's son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter dying in a car accident in the origin world. Their deaths motivated Tannhaus to build a time machine that split his world in two. When Jonas and Martha avert said accident, the knot is broken and they cease to exist.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Even in 2019, Ulrich is still bitter about the fact that the police were unable to find his missing brother 33 years ago, blaming it on former chief of police Egon Tiedemann's drinking problem and general incompetence. Subverted in that, unbeknownst to Ulrich, Egon really was trying his hardest to solve the case and actually came pretty close to identifying the culprit, but obviously had no way of knowing that time travel was involved. Further subverted in season 2 when a retired Egon finally starts getting enough puzzle pieces to start putting them together, but is Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
  • Ulrich's partner Charlotte fares a bit better: she's able to figure out the time travel conspiracy along with her husband, but this isn't enough to stop the apocalypse.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Franziska and Martha both complain about the townfolks keeping to themselves instead of coming forward with whatever leads they had to solve the mysterious disappearances.
  • Katharina couldn't inform her children about the truth behind Mikkel and Ulrich that they're actually stuck in 1987 after time-travelling, because Martha and Magnus are immensely angry on her due to withdrawing herself from them. This prevents Martha and Magnus from finding and bringing them back into 2020, even missing each other in 1987 by that much. In Season 3, this later leads to Katharina's death by her mother in 1987 once she takes up the reins, and Ulrich's death in the asylum as a sad old man.
  • A particularly horrific example happens in Season 3: because Noah only told Charlotte that he is her father, but not that Elisabeth is her mother, Peter believes that the younger Noah, who will kill three children in his future, wants to hurt Elisabeth, and forbids him harshly to be around them or even follow them. If Noah had been with them, the situation that ultimately leads to Peter's death likely would have turned out very differently.
• Portal to the Past: The Winden caves can take one back or forward in tme.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: It turns out that the kidnapped children are being used as guinea pigs to test a prototype time machine.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: The arc words "Sic Mundus Creatus Est", which are also the name of the Apocalypse Cult which seeks to free humanity from the constraints of time. It's a line from the Emerald Tablet, indicating that Heinrich Tannhaus, the original founder of the group was especially interested in alchemy - something that was true for a lot of secret societies in the 19th century.
• Prime Timeline: The final episode reveals that there is one, with its Butterfly of Doom being the deaths of Tannhaus's family. The finale involves Jonas and Martha going back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: While a lot of it happens off-screen, it is implied during much of Season 2 and 3 that Jonas will inevitably evolve into Adam/Old!Jonas. Season 3 even shows Adult!Jonas having basically turned into Adam. The older he gets, the more expendable the lives of others become to him. Season 3 fills in most of the gaps of this arc towards the end before finally breaking this evolution so that two versions of 2020!Jonas never become Adam after all.
• Rage Against the Heavens:
  • Adam claims that this is his motivation: by building a time machine, he hope to rewrite the laws of the universe, creating a world in which humans are no longer at the mercy of forces beyond their control. By the point he is telling this to Jonas, he is lying: by now, he only wants to destroy everything to end it all. Only Claudia persuading him that there must be a third world where all their suffering can be avoided in the series finale moves him to stop his actions and concentrate on helping his younger self and Other Martha to get to this third world.
  • Claudia, Jonas, Noah, and Martha and before them Heinrich Tannhaus and H.G. Tannhaus all have the same motivation at various points in the story - and they all do because they want to save their loved ones.
• Raincoat of Horror: Jonas, the de facto protagonist, wears a conspicuous yellow raincoat (which even gets featured prominently on the promo poster).
• Randomly Reversed Letters: The season 3 title sequence shows "DARK" with reversed D and R.
• Red Herring: Woller's mysterious injuries and the revelation that he's Benni's brother both ultimately have nothing to do with the story. They're just there to make you think that they might.
• Red Right Hand: Zigzagged, given that many characters have distinguishing marks to help identify them across dimensions, but certain deformities are used to imply that someone is unsavory or villainous:
  • Helge has a scarred face, and it turns out that he helped Noah kidnap the kids.
  • The Stranger (adult Jonas) has many scars on his body and seems ambiguously evil through the first season.
  • Adam (elderly Jonas) has a horrifically scarred face, and he's presented as the villain through much of the series.
  • Eva (elderly alternate Martha) has a slash across her cheek from the corner of her eye, and she seems to be Adam's counterpart. She gave the slash to herself.
  • Unknown has a cleft palate and is seen murdering many people. He's just doing what his mother told him.
• Removed from the Picture:
  • In the first episode, Ines has been torn out of a Kahnwald family photo because she and Hannah don't get on.
  • In the first episode of the third season, Ulrich has been torn out of the Nielsen family photo, because he left Katharina for Hannah in the alternate world.
• Rescue Romance: Aleksander rescuing Regina from Katharina's clutches in 1986 leads to them dating and later marrying. They wind up being the only Happily Married couple in Winden in 2019.
• The Reveal: Several.
  • Mikkel Nielsen is revealed to be Michael Kahnwald and Jonas's father.
  • Ulrich caused the child murders to happen when attempting to prevent it in 1953.
  • The Stranger is revealed to be Jonas's older self.
  • Adam is revealed to be an even older Jonas.
  • Jonas caused Mikkel's suicide as well as disappearances, initially as an attempt to prevent both of them.
  • Claudia is the titular White Devil.
  • Elisabeth is revealed to be Charlotte's mother as well as daughter, making herself her own grandmother.
  • Another universe exists within the causal loop, with Martha (as Eva) being its prime resident.
  • Jonas and Alternate!Martha are their own ancestors and descendants due to their child being the Unknown, who will go on to father Tronte in both the universes.
  • The Apocalypse caused Time Stands Still in both universes, which due to the cause and effect breaking can allow change for a short while. Jonas and Alternate!Martha are therefore both alive and dead in the same resultant timelines.
  • Throughout the series, there's been a long question of what was the origin that created the Knot in the first place, and while it was at first believed to be Jonas and the Other Martha's creation of their child aka "The Unknown", it's revealed that the reason of the Knot's existence is H.G. Tannhaus' attempt to bring back his deceased family lead to the creation of both universes, creating the Knot in the first place.
• Revisiting the Cold Case: As the plot progresses, the ties to the Mads Nielsen case from 1986 become stronger until Ulrich decides to fetch the old files from storage and review them for clues to the current case.
• Rewatch Bonus: Going back through the series with the knowledge that the Stranger is Jonas from the future, Adam is an elderly Jonas, Noah is Bartosz's son, Charlotte is Noah's daughter as well as Adam (as his younger self) has met Martha/Eva and most importantly, Claudia has already figured everything about the true nature of the 2 worlds put a lot of the conversations and scenes in a different light.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Fed up with everyone pretending Mikkel will just "walk in the door as if nothing happened," Martha angrily declares that he is dead. And she's right, though not in the way she thinks. Mikkel went back in time and eventually became Jonas's father Michael, who had indeed committed suicide before the start of the series.
  • Noah is completely correct when he blames Jonas for his daughter's disappearance. His only mistake was he should have suspected Adam, Jonas's older self who actually ordered the kidnapping, not Adult Jonas and Claudia.
  • Adam is also correct in his goal to destroy both universes. His sole mistake was he believed the Unknown was the Knot tying both universes. Later it's revealed that these are the offshoot of a third, intact universe and thus can't be undone without the inciting incident being removed from existence.
• Romantic Rain:
  • Season 1 has a kissing scene between Jonas and Martha in the street while it's pouring. Only partially romantic as he knows at this point how wrong this move was.
  • Season 2 gives us Ulrich and Hannah making out outside the house after getting caught in a rain shower.
• Room Full of Crazy: The Stranger has his room at the Waldhotel pinned up to the brim with notes about time travel. Regina is not amused when she visits the room later.
• Running Gag:
  • A very understated one, considering the relentless grimness of the show, but Ulrich and Katharina seem to be unable to enjoy their sex life without someone or something getting in the way one way or another.
  • The story behind Wöller's injuries. Every time he tries to reveal it, a sudden event prevents disclosure, including in the final scene of the series, leaving the audience hanging when promising to resolve it.
• San Dimas Time: The time portals have a constant distance to each other, so someone spending a day in the past is gone for a day in the present. Those using a time machine do not have that problem.
• Scars Are Forever: Helps to identify Time-Shifted Actors. E.g., Martha's scratch from the barb wire fence in Season 3 marks her forever. Same goes for Jonas' wound mark around his neck which he got from getting nearly hanged in the future. Adam has the same scar.
• School Play: In season 1, Martha is starring in a school production of Ariadne, apparently based on the mythological figure.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma:
  • Claudia desperately tries to wash off the blood from her hands after the not-so-accidental death of her father.
  • In season 3, after Jonas gets killed, Martha desperately tries to wash his blood off her hands. It leads to her cutting her blood-stained hair as well.
• Searching for the Lost Relative: Charlotte as a teenager in the 1980s would like to know who her parents are, but the one she asks about, her non-biological grandfather H.G.Tannhaus doesn't know it either, and by the time we see her in 2019, she seems to have settled with never learning about them. As it turns out, Charlotte was born in 2041 to Noah and Elisabeth, which makes Charlotte her own granddaughter and subsequently brought by her adult self and the oldest self of Elisabeth to 1971 and grew up there as Tannhaus's "granddaughter".
• Sentimental Music Cue: The second-to-last scene of most (if not all) episodes features an emotional song underscoring a Montage Out.
• Sequel Escalation:
  • Season 1 mostly happens in 2019 and 1986, then adds 1953 and a Bad Future during the sequel hook.
  • Season 2 moves everything about half a year forward, so June of 1954, 1987 and 2020, confirms the future as 2053 and features scenes in 1921.
  • And Season 3 adds an Alternate Universe with the years 2019, 2052 and to lesser degree 1986. In the familiar world, events now take place in 1888 too. Episode 7 has scenes between the 33 years cycle and episode 8 finally shows the origin world.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The first season ends on Jonas arriving in the desolate, post-apocalyptic-looking future. A scarred girl tells him 'Welcome to the future' before she knocks him out with her rifle.
  • Season two ends with Jonas being rescued from the destruction of Winden at the last second by an alternate version of Martha, who claims to be from another universe entirely (not just another time period).
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Future Jonas' goal is to prevent the Bad Future from happening which he unwittingly helped to create in the first place.
  • Season 3 reveals that the whole nexus of causal loops were triggered by H.G. 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.
  • Claudia's motivation for messing with the timeline is to prevent Regina's death.
  • Jonas first tries to prevent his father's death, then Martha's.
  • Martha tries to prevent the death of her friends and family.
  • Adam tries to destroy existence itself to prevent anything from happening or have happened, he even kills Martha at least three times to do so: Shooting 2020 original world Martha, shooting Eva, and blasting pregnant alternate world Martha out of existence.
  • Noah tries to bring about Paradise with Adam, or at least find this lost daughter.
  • Katharina tries to retrieve Mikkel from the past, and when failing to do so, tries to retrieve an older version of her husband Ulrich.
• Shameful Strip: In 1953, Helge's mother makes him strip to his underwear as punishment for making his clothes dirty.
• Shoot the Rope: In 2052, when Jonas is subjected to a Public Execution for treason, Future Elisabeth shoots the rope to save his life.
• Shout-Out:
  • Perhaps unsurprisingly for a series that revolves around Time Travel and frequently shows characters interacting with different versions of themselves or their relatives throughout different time periods, there are various references to Back to the Future:
    • While explaining the mechanics of Time Travel to Jonas, the Stranger sarcastically remarks that it doesn't work like Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean.
    • In Season 2, Egon mentions "that movie [...] with the young man who has this car that can take him to the past" while talking with Claudia about time travel.
    • While as a clockmaker, H.G. Tannhaus has every right to sport a wall full of clocks running on time, it is also reminiscent of the opening scene of "Back to the Future". Tannhaus in the 1980s is also roughly the same age as Doc Brown, sports rather wild grey hair, and gets pushed further into working on time travel by a visitor from the future.
  • When Martha notes that she just had a deja vu, Jonas jokingly refers to it as "a glitch in the Matrix." The phrase later recurs.
  • Freddy Krueger is referenced during an autopsy scene.
  • Tannhaus' initials, H.G., are a reference to H. G. Wells, the author of one of the most famous time travel stories, The Time Machine. In addition, his last name might be a nod to the Tannhäuser Gate, which originated in Blade Runner; or the Tannhäuser from German mythology, who is best known for helping to Set Right What Once Went Wrong in Heart Of Stone 1950.
  • The Creepy Twins from The Shining can be seen in the background of a shot in the first episode of Season 3.
• Sickbed Slaying: By order of Claudia, Tronte kills bed-ridden Regina with a Vorpal Pillow in 2020.
• Sistine Steal: During the climax of Season 2, Charlotte and her Elisabeth touch each other's fingertips through the portal which seems to initiate a Time Crash.
• Small Town Boredom: Ulrich from 1986 harbors this sentiment towards Winden. However, he decides to stay and join the local police force after his brother disappears in the woods.
• Smash to Black: Season 1 ends with the Girl from the Future giving Jonas a Tap on the Head with the butt of her rifle leading to a cut to black.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Stranger Things, ironically given that the show was initially marketed to Netflix viewers as being quite similar. And on the surface, they are: both are about the disappearance of a young boy in a small town that turns out to be connected to paranormal phenomena and alternate universes, with a group of townsfolk (including his friends, his grieving parents, and the local police chief) searching for him and at least part of the story being set in The '80s. Dark, however, can easily be seen as the Nordic Noir version of Stranger Things (albeit German instead of Scandinavian) for its Darker and Edgier attitude, especially with its more cynical take on the nostalgia that Stranger Things embraces. Their respective opening scenes are a study in contrasts: both shows open with a man dying, but whereas on Stranger Things he gets killed by a monster via a clicheed Vertical Kidnapping, on Dark he hangs himself. And as a twist, the young boy who disappears is the same man who hangs himself in the opening.
• Split Screen: Numerous montages show characters in split-screen.
• Stable Time Loop: So many and so complex that it could be called Stable Time Loop: The Series, so they have their own page.
• Starts with a Suicide: Michael Kahnwald commits suicide at the start of Season 1 which kicks off the plot.
• String Theory: Future Claudia has photos of all characters◊ pinned to the bunker wall with strings highlighting connections between them.
• Summer Romance: Jonas and Martha talk about "what happened last summer" in season 1. Episode 6 of season 2 shows it: It was the Last Day of Normalcy before Jonas's father hung himself, when Martha and Jonas had Their First Time.
• Surprise Car Crash: When Helge from 2019 tries to kill his 1986 counterpart by t-boning his car at a junction.
• Surprise Incest:
  • Jonas and Martha are in love and have been consummating their relationship. Then it turns out they are nephew and aunt (due to Martha's brother Mikkel and Jonas' father Michael being the same person in different timelines).
  • It gets weirder in Season 2 with the reveal that Elisabeth is Charlotte's daughter...and her mother. This means that Charlotte's husband Peter essentially slept with his granddaughter, as did Elisabeth's husband/lover Noah.
  • Also, in Season 2 it is revealed that Noah is Agnes Nielsen's brother. Given that he is Fransiska's grandfather, this means that Magnus and Fransiska are related as well. It's a downplayed example since none of the characters seem to really be aware of this.
  • Briefly in season 3 we are led to believe that Tronte is Regina's father, which would make him the grandfather of both Bartosz and Martha, who were dating at the start of season 1.
  • Late in Season 3, it is revealed that Bartosz marries Silja, and they are the parents of Noah and Agnes. The problem? Bartosz is the great-grandson of Egon...who is Silja's father. Bartosz basically has children with his grand-aunt!
    • In retrospect, it also makes Bartosz's crush (and temporary relationship) with Martha this, as he's her great-great-grandfather. And Agnes and Tronte's affairs with Doris and Claudia respectively, as Doris and Claudia are Agnes and Tronte's great-great-grandmothers!
  • A major reveal in Season 3 is that Jonas and an alternate Martha have a child, who goes on to father Tronte and start the Nielsen line that both his parents are the product of. This reveal adds another layer to the Jonas-Martha incest since they are the great-great-grandson and great-granddaughter of their own child respectively! But it also renders a number of other relationships among the four families as incestuous, to varying degrees. For instance, Jonas is the great-great-grandfather of his own father Michael, making Michael's wife Hannah his great-great-great-grandmother! It also makes Hannah's affair with Ulrich incestuous, since she's his great-great-grandmother.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: When the apocalypse is about to go down in season 3, the Unknown and his two other selves are able to enter the power plant and initiate an Explosive Overclocking with no security around.
• Take a Third Option: The two factions battling for control over the events of the series have two extreme positions: Adam of Sic Mundus wants to break the cycle by eradicating all of existence entirely to spare everyone from the pain it inflicts, while Eva of Erit Lux wants to perpetuate the cycle indefinitely to allow her child to live. Claudia, meanwhile, has learned how to fix the original timeline whence their situation arose, and plans to return all of creation to its original path, instead.
• Tangled Family Tree: The four central families turn out to all be related due to complicated time travel shenanigans.
  • Mikkel getting Trapped in the Past in 1986 leads to a tangled relationship between the Kahnwald and the Nielsen family, with Jonas being Hannah's son and at the same time Katharina's grandson. And Hannah ending up sleeping with Katharina's husband and son.
  • In Season 2, it is revealed that Noah is Agnes's brother and Charlotte's father, making Tronte Charlotte's first cousin (despite being born in different generations), as well as Magnus, Martha and Mikkel being related to Elisabeth and Franziska. It's also revealed that Charlotte is Elisabeth's daughter.
  • Season 3 much afterwards reveals there's much to this: Since Martha of Eva's world had sex with Jonas of Adam's world, the two ended up conceiving a child ("The Unknown" that Eva uses to ensure the events of the series occur) that goes off to start the Nielsen family line, and in doing so, creates a very lengthy and complex family tree that encompasses half of the entire cast, sans the ones who already existed before everyone else's creation (such as Egon, Peter, Hannah, Regina, Claudia, and Katharina).
  • It's also revealed that Bartosz and Silja (who herself is Egon and Hannah's daughter, therefore half-sister of Jonas and Claudia) are the parents of Noah and Agnes. Which means Mikkel married his own ancestor and the Nielsens' affair was with their great-great-grandmothers.
• Tentative Light: Flickering lights are usually used to set the ominous scene in the early episodes. This is later revealed to be an indicator of time travel going on in the area.
• Temporal Duplication: More than you can shake a stick at. The biggest instance is when Eva kills Jonas. Eva is there as the oldest Martha, then there is 2052 Martha, the 2019 alternate Martha who accompanied Jonas, and a slightly older version of 2019 alternate Martha, all in the same scene.
• Temporal Sickness: Adam is Covered with Scars as a result of frequent trips across time. Other characters travel through time with no injury, but they seem to be using safer ways. Adam's only method is a time machine that he spends years desperately trying to repair without fully understanding how it works. His flawed attempts leave a mark, but he keeps trying.
• The Three Faces of Adam:
  • Used to represent Jonas at different points of his life. Jonas is the Hunter, a young man trying to understand the dire situation he's been thrust into. The Stranger is the Lord, an embittered but experienced man who tries to fix things. Adam is the Prophet, who has already lived through much of the plot, knows everything that will happen, and uses this to further his goal. Season 3 does the same with Martha, in a rare female example.
  • In season 3, the Unknown appears as a boy, a middle-aged man, and an old man who act in tandem.
• Title Drop:
  • Episode 10 has Father Noah call Claudia "the Dark" while he is "the Light" in regards to her determination and plan to stop him.
  • Season 2 reveals the time travel is fueled by a compound accidentally made at the power plant which was called "The God Particle", later revealed to be Dark Matter.
  • And, finally, in the last episode of the series Claudia reveals to Adam her ability to manipulate events to force an end to the endless cycle they've all been living in, which necessitated her to force one final loop to take place, constantly keeping everyone 'in the dark' about her ability to affect an actual change. She uses the phrase twice: once for Adam, and once for the rest of the cast. In effect the whole series was Claudia's efforts to keep everyone 'in the dark' while she codified her changes to the loop.
• Time Crash:
  • Basically what causes the Apocalypses in both worlds.
  • Revealed in the finale of the series to be the cause of the Stable Time Loop. The Origin universe split into two time-looped and entangled universes when H.G. Tannhaus switched his time machine on. The Origin universe is only accessible during the exact time of the original Time Crash in 1986 (as opposed to travel between the entangled worlds).
• Time Is Dangerous: Played straight with Adam who looks burned and scarred, and who specifically links this to his time travel experiments in the period between 1888 and 1921. It's later revealed to be the result of Stranger!Jonas getting multiple scars over the years when constructing the Tesla God Particle machine seen in 1921.
• Timeshifted Actor: Different actors play the characters at different stages of their lives.
• Time Stands Still: Claudia discovers that this trope is in effect for a fraction of a second when the apocalypse occurs in 2020. It is the key to unraveling everything, as it is the only moment when changes can be made. Eva knew about it, but used it to preserve the timelines.
• Time-Travel Romance:
  • Noah, a time-traveler from 1921, falls in love with Elizabeth from 2020.
  • Hannah, from 2020, travels to 1954 and has an affair with Egon. Interestingly, as a child in 1986, Hannah met Egon as an old man.
  • Silja and Bartosz, both of whom are time-travelers to the 1890s/early 1900s. Bartosz is from 2020, while Silja was born in the 1980s but grew up in the post-apocalyptic 2040s/early 2050s.
• Time-Traveler's Baby: Quite a number of them:
  • The very first is Jonas Kahnwald, who learns about it in the fifth episode of season 1. His father, Michael Kahnwald, is actually Mikkel Nielsen, who travelled from 2019 to 1986 and later married Hannah. Their son Jonas was born in 2003.
  • Episode 4 of season 3 reveals that Jonas, who now has travelled not only between timelines, but also to another world, and the Martha of the alternate world are the parents of the Unknown
  • In the same episode, we learn that Agnes and the above mentioned Unknown, both already the result of time travels, are the parents of Tronte Nielsen.
  • And, still, Season 3 Episode 4 shows that Hannah, who travelled from 2020 to 1954, had an affair with Egon Tiedemann resulting in her becoming pregnant. She decides against aborting and in the seventh episode of the season, shows that her child is Silja.
  • The same episode shows how Silja, after staying in the 2040s and 2050s as Elisabeth's second-in-command, she arrives in 1890 and starts a relationship with fellow time traveller Bartosz Tiedemann, who came from 2020, and have two children: Noah and Agnes.
  • And then, the probably most complex one, concerns Elisabeth and Charlotte Doppler, who are revealed in the final episode of season 2 to be mother and daughter to each other. As the final episodes of the third season depict, Charlotte is born in the 2040s to Elisabeth and Noah — who travelled from 1921 to 2020 — only to be stolen as a child and brought to 1971 to be raised there. She later has two children with Peter Doppler — Franziska and Elisabeth — who will later give birth to Charlotte — and so on.
• Timey-Wimey Ball:
  • In the first two seasons, You Already Changed the Past is very much in effect, and every attempt by characters to change the past simply results in a Stable Time Loop. Season 3 complicates this somewhat by introducing an Alternate Universe, but its soon established that even the Alternate Universe is part of the larger causal loop.
  • Things start to get confusing starting with episode 6 of Season 3 ("Light and Shadow") which introduces the concept of 'quantum entanglement', which allows for two alternate versions of events to occur — namely, a reality where alt-Martha saves Jonas from the apocalypse on his world, and a reality where she doesn't save him and he survives himself. However, these two branches of reality are ultimately interdependent and part of the larger causal loop — effectively, Jonas and Martha are 'duplicated', with both pairs playing a key role in maintaining the Stable Time Loop. But then, in the series finale "Paradise", we learn that Claudia uses the same quantum entanglement 'loophole' to break out of the Stable Time Loop by feeding her younger self new information, and this ultimately culminates in Jonas and Martha being able to destroy the loop completely. It's unclear how Claudia was able to exploit the loophole in this manner.
  • In the series finale, we learn that there was an origin world. Following the deaths of his family in a car crash, H.G. Tannhaus attempts time travel, which splits his world into Jonas and Martha's world, with the resulting tangle of causal loops. However, Jonas and Martha, armed with information from Claudia, travel to the origin world and prevent the deaths of Tannhaus' family. This attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong succeeds, and they prevent the origin of their two worlds and are both erased from existence. However, this seems to contradict the theme of determinism that the show rigorously followed before this point, although the complexities of the determinism themes play by who controls what, and in the series's case, the minute an option was revealed, the characters took it.
• Token Good Cop:
  • At least for the members of the 2019 police, that we are presented with, Charlotte Doppler fulfills this role. Wöller is a Yes-Man and secretly works with Aleksander Tiedemann and Ulrich has strong Rabid Cop tendencies and his sanity goes haywire once his son disappears. Charlotte on the other hand comes very close to figuring out what is actually happening.
  • Season 2 then introduces the federal agent Clausen who at first appears to be at least competent, but turns out to have ulterior motives and no problems with rulebreaking.
• Took a Third Option: Fittingly in season three of a show obsessed with three, the endgame involves Claudia informing Adam that the solution to breaking the endless loop cannot be achieved by destroying the two worlds but only by saving a third. To that end Adam sends Jonas and Martha to stop Tannhaus from ever creating the origin of the loop.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Winden is a small German town with a history of unexplained disappearances. Its problems stretch at least as far back as 1953.
• Toxic Waste Can Do Anything: Radioactive waste from the power plant — specifically, the dark matter present in it — can facilitate time travel.
• Tragic Time Traveler: Where do we begin?
  • Mikkel never returns to the present after ending up in 1986 due to not-so-accidental time travel caused by Jonas. The only person he ever reunites with is his father, and only for a very short time.
  • Jonas, who is grieving for his dead father in the beginning, has to endure a lot over the course of the series: being Trapped in the Past and the future more than once, barely surviving being hung, and having to watch Martha die make him slowly turn into the Stranger and later Adam, who are determined to finally break the Stable Time Loop to end their suffering.
  • Ulrich attempts to prevent the death of his brother and the two other boys by killing young Helge in 1953, which not only is completely in vain, but also causes him to end up in a mental asylum for the next 33 years.
  • Noah appears as the Big Bad of Season 1, until it's later revealed that everything he did was only because his daughter Charlotte disappeared, and he believes that following Adam's orders can lead him to her. After shooting Claudia, he learns the truth about Charlotte and attempts to stop Adam, but is fatally shot by his own sister.
  • After the disappearance of her son and husband, Katharina learns about time travel and is determined to bring both of them back. Mikkel is missing without a trace, but she at least meets Ulrich and plans to break him out. This never happens, as she is Bludgeoned to Death with a stone by her own mother in the end.
  • Claudia in 1987 finds out about the imminent death of her father and her terminally ill adult daughter in 2020 — both deaths she will cause. Later, though, she successfully deceives Adam, Noah and Eva and is the one who actually manages to find out how to break the knot.
  • In Season 3, Bartosz can't adjust to living in 1888 (unlike adult Jonas, Franziska and Magnus, who escaped from the apocalypse with him), loses all hope after learning about Jonas turning into the one who will murder Martha one day, and is eventually murdered by his own son.
  • Martha, the one from the other world, has to watch her new boyfriend die and is manipulated by her older selves who slowly turn her into them, as well as by Adam, whose plan is to brutally wipe her and her unborn child out. This is successful with one version of her, but changes nothing.
  • Finally, the Season 3 finale shows that in a third world, H.G. Tannhaus attempted to construct a time machine. He finished it in 1986 and it destroyed his world and created the two entangled worlds instead.
• Trapped in the Past:
  • Mikkel, who disappears from 2019, is stranded in 1986. He is adopted by Ines Kahnwald, is given the identity of "Michael Kahnwald", and eventually marries Hannah and fathers Jonas.
  • Ulrich gets trapped in 1953 because he's incarcerated for murder. He spends the rest of his life in prison in that universe.
  • Season 3 reveals that this happened to Adult Jonas, Bartosz, Magnus and Franziska. They are inadvertently transported to 1888 while trying to flee the apocalypse in 2020, and their time machine runs out of fuel. They are stranded in the past unintentionally for years as Jonas tries to build a new time machine. However, they continue to remain in the past voluntarily to fulfill their destiny as Sic Mundus, even after the machine is repaired.
• Troperiffic: For Time Travel Tropes.
• TV Telephone Etiquette: Characters tend not to say "hello" or "goodbye" on the phone.
• The Un-Reveal:
  • Ines is in possession of a letter to be opened at a particular minute on a particular day. When the right minute arrives and she finally opens it, the viewer doesn't yet get to see what is in the letter. It is revealed later on, but by the Stranger's hands instead of Ines.
  • Woller is interrupted twice when he's about to explain how he lost his eye which might be the same incident in which he lost an arm in Eve's universe. We can be fairly certain that it has no relation to the main plot since apparently it still happens in the original universe, though not quite as badly
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • The origin of the never-ending loop and all the misery that results from it is an attempt by Tannhaus to bring his family back from the dead with time travel.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • In season 3, Jonas and Martha 2 are made to believe that they were made to team up to prevent the apocalypse at the power plant while the actual reason was to get them to sleep with another, creating The Unknown, who would afterwards create the entangled family tree of the Nielsens-Doppler-Kahnwald-Tiedemann lines.
  • Bartosz. After Jonas vanishes, Bartosz does time-travel errands for Adult!Noah but isn't part of the conspiracy. Adam/Old!Jonas remarks how easy it is to play Bartosz, basically invoking the trope. When The Stranger/Adult!Jonas saves Bartosz before the Apocalypse strikes, he ends up in 1888 and eventually falls out with Adult!Jonas. The oldest Adam in the future sends back Future!Silja to become Bartosz' wife. They father Agnes and Hanno/Young!Noah (and become the ancestors of the incestuous Nielsen line). He eventually rejoins Adam's Sic Mundus conspiracy after Silja's death in childbed and helps excavate the time travel passage when he tells Young!Noah about his doubts regarding Adam's plan for salvation. Young!Noah then kills his own father. In the alternate world, Bartosz becomes a follower of Eva/Old!Martha instead.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Noah believes that the creation of a world in which humans are free in their actions instead of being "slaves to time" justifies the brutal killing of several children in questionable scientific experiments.
• Visual Pun: Combined with Literal Metaphor: travelers between the two mirror universes come out the other side as mirror images of how they went in: most apparent when the scar on Martha's cheek or the scars on the Unknown's lip(s) switch sides, all without comment or explanation. It's noteworthy that this aspect has been an element in the opening credits since the first episode, making it something of a Rewatch Bonus as well.
• Void Between the Worlds: Jonas and Martha enter this zone in the final episode before traveling to the 1970s to prevent the Tannhaus tragedy.
• Walking Spoiler: Several, in fact. Revealing anything about the Stranger, Noah and especially Adam beyond what they look like spoils pretty much the whole story. Just look at the number of spoiler tags in their respective chapters on the character page.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 5 reveals that Mikkel who couldn't get back to 2019, was adopted by Ines in 1986, and grew up to be Jonas's father Michael. As a result, this makes Magnus Jonas' uncle and Martha (his love interest) his aunt.
  • Episode 8 reveals that Helge as a child had his face almost bashed in by Ulrich, who was attempting to kill him as a child to prevent his future child murders - but this is what led to Helge becoming recruited into the time-travel experiments that ended up killing the children.
  • Season 1 finale: The Stranger is Future!Jonas, who doesn't want to interfere with his younger self's timeline so that he still grows up to form his current plan. He plans to cancel out the wormhole caused by the power plant in 1986, using a new time-travel device Tannhaus created on the instructions of Claudia (who is still alive despite being presumed dead in 2019). However, his plan backfires and actually turns out to be what sent his younger self off on his journey to become the Stranger. The episode ends with 2019!Jonas ending up in 2052.
  • Season 2 Episode 4 reveals that the leader of Sic Mundus is actually Jonas from 67 years into the future, set on causing the apocalypse for his own unclear goals — something to do with freeing humanity from the bounds of time or maybe just wanting to kill all of existence.
  • Season 2 Episode 6 reveals Jonas is the cause of Mikkel/Michael's time-traveling and suicide, the two events Jonas had previously aimed to prevent. It turns out it hadn't even occurred to Michael to commit suicide until Jonas told him not to.
  • The Season 2 finale reveals (though it was hinted two episodes earlier) that alternate universes might play a role in the events of the show, as in the final scene Jonas is rescued from the apocalypse by another version of Martha, after having just witnessed Martha being murdered by his older self.
  • Episode 4 of Season 3, "The Origin" reveals what the true source of the timeline knot is: Jonas and the other Martha having sex and leading to the creation of a child, tying both realities together. It's also revealed said child is the three individuals with a cut upper lip seen throughout half the series attempting to keep the timeline secure, given the name "The Unknown". This of course is revealed to be a Red Herring considering what we see in the final episode...
  • Episode 6 of Season 3, "Light and Shadow" reveals the Apocalypse fractured Jonas's world into alternate realities, one where he's not saved by Martha and he grew up as Adam, and another where he is saved by Martha and died in Eva's World. It is self-contained, meaning the alternate realities don't conflict with each other, meaning Jonas died in Eva's World after siring the Unknown, yet exists as an adult self, not meeting Martha at all till he travels to 1888. It's implied a similar event occurs in Eva's World as well, given as Adam kills alternate-Martha in the end of the episode, yet Martha grows into Eva. However, these two branches of reality are ultimately interdependent and part of the larger causal loop - effectively, Jonas and Martha are basically split into 2 realities, with both pairs playing a key role in maintaining the Stable Time Loop.
  • Episode 8 of Season 3, "The Paradise" finally reveals the reason of the show's plot: H.G. Tannhaus, in his grief of losing his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in a car accident, decided to create a time machine to prevent the accident, in doing so creating both the universes of the series. Adam, realizing it was never the other Martha's child created from the prime universe's Jonas, decides to finally take the opportunity to break the knot and lead Jonas and the other Martha into preventing the accident from occurring, even if it means destroying both universes.
• Wham Line:
  • Michael's suicide note in Episode 5: "The truth is a strange thing. You can try to suppress it, but it will always find its way back to the surface. We make a lie into our truth in order to survive. We try to forget until we can't anymore. We don't know even half of the mysteries of the world. We are wanderers in the darkness. This is my truth. On November 4, 2019, I travelled through time to the year 1986. The boy from the future stayed, and in time he became a man. Mikkel became Michael, who never knew where he belonged."
  • "I am you" is said by multiple characters, most notably when Adam is revealed to be an elderly Jonas in Season 2.
  • "You." When 2020!Jonas asks him who took him away from 2019 to 1986, Michael/Mikkel replies Jonas this, as it was Jonas who made Mikkel go through the Sic Mundus tunnel.
  • The very last line of the first season: "Welcome to the future". The scavengers are aware of the existence of time travelers, and are not friendly to them.
  • Likewise the very last line of the second season: "The question is not from what time, but from what world."
  • Also when Eva monologues to Jonas regarding his role in the apocalypse in the second world: "A man lives 3 lives. The first one ends with the loss of naivete. The second one with the loss of innocence. The third, with the loss of life itself. Yours ends here and now."
  • At the very end of Episode 7 of Season 3: "Hello, Jonas".
  • Said by Adam when Claudia hints at the reveal of a different way to break the Knot: "There is a third world?"
• Wham Shot: In Episode 6 of Season 3: Jonas cradles Martha and promises her to make everything right, but unlike in the previous season's end, Martha does not appear to save him and take him to her universe. Jonas saves himself from the apocalypse.
• What Year Is This?: Standard question by anyone arriving in the past.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: The design of the time machine built by Tannhaus is based on Clock Punk imagery and has lots of cool spinning elements.
• Where It All Began / When It All Began:
  • In Season 2, Episode 6 "An Endless Cycle", Jonas travels to June 20th 2019, the day before Michael hangs himself (which kicked off the story of Season 1) in an attempt to prevent the suicide. He ultimately ends up causing it.
  • In the series finale, Jonas and alternate-Martha travel to June 21st 1986, the day the nuclear incident occurs on both their worlds, opening the time-travel cave passage and the cesium isotope that makes time-travel possible. They enter the cave and are in the passage when it opens. They use it to travel to November 8th 1971 in the origin world, on the night that Tannhaus' family dies in a car crash — the event which caused Tannhaus to invent time travel and create both their worlds.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The police (and absence of Stasi) in the 1980s put it in West Germany, one (fake) area code puts it in western Hesse. The police cleverly avoids showing the Land by being the "Winden Police" instead of using the Land's coat of arms; while the whole thing was filmed in East Germany's Brandenburg, very identifiably by its sandy conifer forests.
• Wild Wilderness: The town of Winden is surrounded by dense, dark woodland, with a large system of partially unexplored caves beneath it.
• You Already Changed the Past: In full effect. The fact that the various timelines are separated by exactly 33 years provides an at least reasonable justification of why various characters, in the future, won't remember having met in the past various characters who were actually time-travelling from that future.
• Withholding Their Name: There's a reason the Stranger and Adam are called as such since the reveal of their names is a huge plot point.
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • Actively invoked by several characters in dialogue, specifically mentioning that nobody escapes their predestined fate. This even happens in the parallel world in spite of events working out differently or Jonas not being present in it originally. People who have encountered their older selves already cannot even die (but definitely suffer).
  • Ultimately subverted once Claudia reveals the loophole in the Stable Time Loop to make exactly this possible.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Eve orders older Martha to kill Jonas with a shot in the guts after he served his purpose of impregnating Martha.
  • Similarly, Adam blasts Alt!Martha out of existence after manipulating her to help his past self, in order to kill the Unknown and to break the Stable Time Loop.

---

And the end is the beginning.