Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing the third season premiere of the twisted German time travel series, released June 27, 2020 (the day of the apocalypse).
“Deja Vu (Déjà-vu)”
Written by Jantje Friese
Directed by Baran bo Odar
September 21, 1987: The Unknown makes their presence felt in Jonas’s world.
November 4, 2019: Jonas is deposited in the other Martha’s reality, where her own journey is just beginning.
1. A Symphony of Terror
Before diving into “Alt” Martha’s world, the episode introduces Jakob Diehl as (per the credits) the “Unknown,” a terrifying assassin with a cleft lip, who is always seen accompanied with prepubescent and elderly versions of himself (the latter played by Diehl’s actual father, Hans Diehl). This unholy trinity is first seen entering Adam’s abandoned study during the cold open, where they retrieve a diagram of the portable time machine, before setting the room ablaze with their lanterns. A new, female, narrator mulls how much free will we have, even with knowledge of the future: indeed, how much free will does this man have if he’s already seen what his older selves will do? They’re unnaturally calm as they observe the room around them burning, because they’ve already seen that they don’t have to hurry.
Later, we see them approach Bernd Doppler’s mansion in 1987: the boy version enters his house first, and demands he hand over the control key to the nuclear plant, an unnervingly aggressive act from someone so small. Then the older Unknown enter: the adult version garrotes Bernd, while the other two simply fold their arms in unison, which is unexpectedly — and absolutely — terrifying. As he murders Bernd, he recites what Noah said in the tenth episode: “Nothing is in vain. Not a single breath. Not a single step, not a single word. Not pain. An eternal miracle of the One.” Could he, not Jonas, be the one Noah recalled meeting in his childhood? Either way, Noah was a captivating villain, while the Unknown seems to have escaped from a German Expressionist horror film: you’ll want to flee from them as soon as possible.
2. Remix
“Deja Vu” is largely a remake of the first episode, with the fun lying in discovering how different everything is in Alt Martha’s world. And it is very different, and clearly on an accelerated timetable:
– Ulrich and Katharina Nielsen are divorced, with Katharina living in what was the Kahnwald house: the kids alternate between homes, with Martha, Magnus and Mikkel waking up on November 4 in her house. Martha sleeps in Jonas’s bed, and even wears his trademark yellow raincoat.
– Ulrich is married to Hannah, who’s heavily pregnant with their child, but now he’s cheating on her with Charlotte, who’s his subordinate instead of his superior in this reality. Because he’s the head of the police station, Ulrich dresses formally, not casually.
– Peter Doppler is the priest of St. Christopher’s, and Helge lives with him, Charlotte, Franziska and Elisabeth. Franziska, not Elisabeth, is the deaf-mute member of the family, and she’s already in a relationship with Magnus: she, not Ulrich, is the one sneaking out of the house that morning, and they later meet up for sex in the bunker.
– Martha is dating Erik Obendorf’s brother, Kilian, who was previously an unnamed performer in the production of Ariadne in the first world. When Ulrich briefs the rest of the police about Erik’s disappearance, he mentions this isn’t the first time he has run away from home, implying finding him is much less of a priority.
– Regina Tiedemann has already died of cancer: Charlotte, when inquiring with Aleksander about searching the plant’s grounds for Erik, asks him how he’s coping, and Bartosz is apparently much more withdrawn than his prime reality counterpart as a result.
– Everyone is physically different in some respect, even if it’s only their hairstyle. Most strikingly, Magnus is a nihilist with long black hair and tattoos; Helge has no left eye; and Torben Woller is missing his left arm instead of his right eye (clearly, whatever happened in both worlds, he’s very unlucky).
Continued belowJonas is abruptly left by the older Alt Martha in the caves after he arrives, and as he gradually discovers, he doesn’t exist in this world, as Mikkel never accompanies his siblings to the cave. It’s an embarrassing day for Jonas: more dazed and confused than ever (he literally still has the blood of his Martha on his hands), he tails Alt Martha, trying to convince her she knows him. After incorrectly concluding he’s supposed to prevent Mikkel from going back in time, Jonas meets her and her friends under the bridge, but sees Mikkel isn’t there.
He gives a whole spiel about what happened in his world, prompting an angry Magnus to explain Mikkel is “old enough” to stay home by himself, and to tell him to get lost. (Since Daan Lennard Liebrenz has visibly aged since season 1, it’s possible Mikkel is simply older in this world.) Martha, Kilian, Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz go to the cave, where the same disturbance causes them to all flee. During the confusion, Martha sees a vision of her prime reality counterpart, drenched in dark matter, just as Jonas saw his father: Kilian finds her, and they all flee into the bunker, where they witness the arrival of Mads’s corpse.
3. Inversion
The show goes further to distinguish Alt Martha’s reality from Jonas’s world by having everything mirrored: it’s visible from the start, as while in his world, Alt Martha has a scratch under her left eye, while in her world, it’s under her right. All the shots are flopped: it’s a remarkable effort given (as Baran bo Odar points out here), it meant “you have to change a lot of things like books and bookshelves. You have to change the titles on them and mirror them. But the biggest challenge was actually for actors to play everything in a mirrored way. You have to open doors with your left hand. And if you ever tried that for one day, it is really weird and awkward.”
Kudos to the cast, because it never occurred to me that the sets hadn’t been rebuilt.
The similar but different vibe is reinforced by the re-recorded music, with instruments like horns now accompanying the strings. As a further concession to the audience, all the date captions in Alt Martha’s world are written with reversed letters, and whenever there’s a transition between her world and Jonas’s, there’s a warp effect.
The warp is much more overt and cartoonish than the windy sound effect we always hear whenever we move to another time period, but on a show that’s become this complex, it’s understandable that subtlety has been jettisoned for clarity’s sake: otherwise, we might end up thinking the Unknown murdered Alt Bernd Doppler.
4. Eva
After doublechecking Mikkel is still at Katharina’s home, Jonas is greeted outside by Eva (Barbara Nüsse). She tells him that, although he was never born in her world, it is still doomed to the same fate, because of him, and because of her. Jonas recognizes her immediately as the elderly Martha, which is smart, as it would’ve been impossible to repeat the Adam reveal from last season.
For the record, Eva is the German pronunciation of Eve, whose name in Hebrew is Ḥawwāh/Chava. (For simplicity’s sake, she’ll be referred to as Eva, and her Biblical counterpart as Eve.) Since Alt Martha is the Eve to Jonas’s Adam, the resemblance of the golden orb she uses to traverse time and space to the forbidden fruit of Eden becomes apparent. Eva narrated over the Unknown’s first scene, and during the murder of Bernd, the young version picked up an apple, further suggesting the two’s connection.
The apple symbolism also evokes witches from German fairy tales like “Snow White,” which Eva seems to be patterned on, from her long, white hair, to her simple, black, long-sleeved dress. If Old Claudia was a hermit wizard like Gandalf the Grey, then Eva is Saruman the Black: it is really wonderful how this show gives older actresses a chance to be the chess players for once.
5. Not His Martha
Continued belowThe slightly older Martha who rescued Jonas goes to meet his adult counterpart at the Tannhaus factory (owned by the ancestors of H.G. Tannhaus) in 1888. She finds him experimenting late at night with the electrical generators that will become components of the enormous time machine from 1921: he’s emotional seeing her again, but backs away when she quickly tells him she’s not his Martha. Why does Jonas not remember her? As always, no spoilers for subsequent episodes, but the reason is far smarter and complex than amnesia, or him not turning out to be Jonas (as some theorized because of Louis Hofmann and Andreas Piestchmann’s different eye colors).
Other Observations:
– Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher who was the primary influence on the series, is finally quoted at the start of the episode: “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills (Der Mensch kann zwar tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will).”
– It’s not shown what nightmare Martha was waking up from: it’s also mentioned Mikkel had a nightmare, which she taunts him about by joking that perhaps this world isn’t the real one.
– Since Alt Magnus is a stereotypical nihilist, it should be noted the term (derived from the Latin word for “nothing,” nihilum) was coined by German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi to criticize rationalism, which he argued reduces everything to nihilism.
– Bartosz says Nostradamus predicted the world would end in 2019: to be blunt, nothing Michel de Nostredame wrote in Les Prophéties is that specific.
– It’s strange no one comments that Jonas reeks, even though he likely hasn’t had a shower lately, having just spent a year with old Claudia.
– 1888 is a significant year in German memory: it’s known there as the Year of the Three Emperors (Dreikaiserjahr), due to the rapid succession that occurred then — Jonas and friends would remember the phrase “drei Achten, drei Kaiser (three eights, three emperors)” from school. It’s an appropriate year for them to have become stranded in, since it’s represented by three upright infinity loops.
– The gate to the Tannhaus factory is likely a visual nod to the Tannhäuser Gate mentioned in Blade Runner. (The name Tannhäuser itself derives from a Medieval German poet, whose legend became the basis of a Wagner opera.)
See you next week when we reunite with the rest of “The Survivors (Die Überlebenden).”
