Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing season two, episode three, of the twisted German time travel series, released June 21, 2019.
“Ghosts (Gespenster)”
Written by Jantje Friese and Marc O. Seng
Directed by Baran bo Odar
June 23, 1954/1987: Little Helge Doppler returns home. Old Claudia convinces Agnes Nielsen to reconcile with her brother, while her younger self meets Tannhaus. Egon discovers the true identity of the man he arrested in 1953.
1. The Possession of Helge Doppler
Noah straps Helge into his finished time machine, which vaguely resembles an iron maiden. In an instant, you realize why Helge was so loyal to him: Noah must’ve looked after the boy since his arrival on November 12, 1986, helping him cope with Ulrich’s traumatic attack, and understand that “God” allowed this for a reason. It’s shown his older self’s constant muttering of “tick tock” was part of a phrase Noah taught him to calm himself: the full mantra is, “Time is always with you. Wherever you go. You carry it within. And it carries you. It sees and hears everything that you do and say. Tick tock…”
Initially, Greta Doppler is overwhelmed with joy seeing her son again, but her cruel personality reasserts itself when she realizes he’s unable to speak. Fearing he’s possessed, she asks Noah to visit him: seeing his savior, Helge comes down the stairs and immediately hugs him. Noah reassures him with the “time is always with you” speech, and then has him read Psalm 119:114: “You are my shield, my protection. I hope for your word.” Greta is pleased, believing her son is completely fine, when he’s actually become utterly dependent on the priest.
In 1987, Helge is still recovering from the car crash, and is visited at the hospital by Claudia, who wants to know why he gave her a copy of H.G. Tannhaus’s A Journey Through Time. He explains that it was a cry to help, which would enable her to understand what he’s experienced. He recites Noah’s mantra in front of her, and when she asks for clarification about the man who taught it to him, he grabs her by the wrist, warning her to never, ever trust him.
2. A Good Man…
Elsewhere in 1954, Egon Tiedemann is mulling why his marriage has become sexually dysfunctional, unaware that Doris has embarked on an affair with their lodger, Agnes Nielsen. Egon’s colleague, Daniel Kahnwald, realizes what’s troubling Egon, and tells him this is perfectly normal (“You have kids and become different people. It’s like she’s married to the brats,” he says), before suggesting he pick other “tender buds” instead. Also during that morning, Doris becomes worried that her daughter saw her and Agnes having sex, but is told by her lover, “Don’t worry about it: every family hides something.”
Egon doesn’t have such cynicism; he remains an idealist, despite his experience arresting the apparent child murderer/kidnapper (Ulrich). Later in the day, he’s visited in his office by the old Claudia, whose heterochromatic eyes he recognizes as resembling those of his daughter. It’s an immediately moving scene, as it’s clear Claudia hasn’t seen him in years, let alone as young as he was here; she calls him a good man and asks for his forgiveness, indicating their relationship deteriorated drastically before he died. Egon seems shaken rather than annoyed by this strange visitor, even though he asks her to leave his office if she won’t clarify “what this is all about.”
Returning home, Egon buys flowers for his wife, instead of seeking out a new lover. He tells young Claudia he thinks he saw a witch today, just like the ones from the old fairy tales. On noticing the flowers he bought for Doris, Claudia calls her father a good man: it’s sweet, but this being Dark, it doesn’t last long, as Egon experiences deja vu on hearing those words again, and notices the resemblance of his daughter’s eyes to the old woman again. At night, he observes how close his wife and Agnes have become, and seemingly internalizes and accepts it.
Continued below3. … But a Naive One
In 1987, the old Egon examines a confiscated vinyl recording of Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill, and finally recognizes the English lyric Ulrich recited 34 years ago (“My only aim is to take many lives. The more the better I feel”). At the hospital, Egon shows him the record, and Ulrich finally reveals his true identity. Reminded of the boy who walked into his office, claiming Ulrich was his father the previous year, Egon decides to follow up, and meets his new adoptive mother, Ines Kahnwald.
He asks if “Michael” has ever mentioned his parents’ names, or “the white devil” Helge spoke of. She tells him he hasn’t: unconvinced, Egon asks to speak with the boy, but she tells him he’s unwell and sleeping, forcing him to book another appointment the next day. He notices a box of sleeping pills, which Ines claims are hers. Something doesn’t add up though, given how happy they seemed yesterday — if she is secretly giving him pills to help him adjust, then it’s nonconsensual and tantamount to drugging, and means she did play a greater role in his death than previously implied.
Egon doesn’t press the issue, and simply asks if she has a photo of Michael for his file. Egon shows Ulrich the photo at the hospital, and recognizing his son, Ulrich goes berserk, accusing him of knowing all this time, and places his hands around his throat. It seems 34 years under guard has not mellowed Ulrich’s anger (the scene immediately recalls his abusive behavior towards the senile Helge in 2019). Poor Egon, suffering the violent consequences of a bizarre set of circumstances he cannot even begin to fathom — as he remarks before losing Ulrich’s trust, “maybe the cancer is already driving me crazy.”
4. The Ties That Bind
In 1954, the theme of secret relationships and sexual awakenings continues when Claudia and Tronte walk in the woods. He asks if she likes her mother, and she responds, “She acts like I don’t understand anything. When I have kids I’ll be different.” (All children think they’ll be better than their parents: they rarely are.) Seeing no one else is nearby, Tronte takes off his underwear at her beckoning, further cementing this chapter as being about Claudia and her relationships.
In ‘87, old Claudia’s warning about the lack of time left with Regina weighs heavily on her middle-aged self’s mind, and she suggests her daughter skip school so they can do something nice together. Regina responds she has a history test, and Claudia gives her an awkward hug goodbye, while complimenting her new hair — evidently, it’s been a while.
After her visit to Helge, Claudia goes to Tannhaus’s shop for the first time — from her perspective, as Tannhaus recognizes her as the old woman he met in 1953 from their identical eye colors. He explains the Bootstrap paradox to her, revealing her time machine is a prime example — since he built it for her using the blueprints derived from she gave him, the question becomes: where did its design originally come from?
These distractions cause Claudia to be late for all her appointments, so she orders her secretary to just cancel them: however, she can’t cancel her father’s visit to her office. She complains he can’t just show up unannounced, but Egon finally informs her he has cancer. Apologetic, Claudia embraces him before he makes for the door.
Claudia ventures into the cave with the barrels, and makes her first journey through time. The next morning, in 2020, Claudia walks to her daughter’s new home, and on seeing she’s stricken by the same sickness as her father, begins to weep.
5. Claudia Christus
Still in ‘54 after burying her time machine, old Claudia meets with Agnes in the Doppler bunker: it’s fascinating, realizing the woman who is basically her stepmother is also her protege. We learn from their conversation that Agnes was a member of Adam and Noah’s group — which is actually called Sic Mundus — until Claudia turned her from them, and that Noah is not (as previously implied) her husband, but her brother. Claudia reminds Agnes that her mother loves her, and asks her to pass her a newspaper clipping to her younger self at some point. It’s a report about Claudia’s unidentified body being found the next day — today is the day she dies.
Continued belowAgnes waits for Noah at his church: he’s infuriated on seeing her again, but she betrays Claudia, telling him she has the missing pages of the journal. “Surely you can’t hate your own sister the way you hate her. You might consider it an offering of peace,” she says. Claudia goes to see her younger father, and then Tannhaus, giving him her copy of his book, the one he’ll have published one day (another Bootstrap paradox), saying she doesn’t need it anymore — she’s like Christ, predicting his death.
In the forest, Noah sneaks up on Claudia with a shotgun, proclaiming he’s no longer one of her “pawns”: the uncharacteristic rage in his voice indicates he trusted her once, deeply. She taunts him, saying “Adam plays you still. The paradise he’s promised you is nothing but a lie. He is selling you the illusion of freedom. Ask yourself, are you truly free? If you were truly free, you would have a choice.” He hesitates, but shoots her anyway.
Awake in bed, Agnes wonders if she did the right thing. Noah finds the missing pages on Claudia’s body, and the seed of doubt she planted takes root when he learns something disturbing about… Charlotte Doppler, the woman whose daughter he gave a pocket watch engraved with her name. He tells Adam he didn’t find what he needed; he remarks she got what she deserved anyway, and says of his sister’s return to the fold:
We can feel estranged from our families and not understand what they do. And still, in the end, we will do anything for them. A common thread that connects all of our lives to each other.
Noah’s quiet betrayal indicates Charlotte is closer than we realize.
Other Observations:
– The three ghosts in this episode are: Ulrich, who is described as one by the authorities in 1954; the copy of Regina’s book in ‘87; and Claudia herself, since we learn she’s technically been dead since ‘54.
– Agnes’s gold halterneck dress is fascinating: the large lapels feel like they may have been intended by costume designer Anette Guther as an allusion to the character’s bisexuality.
– Sometimes, by deconstructing each story, I’m doing a disservice to the intercutting of the different time periods; in this case, I can’t not mention how striking editor Anja Siemens’s work here is, particularly during the juxtaposition of Tannhaus’s discussion of the Bootstrap paradox, with Ulrich in prison in 1954, or how the successive scenes with Egon and the different versions of his daughter becomes an emotional onslaught.
– “Melody X” by Bonaparte is the weakest choice of end montage music so far — it’s not a bad song at all, and its lyrics are as thematically appropriate as any song chosen for Dark, but it sounds too outgoing compared to previous tracks.
We’ll return next week when Jonas’s story resumes in “The Travelers (Die Reisenden).”
