Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing the penultimate episode of the twisted German time travel series, released June 27, 2020. By the way, this episode is listed on Netflix’s English version as “Between the Time,” but that’s an overly literal translation of the titular German phrase — this article uses the more accurate one supplied by the updated subtitles.
“In Between Time (Zwischen der Zeit)”
Written by Jantje Friese
Directed by Baran bo Odar
1974 to 2053, via 1890: everything that has happened will happen again, including the birth of Noah and Agnes, the arrival of Silja, and the kidnapping of baby Charlotte.
1. A New Perspective
If you thought Dark was going to decrease in complexity as it approaches its end, think again: the episode begins with an animated illustration of the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, narrated by Tannhaus during a TV presentation in the ‘70s. Tannhaus asks if the scenario could also have “macrocosmic” implications, like the divergent, but equally real fates of Jonas during the apocalypse.
We see that moment again, this time from Alt Martha’s perspective, revealing why in one timeline, she doesn’t rescue him: Bartosz appears before she enters the house, telling her Adam is lying, and doesn’t want to prevent the apocalypse. Bartosz activates his space-time machine, and Martha, realizing there’s no time before the aftershock hits, joins him as he disappears. It demonstrates the Martha who saved Jonas was also killed by Adam, and Eva is the elderly version of this one.
This explanation of quantum entanglement continues with the ‘80s Tannhaus’s voiceover elaborating on the idea of multiple worlds, and how it could conceivably allow you to retrieve something (or someone) from the past. We see him entering the bunker in 1974, and a timelapse of him building an atomic device that’s finished and activated by 1986. This, coupled with a narrower, more cinematic aspect ratio, and significantly brighter, more saturated lighting, strongly indicates this is a different version of Tannhaus from the pawn in Adam’s World — but is he the one from Eva’s reality?
The aspect ratio for Tannhaus’s scenes aren’t the only unusual element here: this episode jumps from year to year, filling the gaps, instead of taking place during a single day across multiple time periods, and introduces a flip clock transition effect to clarify which year we’re moving to. It’s as cartoonish as the warp transition that tells us which world we’re in, but just as necessary.
2. Noah and Agnes Are…
In 1890, Jonas scorches his arm trying to stabilize a generator, while testing the underground time machine. He returns to his room, where Bartosz is waiting: he informs him he’s lost faith in him undoing the knot, and that he’s leaving. But waiting in the forest for him is Silja, who’s just arrived, and concealed her hazmat suit after donning the clothes she took from Martha — and after coquettishly greeting him, we move to 1904, where she gives birth to a boy, whom she names Hanno. Bartosz remembers he’s heard that name before: it’s Noah’s name.
How extraordinary it is, learning Bartosz is Noah’s father: it means Noah killed his own father at the start of season 2. It is impossible to rewatch any prior episode where they interacted, and not project the regret Noah feels into Mark Waschke’s performance. It’s also heavily implied knowing who his son will become created the distance between the two: Silja dies after giving birth to Agnes in 1910, and Bartosz is unable to comfort his son, only looking on in fear at how this tragedy will shape him into the ruthless man he knew.
3. … Egon and Hannah’s Grandchildren
Silja may have died in childbirth, but it’s not the last we see of her. A year later in 1911, while repairing an automobile, Bartosz is greeted by Hannah, and a five-year old girl, whom he recognizes instantly from the scar on her face as Silja. (The scar remains unexplained, so it may have been retconned as a birthmark, or a botched C-section.) According to the official website, Hannah used the time machine to go from 1954 to 1987, and you can tell she was raising her daughter in 1993 (1987 + nine months and five years) from her hair, and the girl’s distinctive red-and-blue raincoat.
Continued belowSilja being Egon and Hannah’s love child has so many startling implications, from Silja being Bartosz’s great aunt, to how Doris was seduced by Egon’s own granddaughter. Plus, not only did Egon and Ulrich have an affair with the same woman, but Ulrich slept with his great-great-grandmother; and Jonas and Claudia are basically Noah and Agnes’s uncle and aunt, while the Unknown married his cousin/ancestor — it’s a miracle the pedigree collapse in this family hasn’t become visible for all to see. (Also, Hanno is named after Hannah.)
Bartosz must’ve felt terrible when he discovered who Silja really was: the possibility she didn’t truly love him, but was keeping up a charade so he’d remain in Winden, probably kept him up at night — it’s likely exacerbated the distance between him and his children, and why he was so resigned to his fate when Noah finally killed him. Silja likely did love him, just as she must’ve preferred the turn of the century to the post-apocalypse, but she also probably knew, from her conversation with Agnes, that their time would be short.
4. Matricide
Hannah tells Bartosz she’s looking for Jonas, so he takes her to his study, but warns her he’s changed. It’s the first time we see him chronologically in his disfigured state, and it is so much more disturbing to see Andreas Pietschmann in the make-up than Dietrich Hollinderbäumer — it’s utterly eerie, seeing someone you recognize looking like that.
Jonas coldly asks his mother how she found him. Hannah tells him Eva appeared on their doorstep, saying he was looking for her, and brought them here. Hannah, aware he became stranded here because she stole his time machine, apologizes for everything, and caresses his face to show she’s not afraid of his hideous appearance. Jonas does not respond, and only slowly, methodically takes her hand off, before telling Bartosz to prepare a room for them. He turns away, suppressing his tears.
That night, Jonas quietly enters the bedroom to abduct Silja, but Hannah stirs. Jonas tells her Silja doesn’t belong here, and then strangles her. Jonas then wakes up Silja, telling her he wants to show her a secret, and to be careful to not wake up their mother. Hannah did many terrible things, but she did not deserve to be murdered by her own son, or to have her daughter left in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. It’s a chilling scene that demonstrates how Jonas really became Adam — it wasn’t a physical transformation, but one caused by crossing a line few ever would.
5. A Sentient God
In 2023, after repeatedly failing to activate the God Particle, young Jonas decides to hang himself from the same beam of wood his father killed himself with. Noah bursts into the room and cuts the rope, reminding him of the promise his older self made. “You promised me something,” he says. “Adam promised me something. You said the apocalypse must happen. So that we can be saved. So that all of us will be saved.”
Recognizing he’s still not persuaded, Noah hands Jonas a pistol, which he attempts to kill himself with, only to find that it keeps jamming. Noah then takes back the gun, and fires a bullet into the wall. “You cannot die,” he explains. “You can’t take your own life. Because your older self already exists. Time won’t allow it. No matter what you try, something, or someone, will always stop you from doing it.”
This turn pushes the suspension of disbelief greatly, and feels philosophically at odds with how Adam described God as time; here, Noah and the clicking gun are implying time is God, a sentient, intervening force. It does seem to explain why Jonas turns up where he’s always needed (namely in 2052 and 1921), but I’d prefer to chalk the gun repeatedly clicking to improbability, just as the deeply improbable scenario of Jonas being in two universes at once is possible, thanks to quantum entanglement.
Continued belowMore importantly, the scene seeds the idea that, as understandable as it is to become despondent and pessimistic, there are people you may not realize are counting on you for support as well — and so it is that Jonas, Noah and Elisabeth become this unlikely surrogate family, waiting for the passage to “paradise” to reopen.
6. Claudia Shoots Herself
By 2040, Noah has grown suspicious of Claudia, believing she is sabotaging their attempts to reactivate the God Particle. He tells Jonas as much, pointing out she disappears without explanation for days at a time. Jonas replies he still trusts her, because he has seen that the God Particle will work in 2053. Elsewhere in the forest, Claudia informs her counterpart in Eva’s World that she is ensuring Jonas will maintain the loop.
She then asks her if she’s ever met their older self, to which she replies she hasn’t. Realizing this means Eva doesn’t know everything, Claudia comments there may still be a way to save Regina. “I still remember what she [old Claudia] said exactly. ‘If everything works out… then she will live.’ I’ve thought about it all these years. I just can’t believe that what she meant by that was her suffering would repeat endlessly. There must be a way to untie the knot without destroying all life in it. A way for Regina to live. Really live. And I think neither Eva nor Adam know this path. But I’ll find it.”
Claudia pulls a gun on her doppelganger, and shoots her between the eyes, so that she may pose as her in Eva’s World — it’s an act so brazen, even she seems taken aback. Using her spherical time machine, she goes to Eva’s study, where the components of her God Particle machine are under construction. Eva (whose hair hasn’t turned gray yet) asks Claudia why she did not bring her other self, to which she replies Noah is watching her. Satisfied, she gives Claudia the schematics for the briefcase device Tannhaus will build in the ‘50s.
7. Charlotte Kidnaps Herself
A year later, Elisabeth has given birth to Charlotte (who was likely named after the mother she presumed dead). One night, while she and Noah are outside collecting laundry, the older Elisabeth and Charlotte of 2053 sneak into their shack, and kidnap the baby — we now know why Tannhaus described the two women who left little Charlotte on his doorstep as strangely dressed. Elisabeth is visibly emotional seeing the child she lost again, but adult Charlotte quietly reminds her they cannot dawdle, and they must take her infant self to 1971 as soon as possible.
The younger Elisabeth and Noah re-enter their home, and on seeing Charlotte’s been abducted, Noah charges into Jonas’s office in the bunker, demanding to know where she is: he angrily accuses Claudia of taking her, and his former friend of helping her, or as being responsible because he trusted her. After pinning Jonas against the wall, he calms down, and whispers, “I wish you all the suffering in the world.”
Back in 2023, Noah told Jonas that Adam said they would become friends, until he betrayed him. Of course, he bent the truth: Adam was the version of Jonas who had Noah’s family torn apart, not the one living after the apocalypse, who would’ve genuinely taken them to paradise if he could, instead of the nothingness Adam has planned — how horrible.
8. The End is the Beginning
Noah returns home, and promises Elisabeth he’ll find Charlotte. He picks up the notebook that her father received from Old Claudia, and departs again to begin the search. The next chronological scene sees him enter the tavern in 1920: it’s not shown how he returned, but either he went through the cave tunnel, or Jonas let him use the God Particle.
Erna, the owner, recognizes him, but isn’t sure how. She asks the teenage Noah to prepare a room, a sight that leaves the adult version speechless. Later, he enters Adam’s study, where the old man apologizes for trusting Claudia. He tells him that the missing pages of the notebook will help him find his daughter, and that Helge Doppler will aid him; he also gives him a Bible, so he may begin posing as a priest.
Continued belowIn 2052, Claudia reminds Jonas he must guide his younger self down the same path, as well as to find Tannhaus, who’ll “repair” the briefcase machine. (He presumably uses the tunnel as the God Particle would dump him in the middle of the plant in 2019.) This scene is — much like the ones with adult Noah, Elisabeth and middle Claudia — the only time we see adult Jonas with old Claudia, and that’s astonishing in retrospect. Before he leaves, she reminds him not to lose hope: he does not respond. Afterwards, she tears out and pockets the last pages of the Unknown’s notebook.
A dazzling compilation of the events from the first two seasons proceeds, emphasizing their events from adult Jonas, old Claudia, and Noah’s perspectives (as well as the latter two’s younger counterparts after they die), taking us back to where the episode began: Alt Martha and Bartosz vanishing from Adam’s World when the apocalypse takes place. It is spine tingling seeing the cycle repeat once again, and to be reminded of how this rabbit hole began with what seemed like the mere disappearance of a boy.
9. A Self-Inflicted Wound
Bartosz brings Martha to the ruins of Eva’s study in 2052. Martha expresses repulsion at her ruthless older self, claiming they have nothing in common. Eva responds with something Adam told Jonas: “All my life I was convinced that… this moment here could never be repeated this way. I would never be able to say the words that my older self said to me back then. Because I couldn’t understand how I could ever want what she wanted. Now, 66 years later, I understand. There are moments that change us forever. There is pain you never forget.”
She then reveals a knife, and slashes her younger self across the face, revealing the scar was meant as a permanent reminder of the fatal mistake she nearly made allying with Adam. “You may not understand it yet, but by choosing us, you’re choosing life,” she says, because at this point, Martha is still unaware she is pregnant, the timelines having diverged before Adam tells her.
The Martha who knows she is pregnant is killed in the prime reality when Adam’s vortex collapses and vanishes after enveloping her. Adam opens his eyes, and is bewildered that he’s still here, despite killing the Origin. Old Claudia enters the control room, and says (almost warmly), “Hello Jonas.”
See you next week for the final episode, “Paradise (Das Paradies).”
