Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing season three, episode six, of the twisted German time travel series, released June 27, 2020.
“Light and Shadow (Licht und Schatten)”
Written by Jantje Friese & Marc O. Seng
Directed by Baran bo Odar
September 26, 1888/2020/2053: what happened to the adult version of Jonas/Adam is revealed, as are his plans for Alt Martha.
November 8, 2019: the apocalypse takes place in Eva’s World.
1. Schrödinger’s Jonas
The cold open returns to the day of the apocalypse in Adam’s World on June 27, 2020, as we witness what happened to the version of Jonas who became Adam that day: Alt Martha never appeared, and he survived the devastation by simply hiding in the basement. The middle-aged Jonas awakens in 1888 after remembering the day, and rereads the letter that deceived him into believing he’d saved his version of her. He angrily, and tearfully, burns it.
Meanwhile, we see the young Jonas from the other timeline lying dead in Eva’s study: it’s strange, we technically only followed that version of him since the last scene of season 2, and yet it feels like the protagonist has died, replaced by an increasingly deranged duplicate.
In the ruins of Eva’s office in 2052, the middle-aged Martha reassures her younger self that she did the right thing killing Jonas, and they set about writing the letter to trick his doppelgänger. The newly scarred version wants to know as well as we do how Jonas could be still alive after he died in their world, and Eva explains the concept of quantum entanglement, by drawing the sign of the infinity loop in the sand:
You bring him to our world. Or you don’t. A line that starts at one point, then loops into itself once more. Two possible ways. On the outer edge of the line or on the inner edge of the line. And yet it is the same line. Two overlapping realities. On one of these roads, he dies. On the other, he doesn’t. Both realities continue here, repeating endlessly in the loop. One triggers the other. Quantum entanglement. Adam has tried to sever it for 33 years. So that the thing growing inside you will never be born. But it’s impossible. Our worlds can never be disconnected. Every step Jonas takes is guided by us. He cannot escape his fate.
In 2020, after consulting the Unknown’s notebook, Claudia finds Jonas has set up shop in the ruins of the nuclear plant, trying to turn a remnant of the exploded God Particle into the portal he used in 2053. (The cave passage has closed once again.) He’s bitter and resentful, raging at how likely it is he’ll have to carry out what his older self did, as well as angry that the old Claudia never told him how Martha would die, and suspicious of how she found him. She dodges his questions by bringing up the damaged time machine, and regains his trust by telling him she knows what the material at the plant is, and how to help him — thus, ensuring his stranding for decades to come.
2. Becoming Martha
In the alternate 2019, the youngest Martha staggers home after Jonas’s murder. She washes her hands, bins her bloodstained yellow coat, and tries to tell Magnus what happened, but he finds her claims that the world is ending today outlandish and alarming. He tells her their mother was upset by her disappearing again.
After a shower, Martha still feels the bloodstains in her hair, and hastily cuts it, only to see her reflection is now that of her murderous future self. She rouses her mother from her sleep, and asks her if she believes in fate. Noticing something has upset her daughter, Katharina replies she believes we choose our own paths, and reassures her she’ll always be there for her. Lisa Vicari’s performance as Martha is especially beautiful here, quietly conveying that she knows full well this may be the last time she ever speaks to her mother, and that she doesn’t want to tell her she’s wrong.
Continued belowMartha goes to see Bartosz, who is also having his own troubles: his father has confessed to him the shady circumstances of his coming to Winden, and is upset that his mother never knew. He is thoroughly baffled to hear that his father is also going to unleash the apocalypse, but doesn’t judge Martha, and tries to call him at the office: however, Aleksander decides it’s not a conversation he wants to have right now, and instead calls Charlotte to show her the waste barrels.
Martha and Bartosz hop on his bike to physically intervene instead, but en route, they find themselves blocked by the older Magnus and Franziska from Adam’s World. After a minute to think, she recognizes him as her older brother. They tell her her older counterparts are the ones responsible for the apocalypse happening in the first place, “but there is a way to change everything. But you have to choose our world. And trust in him. Jonas.” On learning Jonas is still alive, and that she is the one who must retrieve him from his world’s apocalypse, Martha is finally swayed into joining them.
Before disappearing with Magnus and Franziska, Martha states Bartosz must join them, but the older couple respond, “He’s not one of us. He’s one of the others. They will save him.” Martha apologizes before vanishing into Adam’s World, leaving an incredulous Bartosz alone on the path.
3. Death is the Only Paradise
If her eventual scar wasn’t a big enough clue, Martha made an enormous mistake: in 2053 of Adam’s World, she’s forced into a tiny cage, while the old megalomaniac admits he deceived her into believing the apocalypse could be stopped. “Old Tannhaus,” he recalls, “he firmly believed he was creating a paradise where we’d all be free of destiny, and free of our pain. A world outside your world and my world. But I have finally realized what this paradise really is. Unending darkness, in which nothing exists. But for that… the apocalypse must happen. In my world… and in yours.”
Silja later releases Martha, and orders her at gunpoint to remove the clothes she received in 1888, as she’ll need them for her own mission through time. When asked why she’s helping Adam, she sadly replies, “We chosen few must fill the gaps, so that you find your way here and Adam his. And we finally reach salvation.” The girl who began to question everything she believed, after her encounter with Jonas, remains a fanatic because of his older self.
Martha is tied to a pipe below the God Particle, wearing only her nightgown, like a victim in a monochromatic 1920s German horror film: Adam certainly looks the part of a Nosferatu, with his bald, pale head, and black trenchcoat. He tells her that they’ve come to the end, here and now, where he can kill the Origin before he’s born. “It can’t be killed by normal means,” he claims, elaborating:
It’s born of both worlds. And the energy of both worlds is necessary to destroy it. The apocalypse in my world… and the apocalypse in your world. This here is the end. A machine that crosses not only time, but space as well, which focuses the energy of both apocalypses… on this one point, concentrated. Your son only exists… because the matter exists. Now, through it, he will die, and all of us with him. None of this… will exist anymore. Both worlds will erase one another. Absolute annihilation.
Martha begs Adam to change his mind, calling him by his first name, but he tells her, “There is no hope. No salvation. No paradise. We’re wrong. You and I. In your world and in mine.” He takes the St. Christopher pendant off her, and goes to the control room to activate the God Particle; he looks almost regretful, or hesitant when doing so, unlike the rather smug look he had when he killed his own world’s version of her, but then he is also finally ending his life. The God Particle becomes a swirling vortex that opens to swallow her like a roaring maw, electrifying her body ala Maria in Metropolis.
Continued below4. It’s Happening Again
Charlotte stops at Ulrich’s house to show him what the forensics department learned from Helge’s penny necklace, and the one she found in the bunker. Hannah opens the door for her, and gives her a veiled threat before Ulrich comes down the stairs: Ulrich similarly expresses concern about her appearing unannounced. She proceeds to show him the case files, which demonstrate the coins are exactly identical, “as if it traveled through time.”
Ulrich heads to the morgue to inspect Mads’s body, where the chin scar and estimated time of death forces him to realize his children’s bizarre claims about its appearance are true. He keeps this to himself while questioning Helge though, asking him, “The boy in the bunker looks just like Mads. How can that be?” Like Silja, Helge states a woman told him to send Mads to the future, “to fill the gaps,” and more alarmingly for Ulrich, that he must stop him. Ulrich lets the old man leave the station, so that he can follow him, and is once again led into the tunnels into the past.
Before entering the cave, Ulrich leaves Charlotte a message, asking her to run a DNA test on Mads’s body. She never gets the chance: she goes to the plant to meet Aleksander, who takes her to the barrels in the spent fuel pool chamber alone, and becomes one of the God Particle’s first victims in this world after it’s released from the canisters.
5. Apocalypse Now Redux
Erit Lux assembles to fill the rest of the gaps: as Eva explains, “Every connection in one world must also be closed in the other world. Everything is interconnected. In light, and in shadow.” This is easily the show’s most breathtaking end montage, set to M83’s remix of Bloc Party’s “The Pioneers” (which frankly sounds like a horn heralding the end of the world):
– The Unknown goes back in time to 1986 so they may bring about the reactor meltdown responsible for the cs-137 in both timelines: the young and old version go back in time via the God Particle, while the adult one uses the orb device to cross over to Adams’ World. Their mission is presented in symmetrical splitscreen shots (evocative of the opening credits), which are incredible to look at.
– Adult Bartosz appears to retrieve his younger self, just as Magnus and Franziska promised. The adult version is played by Roman Knizka, who previously appeared as the faithless member of Sic Mundus that the prime Noah killed in 1921, confirming the fate of Bartosz in Adam’s World.
– Middle-aged Martha sneaks into Jonas’s room in 1888 to leave him the letter he will someday use to deceive his younger self, as well as the pocket watch the prime Noah will give Elisabeth; he himself is busy assembling the huge time machine we saw in 1921.
– Alt Noah finds Elisabeth walking home from school, and beckons her to join him. He takes her to his younger self in the bunker, and leaves, presumably to die outside when the catastrophe hits.
– Egon finds Hannah — who has suddenly miscarried — at her home, and takes her to the safety of the past, where she will become the mother of his younger self’s other child.
– Claudia gives her prime counterpart the notebook.
Eva does not send anyone to save her family: Katharina and Mikkel huddle together during the panic and confusion, while Magnus and Franziska, who are sitting by the lake, witness the Higgs field forming over the plant before it engulfs the whole town, and them with it.
Other Observations:
– Alt Magnus and Franziska are established as being at the lake during a tender interlude, where he tells her about his sister’s worrying claims: she responds, “If we die today, then we die together.” And they do.
– Aleksander presumably disclosed the radioactive waste to Charlotte to come clean about his past: any other possibility would conflict with the air of nobility generated by Peter Benedict’s performance.
Continued below– The remnant of the God Particle left in 2020 seems inspired by depictions of white dwarf stars, or what the universe may have looked like before it expanded during the Big Bang.
– It’s lovely seeing Christian Patzold as old Egon again (albeit not the old Egon), though it must’ve been strange having no lines.
– Did I rewatch the ending of this episode a thousand times over the summer? Probably.
See you next week for the penultimate chapter, “In Between Time (Zwischen der Zeit).”