Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing the sixth chapter of the twisted German time travel series, released December 1, 2017.
“Sic Mundus Creatus Est (Thus the world was created)”
Written by Jantje Friese and Ronny Schalk
Directed by Baran bo Odar
November 8, 2019: Ulrich looks into his brother’s case for clues to the current disappearances, and discovers his mother lied about his father’s whereabouts in ‘86. Martha performs in the school production of Ariadne; Jonas returns to the caves; and the bad blood between the Nielsens and Regina Tiedemann is cast into the light.
1. You Don’t Really Know Your Parents
The episode opens with Regina having a nightmare/flashback to a traumatic incident as a teenager, when Ulrich and Katharina tied her to a tree outside Winden’s howling “hellmouth” cave. This cruel prank instantly lays out its whole theme, that we’re born into this world to people with no obligation to tell us who they really are, or were, and to truly love us in that regard. Jonas has just learned the true identity of his father, and is naturally curious to learn from his mother how they met, as well as what he was like before he got “sick”: she responds he was someone who “you never knew if he meant something seriously or not.”
Meanwhile, Ulrich confronts his father about his whereabouts the nights Mads and Mikkel disappeared, causing him to turn angry at the insinuation he’s involved. Jana intervenes on Tronte’s behalf, first lying that he was with her the night Mikkel vanished, and then by revealing he was with Claudia Tiedemann the night Mads went missing in 1986. She also states Regina — Claudia’s daughter — was the last person to see Mads alive. It’s unclear why Jana is covering for her husband’s current nightly disappearances, but an oblivious Ulrich decides to pursue his next lead.
2. Doors Open
Finally noticing the Stranger’s message to “follow the signal” on his father’s map, Jonas returns to the caves. After following a red thread resembling the one Martha uses on stage, he realizes “the signal” is meant to be his Geiger counter: this leads to a lovely moment from actor Louis Hofmann, who wordlessly conveys Jonas panicking, and then deciding, well, it’s only potentially radiation poisoning — it’s not like life can get any worse.
Jonas crawls into a small tunnel leading to a small door, emblazoned with the triquetra and the titular Latin quote from the Emerald Tablet. Turning the handle, he crawls into the windy passage, and a fork in the path. He picks the tunnel on the right, and reemerges out of the cave through a similarly designed right-hand door. At the bus shelter, he’s offered a lift by Hannah and her father, as they’re concerned by the acid rain after Chernobyl: Jonas shakes off the shock of seeing his mother as a 14-year old, and declines.
While Jonas is in transit, the lights across Winden go haywire again. And in further proof you just can’t trust anyone, we see Tronte and Peter Doppler in the bunker, where we see there’s seismic activity whenever anyone uses the portal too. They’re definitely in on a conspiracy: Peter holds a notebook bearing a triquetra, containing the time and date of every time travel journey made in Winden, and he is seen observing Jonas has made his trip exactly on time.
3. Total Depravity
The stress induced by the disappearances causes things to turn violent in Winden: Katharina has an argument with Martha have a fight over her decision to return to school and participate in the play (which she’d wrongly assumed was canceled) — Katharina accuses her daughter of not caring about Mikkel, while Martha responds that she should accept he’s dead and move on, prompting a slap from her mother. Despite that, when Katharina calls into the radio later, she tells the rest of the town they need to accept that a murderer is among them, and to stop being in denial about living in a “sick town.”
When Ulrich questions Regina, it’s made clear she’s never forgiven him and Katharina for their bullying, cooly admitting she wishes he was the one who went missing, not Mads. Ulrich responds he never apologized because she told her grandfather he raped Katharina: she laughs, asking why he never realized that was Hannah. After verifying this from his case file, Ulrich storms to the Kahnwald home, and grabs Hannah by the throat, demanding to know what it is she wants from him — she, in turn, smacks him for insinuating her husband’s suicide was her fault.
Continued belowKatharina decides to attend the performance, where Martha has an emotional breakdown (an utter tour-de-force from actress Lisa Vicari), and she decides to take her daughter home. Regina walks into the school to pick up her son Bartosz, and taunts Katharina as she walks past, suggesting they leave this “sick town”: the disrespect reawakens the school bully inside, and she violently attacks her until Magnus intervenes.
At home, the Nielsens are silent, ashamed, sensing truth in Regina’s words that “that’s who your mother really is.” An exhausted Martha asks Magnus if things will ever be the same again. Perhaps people don’t change, perhaps we’re all children pretending to be adults, but what does change is your naivety and ability to quickly trust others — you realize, unlike friends, family members are not necessarily someone you know. Perhaps that’s why some people decide you don’t need to know the Creator or that He deigns to grace us with His presence: just that “the world was created.”
This is all very heavy: thank goodness for Magnus telling Martha to keep her cold feet on her side of the bed. (Teenage siblings co-sleeping: what a sweetly amusing act of childhood regression.)
4. Being Tact
There’s a few instances here of characters finding out secrets, but not acting on them immediately:
– Regina and Aleksander both separately learn she has advanced breast cancer, but when he does, he defers talking about it on the phone while she’s waiting for Bartosz.
– Bartosz meets Martha before the play, and apologizes for planning the excursion to the cave, believing that’s why she’s been distant (and not because he was more interested in cracking a phone). Martha’s doesn’t know how to factor this into her rekindled relationship with Jonas, and merely proceeds with her performance.
– Katharina sees Ulrich’s phone bill and calls Hannah’s number: she responds, “Ulrich?,” confirming their affair. Ulrich doesn’t see Katharina afterwards, fortunately for him.
– Magnus checks Franziska’s box in the abandoned railway, and finds a bird-shaped necklace nearby.
Point is, there’s probably a reason Dark season 1 had ten episodes.
5. Dreadful Reunion
During her meeting with Ulrich, Jana reminisces about an accident Mads had during Christmas, 1985, that left a scar on his chin. At night, Ulrich, who’s presumably feeling nostalgic after reviving the case, is looking through a childhood photo book, when he realizes the dead boy found in the woods shares the same facial feature. Checking the corpse in the morgue, he realizes the body is that of his brother, deposited 33 years later.
Since this is a time travel series, which has heavily reminded us Mikkel’s disappearance echoes that of his uncle, this is one of the more obvious twists, but it still has an upsetting impact: after all these years, Ulrich has finally found his brother, and he’s been murdered and disfigured by some maniac in an occult experiment — is it any wonder sometimes adults can no longer maintain their pretense of rationality?
Other Observations:
– Magnus is a very mature young adult, consoling his mother after her argument with Martha, as well as stopping her attack on Regina. (Not to mention he’s man enough to let his sister sleep next to him.)
– Suffice to say, it’s not an accident that text from the Emerald Tablet, which revolves around the creation of prima materia, is written on the time corridors’ doors.
– When Jonas is at the bus stop in ‘86, there are missing posters for Mads: then we cut back to 2019, when Ulrich discovers it’s his body they recovered that week.
– Like the previous episode, the cutting between Martha’s monologue as Ariadne with Jonas’s journey reinforces the mythical resonance of his story, and the themes of this episode (mistrust and loneliness):
Just as he once descended into the maze, I now descend into mine. Now I stand before you. No king’s daughter. No man’s wife. No brother’s sister. A loose end in time. And so we all die alike. No matter into which house we are born. No matter which gown. Whether we grace the earth briefly or for a long time. I alone tie my bonds. Whether I have extended hands or with them slapped away. We all face the same end. Those above have long forgotten us. They do not judge us. In death, I am all alone. And my only judge is me.
And on that hair raising note, I leave you as Theseus left Ariadne on Naxos, though not permanently — we’ll return next week for “Crossroads (Kreuzwege).”
