Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing season two, episode four, of the twisted German time travel series, released June 21, 2019.
“The Travelers (Die Reisenden)”
Written by Jantje Friese and Martin Behnke
Directed by Baran bo Odar
June 24, 1921/2020: The injured young Jonas has landed over 100 years in the past, while his older self joins forces with the Dopplers. Claudia continues her journey in the future, and Clausen interviews her son-in-law at the plant. Bartosz’s friends turn on him.
1. When is Jonas?
The cold open reveals where Jonas was during the previous episode: he was deposited by the God Particle over a century back to 1921. After burying his hazmat suit, he’s spotted by two farmers, who take him to receive food, rest, and bandages at the inn of Erna, where young Noah and Agnes live. The bright sunlight is disorientating, while the violin score sounds dissonant even by this show’s standards — it’s folk music, but made to sound horrifying to reflect Jonas’s stress at being so far from when he needs to be.
Jonas claims he was on the eastern front, presumably because it’s easier to pose as an escaped Soviet laborer than a veteran of the western front; the locals assume as much, saying his captors “aren’t human over there.” After getting bandaged up, he goes to sleep — for 24 hours, an amusingly simple alibi. When he wakes up, he finds Noah waiting in his bedroom — you can tell it’s his voice from the aggressive electronic buzz that accompanies it, which I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t realize was actually his leitmotif until now. Noah quips he pictured Jonas differently, and leaves without elaborating.
We also briefly see what happened next in the early hours of June 23, 2053: after taking one last glance at the unstable God Particle, Silja leaves the chamber, and is confronted by Elisabeth, who demands to know why she was in there. Silja angrily asks if she knows what is in there, accusing her of being a liar: Elisabeth replies, “They say it is a part of God. But in reality it’s a part of the devil.”
2a. Generation Gap
In 2020, the older Jonas discovers Aleksander’s gun and passport in the case on the kitchen table, and is shocked by the implication Hannah’s extorting him: however, the reckoning with his mother’s true nature is put off when he sees that she’s invited Charlotte over. Hannah says she deserves the truth too, and Charlotte recognizes him as the man Regina described. She shows him the photo from 1921, and he confirms the priest there is Noah, as well as the name of the group: “Sic Mundus: the travelers.”
At the Doppler bunker, Charlotte, Peter and the Kahnwalds share what they’ve learned, including Ulrich’s reappearance in 1953. They agree Katharina deserves to know the fate of her husband and son, and Charlotte volunteers to collect her. On the ride over, a tearful Katharina expresses fear over what Charlotte is going to show her, but she explains it’s not so simple.
In the bunker, Katharina is incredulous about what she’s told, and laughs when Jonas reveals he’s her grandson. Despite her cynical display, Hannah’s claim that she saw Mikkel 33 years ago gets under Katharina’s skin, and she goes to the school’s archives to double check — in a heartbreaking and chilling moment, she breaks down seeing it really is him in a class photo from 1986.
2b. Childhood Ferocity
Simultaneously, the Doppler girls go to the Nielsen home: Franziska says she forgives Magnus for accusing her of being a prostitute, and explains their parents have not been home for the past two days (the two having preoccupied themselves researching in Tannhaus’s old house and the bunker). Magnus says he’s going into the caves, and Franziska and Martha are adamant that they join him: Elisabeth thinks they’re insane, but Franziska reassures her they’ll be safe.
Continued belowInside, they find Bartosz returning from a journey, with a time machine in his briefcase. They beat and bind him, demanding he spill what he knows about the disappearances — it’s like Lord of the Flies, but on dry land. The girls open the briefcase, and decide to bring back the intricate device inside for analysis. Magnus vows to kill Bartosz if he has anything to do with what’s happening, while Martha suggests they leave her ex-boyfriend inside.
Returning home, Martha notices her mother is once again distraught over her missing son and husband, while Magnus ignores her; while at their house, the Doppler girls stare at an empty couch, still awaiting their parents’ return — if only the adult Jonas wanted his contemporaries on the same page.
3. Clausen’s New Perspective
With Charlotte feigning sickness, Clausen asks Woller to drive him to his next interview subject, Aleksander Tiedemann. Clausen’s many questions include why he didn’t allow Ulrich to inspect the plant; the door in the cave; and whether he came to Winden before or after Mads Nielsen’s disappearance. It’s an awkward experience for Woller, whose glances at Aleksander remind us he was involved in the cover-up of the radioactive canisters.
Clausen becomes fixated on why Aleksander took his wife’s name, commenting it is very unusual, especially when they married. Aleksander says he did it to preserve the Tiedemann name, since Regina was the last of her family: it’s a lovely sentiment, but Clausen knows as well as we do that that’s not true. He asks Aleksander what his birth name was: he replies it was Kohler.
Clausen also raises a startling point about Winden during his interrogation: he asks why everyone born here stays — it’s unusual for such a large town. It’s true, even characters like Agnes Nielsen, or Helge Doppler — who apparently fathered Peter elsewhere — return to the town eventually. Aleksander suggests the power plant merely provides, as he has no way of knowing the town is actually a black hole that traps everyone in its orbit, but to an outsider like Clausen, it still looks just as bizarre.
Clausen and Woller go to speak with Hannah about Ulrich, but find no one’s home. Returning to the station, Woller asks Clausen if he did apply for this job, to which he replies affirmatively, suggesting an ulterior motive. Their conversation gradually leads to Clausen asking about what happened to Woller’s eye. Woller agrees to tell him, provided he tells no one else… and then becomes interrupted when he spots Claudia crossing the road, and is forced to swerve the car around her. “Interesting,” Clausen comments, even though Woller didn’t say anything.
4. Claudia’s Trip to the Future
Claudia — who strongly resembles a P.I. in her shades and coat — wanders Winden, learning from a security guard that Aleksander Tiedemann became director of the plant, and then ventures to the library to learn more of what became her legacy. It’s a fun sequence: the librarian seems perturbed she doesn’t know the town’s archives have gone digital, while a young woman she asks for help using a computer seems tickled by her unfamiliarity with touchscreen technology — Claudia’s adventures in the future could easily be the inspiration for a separate comedy series.
Claudia learns Regina and Aleksander married in 1993, but that their hotel has closed. Furthermore, she learns that on June 26, 1987 (two days away in her personal timeline), her father died in his apartment, and that she reportedly went missing that afternoon. After getting help printing these off for her briefcase, she returns to ‘87, and her daughter, still healthy and asleep at home.
In the bunker, Jonas tells Hannah, Charlotte and Peter that “everything is going to happen the way it always has.” They ask why he’s here then: he states Adam, the leader of Sic Mundus, said there’d be a loophole allowing him to break the cycle. He tells them Claudia tried to break the cycle too, “but in the end, she became exactly what she was fighting.”
Continued below5. “Ich bin [auch] du”
Back in 1921, the younger Jonas limps through the forest to the cave. He finds and opens the door, but sees the corridor has not been excavated, and impotently bangs his fist against the stone. On reemerging, he’s greeted by Noah, who informs him the corridor won’t be open for another 32 years, and that Sic Mundus are waiting to offer him a way home.
Jonas is led on to the incomplete church, where he’s startled to see the older Noah, his kidnapper from ‘86. “It must feel strange to see me here as well,” the pastor admits. They take an elevator to the caverns below, where a vast temple edifice has been carved from the stone, bearing the words “sic mundus creatus est.” Jonas is left in the grand study to wait for Adam’s arrival alone.
The old man appears, and begins by explaining that his scarred appearance is the result of the toxic effects of time travel. (“The human body isn’t equipped for it in perpetuity,” he says.) He asks if Jonas is ready to “begin,” to which the boy angrily replies he’s not interested in beginning anything, but only ending the cycle. Adam replies, “Don’t worry, it will come to an end. That can’t be avoided. Your end, my end. On closer inspection, it’s everyone’s end.” Realizing this man is on the same wavelength, Jonas asks aloud who he is, and Adam takes off his collar, exposing the rope burn scar around his neck.
Tannhaus once said the black hole has two paths, so we should’ve expected to meet the third head of the Jonas triune — but sadly, he is everyone’s worst nightmare: becoming the bitter, old, and cruel establishment figure you railed against. “This isn’t real,” Jonas responds, scarcely able to comprehend how long and twisted his journey will become. “I am you,” Adam confirms. “Every stone is back where it belongs, everyone at their destination. All that’s needed now is a push.” It appears Noah was referring to Jonas in season 1, when he told Helge about his mentor, who “looked as if he’d been in the war.” Jonas is his own abyss, staring back; he truly is the alpha and omega, the beginning, and the end.
Other Observations
– Now we know Adam is Jonas, his decision to operate beneath St. Christopher’s Church takes on greater symbolic significance; the coolness with which middle-aged Jonas admits he has no regrets about leaving Mikkel in the past also appears to be another piece of foreshadowing.
– Without the make-up, Adam actor Dietrich Hollinderbäumer does strongly resemble an old, bald version of younger and older Jonas actors Louis Hofmann and Andreas Pietschmann.
– Some (more) overdue comic relief: this Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song could apply to a lot of characters on the show, but there’s a none-more-appropriate time to share it:
– We briefly get to hear the world the muffled way Elisabeth does, when the other kids beat up Bartosz — it’s a thoughtful reminder that blind or deaf people don’t respectively experience the world in complete darkness or silence.
– Young Noah asks his older self who wrote the notebook he carries: his answer is unclear, simply stating “Adam will send him on his way, the path that’s been determined. So that the last cycle may begin.”
– We see Martha also dreams about sex with Jonas; when she wakes up, she realizes how much she misses him, and begins to cry.
– Can Jonas tell (however subconsciously) that little Agnes is his great-great-grandmother?
– Clausen’s inability to drive makes him oddly relatable.
Join us next week for our look at “Lost and Found (Vom Suchen und Finden).”
