The Survivors
1888 – Our world
Episode 2 of Dark Season 3 begins with Martha awakening in the Tannhaus factory in 1888 to find our world’s Jonas (The Stranger) sitting across the room. Stuffing an envelope in his pocket, he tells her to get dressed. As she steps out the room, Magnus, Fran and Bartosz all happen to be there too. They survived the apocalypse that’s consumed our world and jumped back to 1888. Martha reveals she’s not their Martha but also that she’s been trying hard to fix the wrongs that have occured. The kids then sit and discuss what’s transpired with the two separate worlds. Jonas steps forward though and asks just how she knew they’d be in that time period. It turns out Jonas was the one who told her. It’s here other-Martha is called out about her lies by the older-Jonas, claiming he’s never been to their world. Only, this isn’t actually the truth meaning the timelines appear to be diverging somehow. Out of the shadows, a blind and old Tannhaus arrives and tells Jonas he has a visitor, proceeding to touch Martha’s face and telling her she has nothing to fear. In the aftermath of this, Bartosz sits with Martha and admits the machine is completely empty and unfortunately, given they’re in 1888, it seems unlikely they’ll find a way out. However, this may also coincide with how the kids grow up and are older in 1921, along with Jonas becoming Adam. Martha is lead by Bartosz down into the tunnels where he shows her Ada’s Office and Sic Mundus. It turns out Jonas is trying to rebuild the machine to get back to his time. It’s here Martha admits that Jonas is actually Adam and the one responsible for killing his other self.
22nd September 1987 – Our World
Katharina awakens in Jonas’ room after using the time machine herself. Only, given this is 1987 it actually belongs to Ines and, more importantly, Mikkel (under the Michael Kahnwald guise). It appears Katharina was able to travel after all. Meanwhile, the death of Mads Nielsen – and more importantly his body not showing up – causes fractures in the family as they struggle to get closure after he’s disappeared. With Claudia now gone and disappeared, Tronte heads back to the nuclear plant for answers. Despite receiving fragments and scraps of suspicions, he heads back and picks up Regina, deciding to take her home. She leaves mid-journey though and steps back from the car, watching as Tronte drives off. Katharina meanwhile, heads to the school and begins handing out flyers about Mikkel’s disappearance. Only, one of the people she hands one to happens to be Ulrich. A young Katharina arrives though while they’re talking and kisses Ulrich infront of her. Both the young Hannah from that time and our older Katharina watch on, disapprovingly. As they leave, a young Hannah admits to Katharina that “a lunatic” (Ulrich of course) escaped and took Mikkel to the caves. After warning Hannah against going near Ulrich or Mikkel in the future, she heads to the police station for details surrounding who took Mikkel and where they may be. Eventually, the officer admits that Child Protective Services know exactly where he and Ines are. Only, if she continues to pry then that’s going to cause problems in the future. Katharina is a woman who won’t take no for an answer though and she manages to find her way to Helene in the clinic. With a shaky voice, she asks to visit the patient who, as we know, is actually Ulrich. Helene eventually agrees and they sit together, Ulrich’s lip quivering from emotion. When Jasmin returns to her office, she finds the trio of figures with the cut lip surrounding her. “Hell is empty,” The adult one says ominously before strangling her to death.
22nd September 2020 – Our World
Rain hammers down from the sky as a lowly figure in a raincoat arrives at the broken fractures of the police station. Switching off the radio, this happens to be Claudia and she promises Regina she’ll return after heading out into the rain again. Keeping a safe distance, she watches as Peter and Elisabeth manage to talk their way into a military-controlled checkpoint. Elisabeth and Peter continue to scout, trying desperately to find Charlotte and Fran. This search eventually brings them to Jonas’ house, where young Noah starts to get to know Elisabeth, handing over a slip of paper. Peter rushes to protect her but Noah scoffs at the notion, promising to do his best to save her life and watch over her. Claudia meanwhile, hides out in the bunker and records her message – the message we’ve heard before that Jonas listened to last season. Looking over at the pictures of the kids, she promises to save them all. As thunder rumbles outside, Regina awakens to see Tronte standing over her. He apologises, telling her “it has to happen” and suffocates her with the pillow.
22nd September 2053 – Our World
Charlotte and adult Elisabeth sit together, with the latter telling her everything is going to be okay as they embrace. For now, this timeline is left ominously untouched but I’m sure we’ll see more of it going forward.
4th November 2019 – The Other World
The older-Martha whom we saw greet Jonas at the end of the previous episode, speaks to him about the world order and what’s come to pass across both worlds. Although things don’t happen at the same time, regardless of whether Jonas exists or not every single person is going to die thanks to the apocalypse; there’s no escaping from it. However, it turns out in this other world the apocalypse is due to begin in 3 days time. Tick. Tock.
The Review Write-Up
With an ominous sign of things to pass in this other world, Dark leaves things wide open with plenty of questions for the show to answer. The jumping back and forth between worlds and timelines is certainly a little complicated and requires a fair amount of scrutinous attention to understand but it appears like everything is setting up for this same endless cycle we’ve seen play out before. Whether Jonas and other-Martha can break this or not though, remains to be seen.
