The season finale of Dark, became not only a critical and certainly an audience event, but also a journey through the essential elements that made the Netflix original series a phenomenon at all levels. The last season of the series not only made it clear that the careful plot – with at least six different timelines and as many parallel realities – fitted with the precision of a watch, but the perception of the essential of the show it was still intact. Even its creators had the audacity to leave a final mystery for the closing minutes of the closing episode, intended perhaps to be unanswered but it does provoke long discussions. We mean, of course, the déjà breast Hannah (Maja Schöne) suffers in the middle of dinner, family? with which the story ends.
Let’s do a little context of what has happened in Dark: For the concluding sequence of the show, its long cast is reduced to six characters, who share a lively evening around a table in the so-called “red house” which, until then, was the center of encounters and disagreements through argument. On this occasion, what is really important is not the place, but the connections between those who share the table.
Dark and the game of the worlds
As it was already clear some sequences before, everything that happened both in the first season and in the second corresponds to two “worlds” created when HG Tannhaus (played between 1953 and 1954 by the actor Arnd Klawitter and, between 1986 and 1987, by Christian Steyer) by creating a time machine, with which he attempted to reverse the course of events in which his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter died. Not only did he not make it, but he created a wormhole that divided his reality into two parallel paths, in which Jonas (Louis Hofmann) and Martha (Lisa Vicari), his tragic family tree, and everyone related to him were trapped in a cycle of suffering and pain, in which they were condemned to die and live on successive occasions.
Finally, Jonas and Martha (who in their adult versions were fighting to keep their respective worlds safe), understood that the respective realities they inhabited were accidents, so they decided to interrupt the flow of events. Namely: avoid the death of Marek Tannhaus and his family, thanks to which the time machine would never be built and, therefore, the worlds in which they lived would never exist.
As a consequence, both characters disappeared, as did all those born due to their twisted genealogy. Without Jonas and Martha, practically all the characters interconnected with each other ceased to exist, so that at the dinner with which the chapter concludes – which occurs, of course, in the so-called “original world” – they only meet seis asistentes: Katharina Albers (Jördis Triebel), Hannah Kruger, Torben Woeller (Leopold Hornung), Bernadette Wöller (Anton Rubtsov), Peter Doppler (portrayed by Stephan Kampwirth in 2020 and Pablo Striebeck in 1987) and Regina Tiedemann (Deborah Kaufmann).
In a quick glance at the place, it is clear that Regina is the new owner of the house (and in fact, she is a happy woman), in which we even see as a child in an image with her father and mother. Of course, in this home world, Hannah is not married to Ulrich or Mikkel because neither of them exists and is, in fact, the partner of Wöller, the police officer we saw with an eye patch during the entire series. .
Script turns
Everything seems to go normally in the middle of a celebration until Hannah who is pregnant and it looks happy and radiant, have a already seen. And he has it just when Wöller is about to explain what caused the mysterious – and inexplicable – injury that characterized him throughout history. But we do not know what has happened because there is a short power cut that interrupts the happy gathering around the table. A twist that DarkIt has not hesitated to explode since its inception.
That’s when the enigmatic moment occurs when Hannah blinks and has a already seen. The most curious thing is that the power failures were, throughout the program, an indication that the time machine was working. And, in this case, it could suggest an event directly related to the use or quantum alteration of the wormholes. Does Hannah perceive, in the world of origin and in the middle of 2019, the physical disappearance of Jonas, whom she never knew or will never know?
It is a probable theory. Everything seems to indicate that, in Dark, the maxim that energy is not destroyed but is transformed is completely valid, so it is among the possibilities that the physical disappearance of her son in one of the alternate worlds can be perceived by Hannah in the world of origin, something very similar in principle to what the argument of Avengers: Endgame (Brothers Russo, 2019) to explain how the Nebula character from the present and the past could share memories. Despite existing in different universes and timelines, the energy is the same and there is a possibility – always according to this theory – that Hannah could sense the moment when Jonas ceases to exist.
In fact, Hannah is the most affected by the blackout in Dark. She seems confused, stunned, and stares at a raincoat hanging from the hallway, much like the one Jonas wore —And also Martha— most of the show. It is then that he admits that he has just experienced a already seen, which, by the way, has exactly the same line as Martha’s character in the pilot episode, when she had a clear feeling of the existence of the mirror worlds.
But, instead of focusing attention on the possibility that we might find ourselves in another time loop, the argument insists on the fact that Hannah actually and subconsciously perceived something similar to what the series hints at happened to Jonas and Martha. “It was dark and there was never light again,” says Hannah. “And the weird thing is … it felt really good. That everything will end. Like being suddenly free of everything. No wishes. No need. Endless darkness. Not, yesterday. Not today. No tomorrow. Nothing”.
The dark description causes a minute of silence, only broken by Bernadette, who surely remains the brother of Wöller, just as he was in the world of Jonas. There is a brief conversation, laughter, and then Regina asks the big question with which the series will close its story: “If the world were to end today, and you only had one wish, what would you want?”
Katharina intervenes. Without Ulrich or any relationship with the ill-fated Nielsen family, she is a happy woman who is also notoriously close to Hannah. It is she who answers the question: “A world without Winden. Let’s cheer to that”. She refers, of course, to the town, which in the original world is a rural and peaceful place, without a hint of the tragedies that ravaged it in the worlds of Jonas and Martha.
Amid the laughter, the group resumes the conversation, while the lights come on. “It seems Winden doesn’t want to just disappear,” says Peter, who without Martha or Jonas would never have suffered the series of misfortunes that struck the character. An exchange of words identical to that of the young Ulrich with Hannah in the third episode of the first season. In fact, everything seems to indicate that the history of Dark returns to its point of origin, and that, without the corrupt universes, a clean journey finally begins and straight to something entirely new.
As if all of the above was not enough, when the conversation centers around the baby Hannah is bearing, the character pauses for a long time. Remember? The truth is that, when asked if you have already thought of a name for the baby, the answer seems to close the cycle flawlessly: “I think Jonas is a beautiful name”.
Does it mean that Jonas and, perhaps, Martha will have a new chance to be born? With the fade to black, Dark takes the most curious of its mysteries.
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