Dark: the German Netflix series that's like an amalgamation of Twin Peaks, Back to the Future, and X-Files (SPOILERS!)

I'm sure it'll clear everything up and leave us with a satisfying and resolved finale.

lmao thats how I walked into the last season's finale and got punched in the face instead

I'd been wondering why this is dropping next Saturday instead of Netflix's usual Friday slot but up to S2 of my rewatch now and it's become crystal clear

Why is it, then? I don't remember S2 that well.

27 June 2020 is the date of the apocalypse

Apparently the third season will be the last one

Ah, very glad to hear this. With the season 2 finale drop I had visions of it just expanding forever into utter nonsense. I always think shows like this need a clear ending point.

Even on a rewatch I'm still having to consult that who's who chart every 5 minutes

i read episode recaps, s1 seemed pretty straightforward. s2... shit. pondering a rewatch of key episodes.

One of my favourite things was yelling at the TV about how people failed to recognise each other. I mean, yeah, you would never jump to the conclusion that a stranger was you from the future, but you might think there's a weird familial resemblance, right? Or how strange it is that your friends' son looks exactly like your husband did in school?

I'm secretly hoping that season three is entirely dedicated to The Mystery of Wöller's Eye.

it's weird how they do such a good job of getting actors who look like each other across the generations, except for adam. weird, or a clue...

wow i totally do not remember elizabeth being her own mum's mum.

Watched the S2 finale last night and that one caught me by surprise too

ok I'm putting my wildly implausible fan theory out here just in case it turns out to be heroically correct: adam is lying, he isn't jonas. he's bartosz.

Please tell me they have an extensive recap available at the top of season three?

the episode summaries at https://dark-netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Wiki are pretty good.

Ledge, I don't think that's wildly implausible at all - it has definitely occurred to me a few times. For one thing, Bartosz is the only one we haven't seen as an older version, despite being rescued along with Magnus and Franziska. My question would be why would Magnus and Franziska follow Bartosz in Sic Mundus, when they don't trust him? How would he fool them? (Aside from the trick of everybody in the show not being able to recognise anyone else if they're a different age.)

he'd also have to get a great deal wiser as he gets older as he's not the sharpest tool in the box right now.

but we see adam "seeing"/remembering martha and bartosz is the only other guy with a close connection to her, except for magnus and ulrich who are already accounted for.

Is Adam really that wise, or do people just think he is?

Adam being Bartosz would also track with his pronouncement about "some pain you never get over" or whatever it was he said, but referring to Jonas getting it on with Martha rather than anything else.

As I say, it's definitely crossed my mind more than once, but I'm withholding judgement as of yet. There are many convincing arguments for it actually being Jonas after all. We've also got a whole new batshit thing to bounce around in with the introduction of parallel worlds now, so who knows where the writers are going with this?

Parallel worlds are the only way out of it I think, otherwise the whole narrative comes falling down. I wonder if that's been the intention since the start.

Please tell me they have an extensive recap available at the top of season three?

They don't but YouTube does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnczoVbNsH4

Oh, very good. Thanks.

who says this show has no sense of humour? torben's two eyes one arm reveal was a lol for sure.

Only a couple of episodes in so far but the unknown trio (or whatever they're called) feel very Twin Peaks/Lynchian

oh man i somehow forgot all the episodes are released at once. i was sort of looking forward to eking this out week by week.

some nice symmetries between s3e1 and s1e1 - s1 ulrich climbs out of hannah's bedroom window, s3 franziska climbs of out magnus's (the same room). ulrich uses the same excuse about the queue at the bakers to katharina (s1) and hannah (s3). franziska gives a talk about black holes in s1, bartosz in s3.

it looks like everything is left-right reversed in the other world - jonas's (old) house, the school, the church - but not the nielsen's (old) house?

Yeah, I'm not a fan of bingeing shows but will probably try and watch this as quickly as possible because spoilers

Trying to keep this mostly spoiler-free

I got quite lost this season and should have watched a more extensive recap (the two minute recap NF provided was less than useless), but switching between worlds AND time periods was tough to follow, even with the visual cue. I often had to pause and think about what had last happened. My other problem was most things felt insignificant compared to Jonas and Martha's stories, but some of the gaps were interesting to see filled in. Still, nice finish to the show. I don't know if the story is 100% consistent (I'll leave that to people smarter than I) but I'm still a bit in awe that real people plotted this story out

Rewatching the first two seasons was a massive help for me and meant I could also appreciate all the (plenty of) callbacks this season.

There were obviously a few plot holes but generally it was tightly plotted and I can't wait to see the new character maps people come up with for this season

just finished season 2 this week after stalling out after episode 2 of it last year and am now p stoked for season 3.

don't know if it's just me but S2 really laid bare just how irredeemably awful hannah is.

Well, that final song choice was a stinker, and I say that as someone who has very much enjoyed the 'sad song / slow montage' element of each episode.

I'm glad it managed to stay enjoyable all the way through, definitely not a perfect piece of TV but good. They fucking played me with Wöller's eye, though.

My other problem was most things felt insignificant compared to Jonas and Martha's stories

I got frustrated quite a few times over the series that it was so focused on these two as the central issue, when other people were equally caught up in/responsible for/messed up by the knot. I think in the end the show managed to address that, though? They're important, but their duality is not ultimately the most meaningful thing.

Was that the Peter Gabriel tune? I'd not heard it before and thought it was much better than the original.

I guess spoilers for music here, so look away if you're bothered by that - it was the 'What a Wonderful World' choice. So corny.

Oh yeah, that was bad

We are four episodes into season three and I am not feeling this anymore at all. Too much Jonas and Martha, too much standing around and spouting cod-meaningful platitudes about time.

I also should've watched a better recap. I could maybe even use a previously-on-Dark recap before each episode. Sometimes it takes me a while scene to remember who everyone in a scene is and how they got there.

Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe these German sitcoms are just not what I want in these times.

Takes me a whole scene, not a while scene.

I'm six episodes in and I'm on tenterhooks for what happens next but I agree there's too much time travel bullshit in this one, it was better when it was equal parts unhappy family trauma and time travel bullshit. Too much double crossing as well. He lied to you! No she lied to you when she said he lied to you! etc etc.

I think it gets better in the second half as the final pieces get filled in. Episode 7 in particular was one of my favorites of the series

That is good to hear.

4 episodes in and i p much agree with trishyb. i do find the scarlip3 genuinely terrifying tho, especially the littlest one.

7 is indeed something of a tour de force.

I finished watching it. Sure, the ending was satisfying, but I thought the whole third season was a snooze.

Also, I wish edgy programmes would stop signalling their edginess by showing people hanging themselves. It is extremely upsetting to watch.

That third season wasn't a snore. it was a freegin' chore. Talk about sucking all the momentum out of a story through terrible pacing. So disappointing.

After finishing it last night I dreamt about being in a bunker and hiding from some evil germans.

I give it two thumbs up, yes it went a bit up its own bum in the third season but there was enough sturm und drang to keep me invested and the ending was immensely satisfying.

I agree that the third season was a bummer, I was expecting more multiverse shenanigans and not just the same hammering of "you can't escape fate" theme of the previous two seasons, even if it was ultimately subverted.

One small thing that really bugged me, in the first episode of this season, when Martha and the other kids are in the woods at night, she hears a creepy voice calling her name, and for a second sees a scary woman all covered in some black goo, who then disappears. I kept expecting for the show to explain what the fuck that was about, but it never did. I even rewatched the scene with freeze frame, but because of the black goo it's impossible to tell if the woman is supposed to be a version of Martha or one of the other time-travellers. Seems like a weird detail to leave unexplained in a story that otherwise tied all its threads?

it's her mum i think, an echo of s1e1 where jonas sees his dad in the same way. i only discovered this reading online.

I guess it could be her mom, yeah, but that still doesn't explain why she saw her? Jonas had a creepy vision of his dad because he had just killed himself, but nothing like that happens to the alternate world Katharina.

idk, because martha and jonas are connected, man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the more i think back on this show the more impressive i think it is. multiple characters across three generations and timelines all brilliantly cast, with a labyrinthine plot & family tree that stands up to scrutiny and is resolved with no significant loose ends.

what i liked most about the third season were some of the more minor emotional developments, e.g. bartosz's family and the fact that he and magnus and franziska never (iirc) make it back (... to the future!); and also the small differences/echoes between the worlds/timelines, e.g. when we see peter as a priest talking to an untransitioned benni in eva's timeline.

also the incidental music was fantastic - i was a ben frost fan anyway but I've been listening to & loving his three soundtrack albums. the episode ending songs were sometimes a bit ott but they worked.

Oh and I also liked how it hid away some plot explanations like easter eggs - e.g. who was Regina's father? In Adam and Eva's timeline it was Tronte Nielsen but when Tronte is a kid we see the origin/unnamed/weirdo trio say he gave Tronte his name, implying he's Tronte's father (and Tronte is his own great-great-great grandfather) But then Regina wouldn't exist in the original world, being a product of the time fracture - so in the final scene in the original world we a picture of Claudia, Regina, and Bernd Doppler. (Which makes the fairly creepy scene with an adult Bernd telling a young Claudia that if she wants something she should take it even more creepy.)

In Adam and Eva's timeline it was Tronte Nielsen but when Tronte is a kid we see the origin/unnamed/weirdo trio say he gave Tronte his name, implying he's Tronte's father (and Tronte is his own great-great-great grandfather) But then Regina wouldn't exist in the original world, being a product of the time fracture - so in the final scene in the original world we a picture of Claudia, Regina, and Bernd Doppler. (Which makes the fairly creepy scene with an adult Bernd telling a young Claudia that if she wants something she should take it even more creepy.)

That’s what the previous post was saying. Regina was not a product of time travel.

Regina would be a time travel anomaly if Tronte were her Dad, and the family tree on the floor in Eva's room says he is - but yes it has to be Bernd in all three universes. The theory is that Claudia covered up her parentage and pretended it was Tronte, I'm not sure how much of that is spelled out in the show and how much is fanfic.

really struggling with this. only persisting cos of ledge and mark e itt.

the environment is heavily synthetic and claustrophobic, not at all like being on a boat. i get that this is almost certainly deliberate - effectively this is some sort of mental state or synthetic construct. but the effect is unappealing and monotonous. some sort of sense of the outside world, some sort of sense of realism going gradually awry, and unravelling completely - something Dark did well - would imo have been far more effective. more than once i've been watching and thinking 'i shd just go and play obra dinn'. i recommend something more like the Artemis 81 approach.

i do love how incongruous the musical selections are. but for a different, bad, form of incongruity, the two 'comedy' stokers really are the pits.

also far far too much of this face being made by everyone in every episode:

https://minhaseriefavorita.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2-temp-1899.jpg

also: is it required that anton lesser is in *everything* these days? i don't mind particularly. he's always very good. but he's *everywhere*.

the environment is heavily synthetic and claustrophobic, not at all like being on a boat

i could argue that boats, especially ones designed for long voyages, are exactly those things - they are simulacra of normal living spaces, often dark or cramped, and you can't leave!

effectively this is some sort of mental state or synthetic construct. but the effect is unappealing and monotonous. some sort of sense of the outside world, some sort of sense of realism going gradually awry, and unravelling completely - something Dark did well - would imo have been far more effective.

i'm reserving judgment till i've finished - probably tonight or tomorrow - but i think they try for the gradual unravelling, and that's clearly how the characters are experiencing it, but once the show has tipped its hand even slightly you can just go oh it's a simulation, and though lot may remain mysterious you completely lose any empathy with the characters. (personally i wouldn't recommend the artemis 81 approach for anything!)

i think the music and sound design is fantastic - ben frost again. comedy stokers appalling, yes. i didn't recognised anton lesser from anything else when i saw him in andor, so was amused to find him playing an almost identical character here.

lol wikipedia tells me that those are the only two things he's been in recently, so maybe he's just haunting my dreams

Finished. Unlike Dark it's not going in to my list of best shows of all time. Not enough headfuckery. They tried to amp it at the end with all the oooh whose simulation is it really? but too little too late. Not a patch on classic ST:TNG headfuck episodes like Frame of Mind, or Adult Swim's Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough. And I just didn't care about any of the characters, half of them we scarcely had a clue who they were or what they were escaping from and the main character remained a total mystery right up to the end.

Obviously if there's a season 2 I'll watch it like the sucker I am.

I was enjoying but fairly indifferent to it as I was watching but the last two episodes made me more on board and excited to see a second season even if that twist ending wasn't particularly original

No second season, axed by Netflix :(

tough crowd

crap - only saw the start of the pilot and seemed intriguing

worth the effort knowing that's all there is?

i think the story is quite self contained and does not require a second season.

Perhaps Dark wouldve been better off ending at the start of the first season!

Yeah, it works as a one off season so still worth watching