Dark

Slaanesh69 · Feb 1, 2023

Aldarion said:
This show was great but the ending left the main characters' motivations completely inexplicable. Everyone said the ending was so good.

So many unanswered questions. They answered the big picture questions but left so many details unfinished.

A 4th season would be great.

Since it is still relatively fresh, my take, and no more spoilers since I am like 3 years out now lol:

Adam wanted annihilation, Eve wanted preservation, Claudia was the crux between the two. The actions of Adam and Eve continued the knot infinitely, and it took a Claudia breaking from the loop to eventually bring it all down.

Everything else was simply each character going through similar actions in similar sequences tied up in the knot.

Like someone said, it was all a tragic love story in the end, overlain with time travel sci fi (Claudia and her daughter, Jonas and Martha, all the other cheating and such).

Mahes · Feb 1, 2023

The problem(Difficulty to understand for many who watched) with the ending was that it was a two part ending. You had the completion of the main story that resulted with the erasure of the existence of the 2 main characters and everyone related. I question if that also included the actual existences but that could be discussed out.

The other ending, the final ending, was the reality that nothing had ended at all and that the loop would actually continue...

Aldarion · Feb 1, 2023

Yeah, "Adam wanted annihilation". This is what they never explained. I mean, not even a little.

Along with how his face got fucked up. I wonder if I slept through an episode or something.

Mahes · Feb 1, 2023

The face getting fucked up had to do with the constant research into time travel. He got electrocuted a lot during the process that over a long period of time had that effect on him.

Mahes · Feb 1, 2023

Aldarion said:
Yeah, "Adam wanted annihilation". This is what they never explained. I mean, not even a little.

Along with how his face got fucked up. I wonder if I slept through an episode or something.

I had to look this up a bit. This person does a pretty good job of explaining out all of the reasoning. It is an opinion but it is a pretty good one. What I liked was this was written just after season 2. The person was pretty much right on.

The way I see it, it's not about a "loop" per se, or "breaking" it. Causal loops like the ones we see in Dark are formed when individual people start traveling backwards and forwards in time - and which create all the nasty and unnatural surprises we encounter. Even Michael calls it a "cancer".
If I follow Tannhaus correctly (S1x8, the extended sequences with Stranger) time travel actually occurs in a wormhole, another space that is not the actual real world but a "multi-dimensional" entity that resides in the actual world. That entity may have been initially created during the incident at the plant in summer 1986.
Adam wants to put an end to the horrors - in the Winden bound up in the wormhole (which gets more horrible with every act of time travel that is undertaken) - not by undoing anything - but by destroying the wormhole itself.
So as I see it, it's not about the thorny issues of casuation and predestiny inside a close temporal system like a wormhole - as Tannhaus explains causal paradoxes exist as long as the wormhole they occur in exists. It's about the technical challenge of pulling off the destruction itself.
I think Claudia is essentially pursuing the same goal, if for other motives. She wants to "save everyone" which I take to mean all the people in the real world that were effected by the consequences of the wormhole when time travel started (her contributions included). For her destroying the wormhole will essentially erase everything that happened in the real world from the moment the wormhole was created. Regina might die in a car crash but not from the cancer she now has.
For Adam - who if absolutely positively is Jonas and is thus a creation inside wormhole Winden (and any others who had no prior existence in the real world prior to the wormhole) - destroying the wormhole means the immediate termination of the entire "twisted" temporal existence of the Winden world that we know...
You might say a sort of Donnie Darko "restoration of time" theme. If this is the case the debate will no longer hinge on limits to what people can or can't do to effect the past by time travel (in the wormhole), but what they are able to accomplish moving forward in time to destroy the entity they are trapped in (the wormhole). YMMV!

Animosity · Feb 1, 2023

It always seemed to me that Adam was trying to destroy the wormhole because every loop always ended the same. Him and Martha never being together. So if he could destroy the wormhole he could create one where they were.

Mahes · Feb 1, 2023

He was. But it was his very act along with the actions of Martha that was always causing the loop to repeat. It took an outside understanding of the situation with Claudia to finally find a way that broke the cycle by explaining the process to a younger Adam which led to the perceived ending of the cycle.

Then of course we get the final ending that appears to hint at the change of the cycle but not the actual end....

Aldarion · Feb 1, 2023

Reading you guys discussion makes it clear that whats really bugging me about the end I guess is Adams missing story. he's driving everything but we don't get to see or even hear how he ends up that way.

Also think I must have missed a lot in S1 when I was still spoiler free just trying to figure out wtf was going on.

Mahes · Feb 1, 2023

It is true that the show left off a bit of Adam's degeneration caused by his learning how to open time travel. This was on purpose. One of the big reveals was that Jonas and Adam were the same people. Given time restraints and such with the show, I am guessing that wanting to show the continual scarring of Adam after the reveal, was not a practical option even if they wanted to explain it out. They left it to audience to realize that time travel comes with a cost. Adam kind of touched on it with this quote.

“Man is a strange creature. All his actions are motivated by desire, his character forged by pain. As much as he may try to suppress that pain, to repress the desire, he cannot free himself from the eternal servitude to his feelings. For as long as the storm rages within him, he cannot find peace. Not in life, not in death. And so he will do what he must, day in, day out. The pain is his vessel, desire his compass. It is all that man is capable of.”

Slaanesh69 · Feb 1, 2023

Aldarion said:
Reading you guys discussion makes it clear that whats really bugging me about the end I guess is Adams missing story. he's driving everything but we don't get to see or even hear how he ends up that way.

Also think I must have missed a lot in S1 when I was still spoiler free just trying to figure out wtf was going on.

I 100% agree with this.

Middle aged Jonas is only shown in one episode with the degradation, and his personality and demeanor have changed dramatically (see his interaction with his mother) with zero transitional explanation.

I really liked old Adam, I thought he was a great character, but you are right: they had the transition from young, innocent Jonas to older, striving Jonas, to inventor Jonas, but really left out the transition to middle aged testicle head Jonas and then to Adam. The only hint was the electrocution on his arm in a 30 second throwaway scene. And Bartosz saying "travelling took it's toll" (paraphrase) but that was misleading because Jonas did zero "travelling" between inventor and middle age testicle head stage (of which we are aware since he was still in 1900 whatever).

Mahes that quote explanation is really good, he figured out way more than I did after 2 seasons.

Nester · Feb 1, 2023

I want another season, i love this show....apparently the show runners moved on to 1899 which looked promising - sadly it did not get a 2nd season.

spronk · Apr 2, 2023

watched all 3 seasons the last few weeks, really enjoyed it. Its definitely NOT German Stranger Things, dunno why people talk about it like that. Its romantic tragedy with scifi as a big backdrop. Reminded me of a bit of Fringe and a LOT of 12 Monkeys. If you've never seen 12 M and liked this show you 100% should go watch 12 Monkeys ASAP, its written with time travel in mind from second 1 and it does a really amazing job exploring paradoxes and causality and inevitability.

Really enjoyed this show, and it was just super neat seeing philosophical debates in German.

Adam and Eve from the Uffizi gallery in Florence, I saw this a few years ago there and it was awesome seeing the same paintings in the show.

the theme song is also one of the most banging songs of all time, fantastic work all around by the crew and cast

I'd honestly say season 1 of 1899 was pretty close to s1 of Dark in quality / pacing, its just too bad there is such a bigger glut of content and less demand nowadays, if 1899 was made a few years ago it would have run for 3 seasons I think.

bigolas · Oct 6, 2023

I'm very late to the party but posting this so that anyone still on the fence does watch it. It's worth your time more than any other series.

bigolas · Oct 7, 2023

Random thoughts:
What made this show great was the cast, the entire soundtrack and enough mystery to keep me glued and enough answers to avoid frustration. Maybe it wasn't the case, but with the audio being foreign, I didn't skip a single line of dialog because all of it felt important to understand the story. The plot is as coherent as a plot involving time travel could be.
The show could've easily been ridiculous as a teenage drama pretending to be philosophical but the events of the main characters' lives and their internal conflicts as they were presented were compelling and thought-provoking.
Minor negative points:

- Martha's angry heavy breathing got annoying by the start of season 2 but she was still a great character.
- I didn't like the misdirection with the ominous music and the way they shot the priest's scenes in s1 when he was just a pawn on a mission like other travelers.
- The same way, the 3 ugly "origins" creepily approaching their targets to fulfill their missions was not needed and kind of ridiculous.
- Even with the intermediate years shown, it's unclear how Jonas turned from hopeful and naive to a cold-hearted killer who's certain he has the definitive answers.

Random thoughts:

- Hannah was a cruel manipulative bitch in every timeline and she gets to exist in the origin world.
- What a tragic life Ulrich had in Jonas' world. Katharina ending up killed by her mother for no "greater good" reason was also dark. Even more fucked up, Martha and Magnus had the time travel abilities and never once cared about their parents' fates.
- Franziska and Magnus are given too much screen time considering how small their role in the grand scheme of things is. Also weird how they grew up together from 1888 and never had kids to add to the convoluted genealogical mess.

Lumi · Nov 4, 2023

Just found out about this show recently. Binge watched the entire 1st season in like 2 days. It's really fucking good.

Only question I have so far is how the fuck did the dog open the gate to go to the future lol.

elidib · Nov 4, 2023

That is explained.

Lumi · Nov 4, 2023

I'm guessing not in season 1 then :/

Foggy · Nov 4, 2023

Just got into too. Binged 3 seasons over the past week and have loved it.

Brikker · Nov 4, 2023

Great show. I remember at least 1 pair of great tits in it, too.

spronk · Nov 4, 2023

as i said before, if you like this show go back and watch 12 Monkeys (the TV show, and the movie if you want) its also really excellent and does time travel absolutely awesome. Smoking hot chick in it too.

Thats a show that should get an HBO style reboot but sadly its all Euphoria and dicks now

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