German series 'Dark': Time doesn’t stand still

Nonika Singh

“We are attracted to dark just as moth is to light.” Perhaps nothing more can sum up the mesmerising power of the web-series Dark as one of its cryptic one-liners. Netflix’s first German series whose finale was as awaited as watched eagerly may have come to an arresting climax, but the questions it leaves behind will not find easy answers.

One of the most complex series to have hit the OTT platforms, it began as a thriller where children vanished mysteriously, with the pattern repeating 33 years later. However, it soon ensnared viewers with multi-dimensional realities and dilemmas. The question isn’t ‘what time, but which world…’ If the second season ended on this note, the finale picked up the same thread and we were face-to-face with an alternate world where key characters from four different families — Jonas, Martha, Ulrich, Claudia and Hannah — are the same, but related differently.

Just as mind boggling as the previous seasons, tracing family trees cutting across timelines and worlds has not been more arduous. No wonder then that a meme suggested keeping a bowl of almonds and not a bag of popcorns to go along with this mystery. Frankly speaking, few can arrive at a definite conclusion or unravel the knot, as the key characters keep reminding us. Indian viewers can certainly draw comparisons with their world view, their philosophy of fate and destiny.

Dark is not a borrowed concept. It is not like Stranger Things either with which it was earlier being compared. Rather as original as it gets, it’s an amalgamation of science, spirituality, philosophy and human emotions. Set in a fictional town called Winden, this tale not only superimposes timelines but also varying lines of thought. As you continue to go back and forth in time, you may grumble/ grudge. You may marvel at the insanity of it all, the characters flitting in and out of decades. Jonas looking at his multiple selves, Martha talking to her older versions and Claudia in conversation with her varying beings is confounding at the very least.

With 72 characters on board, even the makers, husband-wife team of Baranbo Odar and Jantje Friese have admitted it wasn’t easy to structure it all. Yet, the series had viewers transfixed and perplexed in equal measure. Time travel, God particle and a nuclear facility… the recipe for impending disaster literally had you on tenterhooks.

The year in which it happens is eerily 2020, and the date of premiere of the final season is the same as the predicted D-day: June 27, 2020. However, what sucks you into this narrative is not the doomsday prophecy but the maze inside your head and inside its principal characters — the sorrowful Jonas (played by Louis Hofmann), the pensive and puzzled Martha (Lisa Vicari), the scheming Claudia (Julika Jenkins). Add to it slick editing, technical brilliance and the writing, all of which remain superlative. Lines, even in the English version, are etched in your mindscape.

“What you know is a drop, what you don’t is an ocean.” The dialogue repeats itself and you dive into a cesspool of quantum physics, of concepts like Schrödinger’s cat.

The end is a beginning and the beginning, end… If you think the finale with its talk of a world without wants and needs points in one direction or another or ties up all loose ends, you were clearly not paying attention. This is a show that both commands and demands attention. Dark may have packed a lesson or two on letting go, but it is certainly not a show you can let go of easily. In the labyrinth of time travel shows, it will always be a benchmark, almost gold standard.