Warning: SPOILERS for Dark season 3.
The final season of Dark has arrived, and while the ending of the show explained many of its mysteries, there still a few questions left to answer. Dark season 3 introduced an entirely new world and finally broke the cycle that had trapped Jonas and the rest of the characters in a never-ending time loop. Adam and Eva’s goals and methods were revealed, and events from the past season were explained in detail. But not all elements of the story had definite answers, although there’s enough in the show to speculate their meaning.
Dark is a complex show that requires the audience to fully pay attention to what is happening on the screen. It’s also filled with details and connections that sometimes only repeated viewings can reveal. From flipping each world to indicate in which reality a scene is taking place to various mythological and biblical references, Dark truly rewards the time viewers invested in it. Moments in the past seasons can setup the fate of certain characters, and the show cleverly uses objects such as the notebook and the St. Christopher’s pendant to help the audience keep track of the chain of events. Because of this, the many twists in Dark don’t feel cheap, but satisfying.
At the end of Dark season 2, the series introduced another twist to the audience: not only characters were able to time travel, but they could also cross to different worlds. The question wasn’t just when events were happening, but also on which reality they were happening. A new reality also meant different versions of the same characters. In Dark season 3, we learn the second version of Martha went through a very similar journey as Jonas did in the first season. With his help, she learns about the upcoming apocalypse and the time machine. However, this is not the path to break the cycle. As the show puts it: what they know is a drop while what they don’t know is an ocean. It’s only in the last episode that the characters and the audience learn the truth. But that doesn’t mean every single question was answered, and with no Dark season 4 coming any time soon, some things will have to remain a mystery. Here are the biggest questions lingering after the finale:
Family trees are a big deal in the world of Dark. With everyone being related to someone, the true identity of parents and children isn’t just a curiosity, but vital to understand the time loop and cycle that has trapped the families of Winden. In previous seasons, there was speculation Regina was Tronte’s daughter with Claudia. This would mean Regina’s existence was tied to the loop, as Tronte Nielsen is the son of the Unknown. If that was the case, Claudia would have never tried to end the loop – her goal was to ensure Regina’s survival, but if she had been part of the Nielsen family, she would disappear once the cycle ended.
Instead, the last episode of the season shows Regina alive and well. As Martha and Jonas travel to the original world to stop the invention of time travel, Claudia meets Tronte in the woods and reveals he was never Regina’s father. In the third world, created once Jonas and Martha succeed in stopping Tannhaus, Regina is dining with friends. We see a photo of Claudia, Regina, and an older man. His identity? Bernd Doppler. While it is not outright stated in the show that he is Regina’s father, it certainly explains how her existence wasn’t wiped out. Claudia knew the adult Bernd as a young girl, and he was alive in 1986 in her world. At some point, in the 1970s, they either marry or have an affair, leading to Regina’s birth.
To prevent Tannhaus’ time travel experiment, Jonas and Martha go through the Winden caves to travel to the original world. However, once they get there, a stream of lights appears. Then, they are taken to a tunnel of light that appears to have no end or beginning. As they call for each other, a window into time or space opens, and they see younger versions of each other back at their houses. The windows disappear, and they find each other again. What is this strange tunnel? Previously, traveling through time using the Winden caves was signaled by strong winds, not strange lights, and led back to the outside, only in a different timeline. So, where did Martha and Jonas go?
One possible explanation is they were transported to a dimension outside time and space. As explained by Eva, the apocalyptic event in 2020 creates a quantum entanglement that completely stops time. During one second, all the cause and effects rules don’t apply to the characters. And Martha and Jonas were going inside the wormhole created by the apocalypse, meaning they were at the core of this disruption.
Thus, the tunnel is a manifestation of the time and space stream. It can be compared to the fifth dimension in the movie Interstellar. It’s a visual representation of what it means to be outside the usual dimensions humans are able to experience. This might be why Martha and Jonas could “summon” windows in time by calling each other’s names. They have access to all realities and timelines for that fraction of a moment.
In Dark season 2, it's revealed that Tannhaus invented the time travel machine with the help of Claudia and Adult Jonas. She gave him the blueprints necessary for its construction in 1953. Later, Jonas gives him the nuclear material needed to power it. The machine replicates the wormhole incident in 1986 that occurred at the nuclear plant. However, in season 3, we learn that the nuclear power plant was only built because of the Unknown (Adam and Eva’s child). He secured the permits for the construction, which means the building is part of the loop. Essentially, this means time travel was bootstrapped, or self-created by a paradoxical time loop.
Once the loop is broken at the end of the show, the nuclear plant is gone, and so the incident never happens. How did Tannhaus know the requirements for the time machine without Claudia, Jonas, and the nuclear accident? A possible answer is that he didn’t. His attempt at creating time travel only succeeded in making Adam and Eva’s worlds. Thus, the machine he builds in the bunker after his son’s death is not the same machine Claudia bootstrapped in the other realities.
Throughout Dark seasons 1 and 2, Torben Wöller played a supporting role at the Winden Police department, first aiding Charlotte in her investigation into Mikkel's disappearance and then Clausen in his investigation into his brother's whereabouts. In both seasons, he was shown wearing an eye patch over his right eye. Clausen asked him about this in Dark season 2, but when he was going to explain - by telling an "embarrassing story" - a young Claudia passed them on the road, forcing their car to swerve out of the way. Woller's eye was never brought up again, but then in season 3, things changed.
In the second world, the one the new Martha is from, Woller's eye is fine, but he's instead missing his left arm. It's also not explained what happened to him, but it's clear that some event occurred in both worlds that resulted in him either losing his eye or arm. What's interesting is that in the third world (the origin world), Woller's eye was injured but it was still there; he also had his arm. When pressed about what happened, he once again was going to tell his story before being cutoff by another event. Unfortunately, it seems all audiences will ever know about what happened to Woller is that it was something embarrassing.
This is perhaps the biggest question of Dark season 3. Adam and Eva are stuck forever in a battle to destroy or save the point of origin of their cycle. But they are wrong in assuming the origin is their child. Claudia, however, manages to discover the real knot is outside the time loop. At the end of the final episode, she reveals to Adam that, to destroy the time loop, they need to stop Tannhaus’ time travel experiment.
But it’s not clear how she came to this conclusion, especially considering she was also stuck in the same loop, destined to guide Jonas and her younger version toward Adam and Eva’s plans. If everyone was always destined to make the same decisions, how could she learn something new? She even says to Adam this is the first time she’s able to do this, but had to make sure everything in the loop happened precisely as it always did – including her death. This seems contradictory.
The answer might involve the quantum entanglement Eva uses to jump from reality to reality. In Dark season 3, we learn the apocalyptic event in 2020 stops time for a fraction of a second. This pause can be used as a door to another world, including a world outside the Winden loop. Either Claudia used this to travel outside the loop and learn about Tannhaus’ experiment, or she exploited this “glitch in the Matrix” to pass on different knowledge to her younger version. Each loop meant she could learn something new about it. Eventually, after countless versions, she had enough knowledge to conclude the origin had to be outside the cycle. Perhaps she studied the Tannhaus family, noticing they always had an obsession with time travel, and concluded the 1971 car accident would lead Tannhaus trying to create time travel. Unfortunately, Dark doesn’t offer a clear explanation, so we can only speculate what happened.
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