Dark (TV series)

In 2019, Ulrich, also having returned to the caves, hears his faint calls, but they cannot see each other.

In 2019, with Yasin also vanished, panic is starting to spread, and Charlotte accuses Peter of being involved in the boys’ disappearances. Hannah wants to resume her affair with Ulrich, but he angrily refuses. At the hotel, the Stranger tells Regina to deliver a package to Jonas while he is away for a few days, and at Michael’s grave, the Stranger approaches Jonas, telling him that his father once saved his life. Bartosz meets Erik Obendorf’s drug supplier, who is also Noah. Later, Jonas receives the Stranger’s package, containing a light, a Geiger counter, and Michael’s suicide letter. In the letter Jonas’ father explains that on 4 November 2019, he travelled back to 1986. There he stayed and grew up, raised by Ines, eventually marrying Hannah and fathering Jonas. Thus Mikkel Nielsen became Michael Kahnwald.

In 2019, the police are finally allowed to enter the power plant, and Charlotte finds a welded shut door in the caves. Meanwhile, Ulrich finds Egon’s 1986 notes, making Helge a suspect, and visits him at the nursing home. Frightened, Helge claims to be able to change the past and future. Ulrich is suspended from work and Katharina confronts him about his affair. Charlotte discovers that the cave system goes beneath an old cabin owned by Helge. She receives a voice message from Ulrich, stating that Helge is the kidnapper, but that the question is not how he is doing it, but when. Late at night, Helge leaves the nursing home, followed by Ulrich, who brings a book from Helge’s room: Eine Reise durch die Zeit by H.G. Tannhaus.

In 1986, the Stranger meets with an elderly Tannhaus, who shares his theory of time travel through wormholes. The Stranger confirms his theories and states that such a wormhole, allowing people to travel 33 years into the past or future, exists in Winden. He asks Tannhaus to fix a broken brass device of his, so he can destroy the wormhole. Tannhaus later brings out the original version of the device, studying them side by side.

In 2019, Hannah uses her knowledge of Aleksander’s past to blackmail him into destroying Ulrich’s life. She lies to Katharina that Ulrich wanted to leave his family. Regina discovers the Stranger’s research, and Jonas breaks things off with Martha. Bartosz is approached by an elderly Claudia, his supposedly dead grandmother. Later, Bartosz meets with Noah and agrees to join him.

In 1953, Helge has been reported missing, and Noah – appearing the same age as in 1986 and 2019 – offers pastoral support to Helge’s mother, Greta. Ulrich is arrested and confesses to murdering Helge. The Claudia of 2019 enters Tannhaus’ shop with blueprints for the brass machine, asking him to build it for her.

In 1986, the elderly Helge is killed while attempting to stop his younger self by driving a car into him. Jonas has also returned to 1986 to bring Mikkel back to 2019, but Noah and Helge kidnap him. Jonas wakes in the bunker, accompanied by the Stranger, who reveals himself to be the adult Jonas. The Stranger leaves to destroy the wormhole using the brass machine, which Tannhaus has completed from the broken version brought by the adult Jonas and Ulrich’s smartphone.

In 2019, Charlotte uncovers a 1953 article on Helge’s kidnapping, including a photo of Ulrich. Noah tells Bartosz that Claudia is their main adversary, and that the adult Jonas, unwittingly, is about to create the wormhole.

In 1953, Helge regains consciousness as the wormhole appears, connecting him to Jonas in 1986. As they reach out to each other, Helge is transported to 1986, while Jonas awakens in a post-apocalyptic Winden in 2052. He is accosted by a gang of bandits and knocked out by an armed woman.

On 21 June 2020, six days before the apocalypse, things in Winden have grown tense. An investigator, Clausen, arrives to assist Charlotte and the police force with their investigations in the disappearances, which now include Helge, Jonas, and Ulrich. Katharina searches the cave for answers. Martha breaks up with Bartosz, who is now working with Noah. The adult Jonas from the future makes his identity known to his mother, Hannah. Aleksander has his men move a truck of radioactive waste into the power plant.

In 2053, the teenage Jonas is still stuck in post-apocalyptic Winden, having learned of the impending apocalypse. He plans to stop it but is under strict watch by the adult Elisabeth, who survived the apocalypse and now leads a group of survivors. She forbids anyone to enter the power plant under penalty of death. Jonas enters the Dead Zone nonetheless and finds a large, floating amorphous sphere inside the particle reactor.

In 2020, Clausen and Charlotte interview Regina, who is suffering from breast cancer. She discusses the Stranger who was at her hotel during the disappearances and left his belongings, which included pages from Tannhaus’ book. The newfound evidence makes Charlotte, who was raised by Tannhaus, question her origins. The adult Jonas informs Hannah about time travel and takes her to 1987, where they see Mikkel in Ines’ house.

In 2053, Jonas learns via recordings by Claudia about the “God Particle”, the sphere in the reactor that can be used as a portal for time travel. He steals fuel for the portal but is caught by Elisabeth. She initially hangs him in public, but spares him and jails him instead. Silja, Elisabeth’s interpreter, doubts Elisabeth’s stance and frees Jonas. They go to the Dead Zone, where they successfully access the God Particle. Jonas heads inside, leaving Silja behind.

In 1987, Egon visits the older Ulrich at the asylum. Ulrich tells Egon his identity, which reminds Egon of claims Mikkel made when he first appeared in 1986. After interviewing Ines, Egon shows older Ulrich a photo of Mikkel. Ulrich attacks Egon and is restrained. Claudia visits Helge and then uses the time machine she found to travel to 2020; she cries upon seeing a dying Regina at her home.

In 2020, adult Jonas and Hannah meet Charlotte and Peter at the bunker and they discuss the existence of time travel, which they also reveal to a sceptical Katharina. The 1987 version of Claudia visits Winden’s public library, where she discovers a report on Egon’s death; she then travels back to 1987. Clausen interviews Aleksander, who reveals his original surname – Köhler – before he married Regina. Martha, Magnus, Franziska, and Elisabeth visit the cave, where they find Bartosz carrying the time machine. The kids take the time machine and leave Bartosz tied up in the cave. Katharina searches class photos from 1987 and identifies Mikkel, confirming Jonas’ claims.

In 2053, Silja walks into the power plant, where she is confronted by the adult Elisabeth at gunpoint. They have a heated conversation in which Elisabeth admits her knowledge of the God Particle.

In 1987, Claudia invites Egon to move in with her in hopes of preventing his impending death. The imprisoned Ulrich escapes the psychiatric ward to visit Mikkel at the Kahnwald house. After a conversation, Mikkel realises that the old man is actually his father. Ulrich tries to take Mikkel to the cave but is apprehended by the police. Ines recovers Mikkel and Ulrich returns to the ward.

In 2020, Katharina attempts to explain to Magnus and Martha what she discovered but is rebuffed by her children for her distant behaviour. Katharina then approaches Hannah for help understanding time travel. Adult Jonas leaves a necklace for Martha and goes to the Doppler house to help Charlotte, who explains that Tannhaus is not her real grandfather and that she never learned her parents’ identities. Magnus, Martha, Franziska, and Elisabeth return to the caves, where Bartosz explains the time machine before taking them to 1987. Noah visits Charlotte at Tannhaus’s workshop, revealing to her that she is his daughter.

In 1921, two members of Sic Mundus—older versions of Magnus and Franziska—share concerns with Adam.

In 1987, Claudia tries to prevent the death of her father. Egon wonders why Ulrich tried to reach the caves again, but Claudia insists there is nothing there. He realises she knows about time travel and is selfishly using the caves for her own gain. They struggle for the telephone and he falls and hits his head. The dying Egon tells her she is the White Devil. 2020 Jonas arrives and tells Claudia they still may be able to change the events.

2020: Martha meets adult Jonas and is shocked to learn from Katharina that he is her nephew. Clausen confronts Aleksander about his background and informs him that in 1986 his own brother disappeared and that his name was Aleksander Köhler. Clausen shows him an anonymous note explaining that the answers to his brother’s disappearance could be found in Winden. Aleksander says nothing.

In 2053, Elisabeth turns on the machine, simultaneously as Magnus and Franziska do so in 1921. As Katharina enters the cave and opens the Sic Mundus gate, the dark matter creates a portal connecting Elisabeth to Charlotte in 2020. As the town is razed by the apocalypse, Young Jonas is met by another version of Martha who says that she is not from another time, but from another world.

Amidst the apocalypse in 2020, Jonas and the “other” Martha travel to a parallel world where Jonas was never born. As of November 2019 in this alternate dimension, Hannah is pregnant and married to Ulrich; Ulrich is having an affair with Charlotte; Katharina and Ulrich are divorced; Franziska is deaf instead of Elisabeth; Peter is a pastor instead of a psychologist; Martha is dating Erik Obendorf’s brother Kilian instead of Bartosz and Regina has already passed away. Martha then disappears again before Jonas can find out more information. Jonas later meets an elderly Martha, who tells him that even though he does not exist in this world, it will nonetheless fall apart again and again. Alternate-dimension Martha travels back to 21 September 1888 to meet adult Jonas, who has spent the past months building a device to activate the God Particle. Martha informs him she has come to find the origin of events in each of their worlds.

In 1987, adult Katharina visits Ulrich in the psychiatric ward and promises to get him out. Tronte’s marriage with Jana is strained following Mads’ death and Tronte’s affair with Claudia. Tronte visits Regina, who he believes is his child, and decides to stop investigating Claudia’s disappearance for the sake of his marriage. Meanwhile, the Unknown breaks into the power plant and murders Claudia’s secretary.

In September 2020, three months after the apocalypse, adult Claudia is nursing an ailing Regina while working to find a way to save those that perished in the apocalypse. While Claudia is away, Regina is visited by the elderly Tronte, who reluctantly smothers her to death. Peter and Elisabeth look for Charlotte and Fransizka and learn that a perimeter wall will be built around Winden. They encounter the teenage Noah, who is now sleeping in the Winden caves; he says that he will protect Elisabeth after Peter is killed.

In alternate-dimension 2019, the elderly Martha shows Jonas the full Winden family tree. She tells him that the two worlds are doomed to the same fate, and that in her world, the apocalypse will happen in just three days.

In alternate-dimension 2019, the elderly Martha tells Jonas that she is “Eva”—Adam’s counterpart in this world—and that her connection with Jonas ties the two worlds in an inseparable “knot”. Eva claims that whereas she wants to save both worlds, Adam wants to destroy them, and that if Jonas wants Martha to live, he must guide the Martha of Eva’s world to eventually become Eva herself. Later, the Unknown is shown to be working for Eva and delivers her the keys to the nuclear power plant’s volume control system. Elsewhere in Eva’s world, Ulrich informs his staff that Kilian, Bartosz, Franziska, Magnus, and Martha found the unidentified body of a child from the 1980s bearing Mads Nielsen’s ID card. Charlotte visits the bunker and finds Helge’s pendant. Hannah learns of Ulrich’s affair and blackmails Aleksander to ruin Charlotte’s life. Helge confesses to the police that he killed Mads. Jonas explains his appearance in alternate-dimension Winden to the 2019 Martha, and takes her through the wormhole in the cave. The two emerge in a desert landscape and are approached by an adult Martha, who tells them they are in the future.

Adam has moved Sic Mundus‘ base of operations to 2053. Agnes and Adam watch the God Particle in safety, and Agnes says she knows the true origin of the cycle. She later enters the God Particle.

In 2052 in Eva’s world—which has been turned into a desert wasteland by the apocalypse—Jonas and Martha meet in the bunker with the adult Martha, who tells them they can prevent the apocalypse if they can stop the opening of the barrels in the power plant, but that only one of the worlds can be saved from it and that Jonas must choose Eva over his world’s Martha. After they leave, Noah of Eva’s world arrives at the bunker and observes the family tree with the adult Martha, remarking that the Winden family lineage is in fact an infinite circle that originates from Jonas and Martha. Martha and Jonas return to 2019 and have passionate sex. Meanwhile, in 2053 in Adam’s world, Adam reveals to Martha that she is pregnant, and that her child with Jonas—the Unknown—is the origin of the family tree.

In 2020, Peter continues to look for his eldest daughter and wife. Elisabeth tries to get him to admit they are dead and refuses to continue searching. Returning to their trailer, she is met by an intruder who ties her up and later tries to rape her. Peter returns and tries to save her but is murdered by the burglar. Elisabeth bludgeons the burglar to death with a fire extinguisher. She goes to the cave and is found by Noah. Meanwhile, Claudia is met by her counterpart from Eva’s world, who warns her that Jonas will eventually become Adam and attempt to destroy both worlds to untie the knot of events binding them together. Claudia’s alternate self assigns her the task of saving both worlds, and gives her the triquetra journal for the first time.

In 2053, Adam persuades Charlotte to carry out a task for him. She and Elisabeth bid farewell to Franziska and then enter the God Particle.

In 2019 in Eva’s world, Jonas leads Martha to the power plant to prevent the apocalypse, but after she injures her face in a similar manner to a scar on Eva’s face, he realizes that Eva lied to him and they are merely perpetuating the cycle of events in her world. He and Martha go to confront Eva, who appears with her middle-aged self. She tells Jonas he has completed what he needs to do in her world, before another teenage Martha, bearing a large scar across her face, emerges from behind a door and shoots and kills Jonas.

In 2052 in Eva’s world, Eva explains to her scarred teenage self that Martha’s death in Adam’s world is the point at which two parallel realities overlap: in one scenario, Jonas is saved from the apocalypse by the alternate Martha and brought to Eva’s world, where he is eventually killed; a second scenario exists where Jonas is not met by the alternate Martha and instead lives on in his own world, eventually becoming Adam. Eva says that these divergent chains of events coexist in quantum entanglement.

Martha travels to the day of the apocalypse in Eva’s world and tries to seek help from Magnus, who rebuffs her. She then reaches out to Bartosz, telling him that the apocalypse will be triggered by the opening of the barrels in the power plant. Aleksander, ignoring Hannah’s blackmail attempt, calls Charlotte to the power plant in an attempt to clear his name with the police. Unable to reach Aleksander, Martha and Bartosz race to the power plant, but are intercepted by the adult Magnus and Franziska from Adam’s world, who explain that Eva lied to her. They send Martha on her mission to rescue Jonas from the apocalypse. Bartosz is met by his adult self, who was sent by Eva alongside the other acolytes of Erit Lux (her world’s counterpart to Sic Mundus) – Noah (as an adult and a teenager), Claudia, Egon, and the adult Martha – to complete her world’s cycle of events. Meanwhile, the Unknowns travel to the year 1986 in both worlds to trigger the release of radioactive cesium waste at the power plant – this is the incident that eventually results in both the creation of the wormhole in the cave as well as the apocalypse. In 2019, Aleksander and Charlotte open a barrel of the radioactive waste at the power plant, inadvertently releasing the dark matter and causing the apocalypse to erupt in Eva’s world.

In 2053 in Adam’s world, Adam takes Martha prisoner. He tries to destroy the origin by activating the God Particle at the time of the apocalypse in both worlds and releasing the energy of both apocalypses onto Martha, killing her and the child forever.

In 1890, Bartosz meets Silja, who was sent from 2053 by Adam. They go on to have two children together in 1904 and 1910 respectively: Hanno (Noah) and Agnes (whose birth results in Silja’s death). In 1911, Hannah arrives with a young Silja to stay with Jonas, who has begun to transform into Adam. Jonas strangles Hannah to death and takes Silja in as an eventual member of Sic Mundus.

From 1974 to 1986, H.G. Tannhaus is shown building his own time machine in the bunker, in an attempt to prevent the deaths of his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

In 2023, Jonas and Claudia fail to reactivate the God Particle. Jonas attempts suicide out of despair but is stopped by the teenage Noah. Noah proves to Jonas that he cannot kill himself, seeing as his adult self already exists, and reminds him of his commitment to helping Noah and Claudia restore the God Particle. This effort continues through 2041, by which point Elisabeth has given birth to Charlotte. The adult Elisabeth and Charlotte from 2053 travel to 2041 to kidnap baby Charlotte (who they eventually deliver to Tannhaus). Noah suspects that Claudia is responsible, which leads to his pursuit of the missing pages in Claudia’s notebook and his eventual initiation into Sic Mundus by Adam in 1920. Meanwhile, Claudia – who has been deliberately stalling the restoration of the God Particle on her alternate self’s orders – kills her alternate self and begins posing as her to keep up appearances to Eva, all the while collecting knowledge about the cycle of events between both worlds. In 2052, the elderly Claudia sends the adult Jonas on his mission to Winden in 2019, establishing the cycle of events that began in the first season.

In 2053, Adam’s attempt to destroy the Origin fails to erase his existence, baffling him. He is then met by an elderly Claudia, who tells him she knows how the worlds are connected.

In 2052 in Eva’s world, Eva introduces teenage Martha to her son, the Unknown, and forces her to shoot Jonas as her younger self witnessed earlier, claiming this is necessary to save their son.

Adam returns to Jonas on the day of the apocalypse and takes him to Eva’s world, which Jonas is unaware of at that point in time. Adam urges Jonas to prevent the origin with the alternate Martha, for it is their connection that binds the two worlds together. Adam then visits Eva and, to her shock, refuses to kill her as she originally remembers. Eva realizes that the cycle has finally been broken, and she and Adam embrace. Jonas and Martha travel to the origin world through the passage in the cave and successfully prevent the deaths of Tannhaus’ son Marek, his wife Sonja, and their infant daughter Charlotte, thus eliminating the pain that caused Tannhaus to create the time machine in the first place. With the origin prevented, Jonas, Martha and most of the other characters are erased from existence along with both worlds.

The only middle-aged main characters who remain in the origin world are those who weren’t born as a result of time travel: Hannah, Katharina, Peter, Regina and the Wöller siblings. Additionally, Claudia and Bernd are shown to be Regina’s parents. In the origin world, Peter is in a relationship with Bernadette; Regina and Katharina are happy and single since Ulrich never existed in the origin world and Regina never met Aleksander/Boris; and Hannah is expecting a child with Torben Wöller. The six of them enjoy dinner in Regina’s house (which was the Kahnwald residence in Adam’s world and the Nielsen residence in Eva’s world). Amidst a thunderstorm, Hannah notices a yellow raincoat (similar to the one worn by Jonas and Martha in their respective worlds) and experiences an intense deja vu; her recollection bears similarities to the fate of the two worlds, implying that their events have still influenced the origin world in some way. When asked what she will name her child, Hannah takes a moment to think and decides on a name: Jonas.