Dark (TV series)
Dark (2017-2020) is a German science fiction thriller streaming television series co-created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. In the aftermath of a child's disappearance, Dark follows characters from the fictional German town of Winden as they pursue the truth. They follow connections between four estranged families to unravel a sinister time travel conspiracy which spans several generations. The series explores the existential implications of time, and its effect on human nature.
Season 1
[edit]Geheimnisse (Secrets) [1.01]
[edit]- Narrator: We trust that time is linear. That it proceeds eternally, uniformly. Into infinity. But the distinction between past, present and future is nothing but an illusion. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive, they are connected in a never-ending circle. Everything is connected.
- [Mikkel performs a trick with cups]
- Ulrich Nielsen: Amazing! How did you do that?
- Mikkel Nielsen: Dad, the question isn't how, the question is when.
- Mikkel Nielsen: There is no such thing as magic, just illusion. Things only change when we change them. But you have to do it skillfully, in secret. Then it seems like magic.
Lügen (Lies) [1.02]
[edit]Gestern und Heute (Past and Present) [1.03]
[edit]- Bernd Doppler 1986: What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.
Doppelleben (Double Lives) [1.04]
[edit]Wahrheiten (Truths) [1.05]
[edit]- Elisabeth Doppler 2019: My mother told me all about the old world, before the flood. She said it had been of a different kind: sinking. She would braid my hair and recount harrowing tales, stories of my father and of demons from the underworlds. She said all is forgiven but nothing forgotten. Then the darkness in her eyes was stronger than the light. And her words flowed like waves. She said all was well now the way it was. That all occupied its own space, in the past as in the here and now. When she spoke like this, something would come over her. She would pull hard on my braids, as if to punish me for something that dwelled in a place deep within her. Something that tugged at her from the center, like a hunger that could not be satisfied. She spoke of yesterday as though it were before her very eyes. As if today was but a veil that shrouded in shadow all that was real to her. The old world came to haunt her like a ghost that whispered to her in a dream, how to erect the new world, stone by stone. From then on, I knew that nothing changes. That all things remain as before. The spinning wheel turns, round and round in a circle. One fate tied to the next. A thread, red like blood, that cleaves together all our deeds. One cannot unravel the knots. But they can be severed. He severed ours, with the sharpest blade. Yet something remains behind that cannot be severed. An invisible bond. On many a night, he tugs at it. And then I wake with a start, knowing that nothing ceases to be. That all remains.
Sic Mundus Creatus Est (Thus the World Was Created) [1.06]
[edit]- Martha Nielsen: We all face the same end. Those above have long forgotten us. They do not judge us. In death I am all alone, and my only judge... is me.
Kreuzwege (Crossroads) [1.07]
[edit]- The Stranger: But every decision for something is a decision against something else.
Was man sät, das wird man ernten (As You Sow, so You Shall Reap) [1.08]
[edit]Alles ist Jetzt (Everything Is Now) [1.09]
[edit]- Noah: Most people are nothing but pawns on a chessboard. Led by an unknown hand. Their lives exist only to be sacrificed for a higher goal. Jonas, Mikkel, the children, they're nothing but unfortunate, yet necessary chess moves in an eternal war between good and evil.
- Helge Doppler 1986: Why would God want any of this?
- Noah: Yes, why would God want any of this? After looking into hell, as you have, it can never be forgotten. It becomes a part of you. And the idea of God, of Jesus the Savior, becomes a thread of hope you cling to. All of us who know the darkness long for the light, but... there is no God. God didn't make this hole among us. God doesn't have a plan. There is no plan at all. There's nothing but chaos out there. Pain... and chaos.
- Helge Doppler 1986: If there is no God, then why do we believe in a lie?
- Noah: Because we prefer any lie to the pain.
Alpha und Omega (Alpha and Omega) [1.10]
[edit]- Charlotte Doppler 1986: What are you doing here?
- Jonas Kahnwald: Bringing someone back from the dead.
- Charlotte Doppler 1986: How does that work?
- Jonas Kahnwald: It's very hard to explain.
- Charlotte Doppler 1986: [looking at the dead birds] Can you bring these back?
- Jonas Kahnwald: No, you have to find them when they're younger.
- Charlotte Doppler 1986: But then, they're not dead yet.
- Jonas Kahnwald: That doesn't change the fact that they will die.
- Charlotte Doppler 1986: You're crazy.
- Jonas Kahnwald: Maybe.
- Noah: There was this sadness in his eyes. The kind you sometimes see in those who want to die, but life won't let them.
- Noah: Your pain defines who you are, but it no longer holds power on you.
- Jonas Kahnwald: You could have saved Mikkel! Now I have another Grandma, and she's the principal of my school. Her husband, who's fucking my mom, is looking for his son, who's my father! A few days ago, I kissed my Aunt! And the crazy thing is... there's nothing wrong with any of them. They're okay. I'm what's wrong! I just want everything to go back to normal.
- H.G. Tannhaus 1986: Why do we decide for one thing and against another? But does it matter whether the decision is based upon the consequence of a series of causal links? Or that instead it stems from an undefined feeling inside me? Perhaps everything in my life boils down to this one moment. That I’m part of this puzzle. One that I can neither understand nor influence.
- H.G. Tannhaus 1986: Will you tell me what the future's like?
- The Stranger: I'm hoping that by tomorrow, it'll already be different from today.
- The Stranger: We're not free in what we do, because we're not free in what we want. We can't overcome what's deep within us.
Season 2
[edit]Anfänge und Enden (Beginnings and Ends) [2.01]
[edit]- Investigator Clausen: Expectations lead to disappointment. "Have hope," my mother used to say, "not expectations. You might just be surprised, but not disappointed."
Dunkle Materie (Dark Matter) [2.02]
[edit]Gespenster (Ghosts) [2.03]
[edit]- H.G. Tannhaus: Have you ever heard the term "bootstrap paradox"? Well, in a bootstrap paradox an artifact, or any information, is sent back to the past from the future. And this, in turn, creates an infinite cycle in which the artifact doesn't have a real origin anymore. It exists without ever having been created. To put it simply, this book has traveled back through time. It found me before I even wrote it. It's all a question of origin. Where is the beginning? When is the beginning? Is there a beginning at all? The world is full of such paradoxes.
Die Reisenden (The Traveling Ones) [2.04]
[edit]Vom Suchen und Finden (From Searching and Finding) [2.05]
[edit]Ein unendlicher kreis (An Infinite Circle) [2.06]
[edit]- Adam: Where did it all begin? Where did this begin? In the past? In the future? Who can say where anything begins? Will we ever be able to know the origin of it all, or will there always be something - something that came before, and before that, and before that? Is there a beginning and an end, or is everything connected in one endless loop? Do the words 'beginning' and 'end' describe the very same moment?
- Jonas Kahnwald: I thought I had more time. Why does everyone say that? "To have time." How can we say that, when it's time that has us?
Der weiße Teufel (The White Devil) [2.07]
[edit]- Adam: People are peculiar creatures. All their actions are driven by desire, their characters forged by pain. As much as they might try to suppress the pain, to repress desire they cannot liberate themselves from eternal servitude to their feelings. As long as the storm rages within them, they cant find peace, Not in life not in death. And so, day after day they will do all that must be done. Pain is their ship. Desire, their compass.
Enden und Anfänge (Ends and Beginnings) [2.08]
[edit]- Jonas Kahnwald: What time are you from?
- Martha Nielsen: The question isn't from what time, but from what world.
Season 3
[edit]Deja-vu [3.01]
[edit]Die Überlebenden (The Survivors) [3.02]
[edit]- Man: Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.
Adam und Eva (Adam and Eva) [3.03]
[edit]- Gustav Tannhaus: That's when I knew that nothing changes. That everything remains the same. The spinning wheel turns. Round and round. One destiny leads to the next. A thread, blood-red, connects all our actions.
Der Ursprung (The Origin) [3.04]
[edit]- Man: I don't have a name. I was never given one.
- Man: Not all human connections are formed out of fondness.
Leben und Tod (Life and Death) [3.05]
[edit]- Woman: [voiceover] Why do we die? What is death? Could we escape it if we knew when to expect it? Is the time of our departure predetermined? Our dying, part of an endless clockwork? We all have one truth in common. We are born and we die. No matter what path we take to get there.
- Adam: [to Charlotte] Your path will always lead you here. To Elisabeth. To me. Time plays a cruel game. Have you decided? Just one more day and we can unravel this knot once and for all. But you must...like us all, play your part in it. Will you do your part? Eva will never achieve her goal. Her world is no more deserving of salvation than ours is.
- Charlotte: Have you ever wondered if it's possible to rewind time?
- Tannhaus: Yes. Yes I have.
- Charlotte: And? Possible, you think? To go back and try changing anything?
- Tannhaus: You're such an adult now. Adult enough. For quite a while now, I've wanted to be able to turn back time. But my place is not in the past. Nor in the future. It's here, with you.
- Charlotte: Are those my parents? I thought you said there were no photos.
- Tannhaus: That photo's not you. Those aren't your parents. That's my son and his wife. And my granddaughter. They died in a car accident. That night, when it happened, I woke up. There was a noise down in the store. There were two women. Strange looking. They were carrying a bundle. That bundle was you. They said that on that night everything would be taken from me. And then I'd be given everything. Then I got the call. On the bridge, a truck... had forced my son's car into the river. They only ever found the bodies of my son and his wife in there. My granddaughter...was never found. [hands her a watch] This is the only thing you brought with you.
- Charlotte: I don't understand. Who are my parents?
- Tannhaus: Charlotte.
- Charlotte: Who am I?
- Tannhaus: I just don't know. I don't know.
- Charlotte: You're from another world? What do you want?
- Charlotte2: I'm here to guide you into the light. There are two groups out there fighting for superiority in time travel. Light and dark. I want you to join our side. Eva's side.
- Charlotte: Eva?
- Charlotte2: I know you thought you could trust him, but you can't do that.
- Charlotte: Who?
- Charlotte2: Jonas. He belongs to the dark.
- Charlotte: Jonas? He's dead.
- Charlotte2: No. He's not. He wants to destroy both worlds forever and untie the knot. He doesn't know that death is what he'll want in the end. But all his impulses on this journey will lead to that end. But Eva wants to save both worlds.
- Charlotte: I don't understand. Jonas said we could change it. We change one component, we change the entire world.
- Charlotte2: It was you who told him that. Your older self. A positive feedback loop. Jonas opened the passage in 2020. The older Jonas had previously shut it in 2019. After it'd been opened in the summer of 1986 for the first time. In all three moments, they left behind traces of cesium residue, a component of the black matter. Half-lives. In every cycle, at each of these three moments, this cesium is carried through the tunnel and back before it's completely decayed. It exponentially expands endlessly. So the passage is the result. It must continue to exist forever. Everything has to happen again. Jonas has to bring the matter to the passage. And opening one of the nuclear plant barrels has to trigger the apocalypse. Everything in this loop repeats. Life...and death.
- Eva: Adam and Eve. And so it begins all anew.
- Martha: You lied to us. You said we could save both worlds when it was only one. Or is that a lie as well? I want to return! Now! To my world!
- Eva: Naturally you'd want that. But there's no way back for you at all.
- Jonas: What are you saying?
- Eva: A human lives three lives. The first one ends with the loss of naiveté. The second one with the loss of innocence. And the third with the loss of life itself. Yours ends here and now.
- Jonas: What?
- Eva: You've accomplished what you were sent to this world to accomplish.
- Martha: We've accomplished nothing. She said we have to stop the apocalypse. The containers in the plant...
- Eva: You will understand everything. When it's right for you to understand.
- [Martha2 enters]
- Martha: Who are you?
- Martha2: I'm sorry. [she shoots Jonas]
Licht und Schatten (Light and Shadow) [3.06]
[edit]- Martha: [in a letter] Dear Jonas, you promised to make everything right again. I want you to know that you will do that. You must never lose hope that there is a way out of this maze. A way to save me...and you. But we will have to make sacrifices... do unimaginable things...to untie the knot at the end. Each fate in this knot is linked to the next. A thread, blood-red, that connects all our actions. In light...And in shadow. But the apocalypse...must take place. You must let me die, so I can live. We have to let some things go before they find their way back to us. You and I are perfect for each other. Never believe anything else.
- Adam: Old Tannhaus. He firmly believed he was creating a paradise where we'd all be free of destiny, and free of our pain. A world outside your world and my world. But I...have finally realized what this paradise really is. Unending darkness, in which nothing exists. But for that...the apocalypse must happen. In my world...and in yours.
- Eva: [to Martha] There's a switch point...in the loop of time. The moment...that causes things to run in one direction or the other. You bring him to our world. Or you don't. A line that starts at one point, then loops into itself once more. Two possible ways. On the outer edge of the line or on the inner edge of the line. And yet it is the same line. Two overlapping realities. On one of these roads, he dies. On the other, he doesn't. Both realities continue here, repeating endlessly in the loop. One triggers the other. Quantum entanglement. Adam has tried to sever it for years. So that the thing growing inside you will never be born. But it's impossible. Our worlds can never be disconnected. Every step Jonas takes is guided by us. He cannot escape his fate.
- Eva: It's time. Adam has moved each of his tokens into position. It's time we do the same. This knot has given us all life. And we are its keepers. In both worlds. He'll never be able to untie this knot. In all these years, he's never understood how everything is connected. How it all ends and begins. Not only in our world, but also in his. We are...destiny. We raise the walls of this labyrinth. Each of us shapes the paths and extends their hand. Bartosz, you must save yourself to save our lives. Claudia, you must guide yourself to be our eyes in the other world. Egon, you must create your past... to preserve the family tree. Noah, you bring love...to make everything new. Every darkness is followed by light. With every death comes a life.
- Eva: The beginning is the end...and the end is the beginning. Every connection in one world...must also be closed in the other world. Everything is interconnected. In light...and in shadow.
Zwischen der Zeit (In Between Time) [3.07]
[edit]- Tannhaus: As humans, we struggle to accept our own mortality. One holds onto events that are long gone. We long in vain for a way to turn back time...to reverse death. But when time is relative and nothing really ever passes, and the simultaneous overlapping of different realities is possible, shouldn't it then also be possible to bring back something that was believed to be dead long ago and to create a new reality in which the dead live again? If our life is defined as everything between birth and death, it exists there ad infinitum. Could we succeed in cheating death by finding a way to bring back life? There, in between time.
- Jonas: [after Noah cuts the rope Jonas tried to hang himself with] What are you doing here? Are you following me?
- Noah: You made me a promise. Adam made me a promise. You said that the apocalypse must happen. So we can get saved. So all of us can be saved. You cannot die.
- [Noah gives Jonas a gun, who tries ro shoot himself, but the gun will not fire. Noah takes it back and the gun again fires, to the side]
- Noah: You cannot take your own life. Because your older self already exists. Time won't permit it. No matter what you try, a force, or someone, will always stop you. Elisabeth and I, we found the passage. You must keep your promise. It will open up again. And then you take us...Adam takes us...to paradise, finally. He said we will become friends. Before you betray me.
- Tannhaus: Fate is playing a cruel trick on us. And yet we will always believe that there is a way to turn the tide in our favor. If we only want it hard enough. Man is able to pursue any goal, no matter how unattainable it may seem, over the course of an entire lifetime. No resistance, no obstacle is great enough to stop the human will in its tracks. Isn't this stubbornness in our striving what distinguishes us from animals that know only short-term desire? And throughout the ages, is not this unquenchable thirst at the heart of any progress that is ever made? No matter what motivates our will, it guides us on our path. We will only be able to let go once we've reached our goal.
- Jonas: Why do you think it still isn't working?
- Noah: Maybe Claudia doesn't want it to work.
- Jonas: Why do you even trust her? Why did you trust him? Adam? He lied to you. There is no paradise. There is no world besides this one. I know you think I'm becoming him, but I'm not.
- Noah: I know the portal will work. I've seen it. In the future. Everything repeats itself. If I travel back, I know I can change everything. My older self tried it before. But this time it's different. The components in the passage have changed. This time it'll work.
- Jonas: She told you all that? Claudia? What do you really know about her? She sometimes disappears for days. How does she know all the things she knows? She said that not all that's here should exist here. What did she mean by that? ...Claudia's hiding something from us. We can't trust her. I hope you know that.
- Tannhaus: You can choose as you want, but your wants are chosen for you. All the paths we take in our lives, every choice we make is guided by our deepest desires. It's pointless to fight this sense of want. It determines every one of our actions, no matter how difficult and unimaginable they seem.
Das Paradies (Paradise) [3.08]
[edit]- Claudia: [voiceover] Every journey has a beginning. But yours has no end. It goes on forever and ever. [to Adam] I'm here to finally make your journey come to an end.
- Adam: This is impossible. You should be dead. I had you killed.
- Claudia: You still have no idea just how this game is played. You want to destroy the knot, but every action you take continues its existence.
- Adam: This can't be. I have killed it. I have killed the origin, and the origin within her.
- Claudia: Your world and Eve's world, they both should have never existed. You thought that the origin lies in the bindings of both worlds. But in reality, it's outside of both worlds. Our thinking is shaped by dualities. Black, white. Light and shadow. Your world and Eve's world. But this is false. You need a third dimension to fulfill it all.
- Adam: The triquetra. [sighs] That means... a third world?
- Claudia: The world that gave birth to this knot. Where everything originates. Where a single mistake was made. Tannhaus, in the origin world, like you, he lost someone. And like you, he tried to bring that person back from the dead. But instead he divided and destroyed his world...And created our two worlds. But there is a way to destroy the knot. Through preventing, in the origin world...the invention of travel through space and time in the first place. I'd have liked to have spared you all that. But your path has to remain unchanged. Every step has to be taken as before. Up until this very moment.
- Adam: This here... Has this happened before?
- Claudia: Your trying to destroy the origin has happened an infinite number of times. But this here, you and I... this is the first time. It's time for you to understand how everything is really connected.
- Claudia: A man lives three lives. The first one ends with the loss of naivety, the second, with the loss of innocence and the third… with the loss of life itself. It’s inevitable that we go through all three stages.
- Adam: Life is a labyrinth. Some wander around until their death in search of a way out of it. But there is only one path, and it leads ever deeper inside. Only when one reaches the center will one understand. Death is incomprehensible. But one can reconcile oneself with it. All that we've done...is ultimately forgotten. We are responsible... for this never-ending déjà vu. And we're the ones who have to end it. We...are the mistake.
- Claudia: Both of our fates are bound together in eternal damnation. Across both worlds. All is cause and effect. Every pain tempts us to act, forms our will. Tannhaus lost everything that ever meant anything to him in the origin world. His son, his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter died in a car accident. They were forced off a bridge and drowned in the river. He could never let go of his pain. Jonas and Martha...must take his pain away. So that he never looks for a way to undo everything. They must go to the origin world... and prevent our two worlds...from ever being created.
- Jonas: What we know is a drop. What we don't know is an ocean.
- Jonas: [to Marthe] You and I are perfect for each other, never believe anything else.
Cast
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External links
[edit]
- Dark quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Dark – The Official Guide