This article is by Brad Clay:

My next birthday is one of the big ones, when both numbers change. Such a milestone naturally brings to mind the big events of one’s life, and, while there’s much for which to be grateful, one winces at the mistakes and would-a, could-a, should-haves that memory serves up. The educational and career choices, the broken or unpursued relationships, words spoken, bridges burned. Sometimes one wonders if they is so far down the road, a turn seems impossible. What we could all use is a time machine.

The German Netflix Sci-Fi Mystery Thriller Dark provides a window into such a possibility. Time travel has always been a common Sci-Fi trope, with shows from the small screen like Dr. Who, Timeless, Quantum Leap, Outlander, and Flash, to movies like Avengers: Endgame, HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Terminator,  Back to the Future, and even Groundhog Day.

Dark, by Jante Friese and Baran bo Odar, opens in the small town of Winden in 2019 where two local kids go missing, which eerily seems to be a repetition of past events.

The premise of the show is revealed when one of the missing kids wakes up in a nearby cave, walks to school, fails to recognize anyone, and discovers it’s 1986. An accident at the town’s nuclear plant has opened a portal in the caves, and now one can travel. The viewers are introduced to a group of teens and the extended members of their families which will be followed over 26 episodes for 3 seasons.

Over the course of the first two seasons, the viewer learns the complex relationships and experiences of these families of Winden. There are ~20 major characters whom the viewers see as children, as teens and/or adults, and as elderly throughout the show. It could be described as a mix of This is Us and The Butterfly Effect.

The family relationships are so complex, due to time travel and the revealing that some are created through it. A classic example from the show is a character discovers that she is from the future, and her daughter is also her mother.

Another source of conflict comes with the realization that in the near future there will be another accident at the nuclear plant; this time it will be an “Apocalypse” that will destroy Winden and anyone living there, and at the start of the final season, the creators up the stakes by introducing a sister world enabling crossover between time and space. Characters trying to discover who they are, correct mistakes of the past, and prevent the coming Apocalypse drive the action.

The main characters, Jonas and Martha, encapsulate this struggle. In one world, future Jonas kills Martha before his younger self’s eyes, and in the other world, future Martha kills Jonas before the eyes of her younger self. The younger ones both tell their dying paramours, “I’m going to make this right,” which one would think possible as a time traveler. Sadly, they discover only repeated failure, and that they are caught in a knot. Their best efforts over and over, across decades, across worlds, trying to save each other and prevent the Apocalypse, are exercised in vain. They rename themselves, enlighteningly so, Adam and Eve, and they wind up in opposition to each other, hence the events which start their path.

Adam arrives at the conclusion that nothing can be changed, and so he tries to enhance the Apocalypse to destroy it all. Eve possesses a depressed resignation that at least the knot can be repeated over and over, with everyone having at least some modicum of life. Their philosophies reveal broken human response to life’s experience.

Another character finds a way out of the knot, motivated by love of a dying daughter. She discovers that the world was created when a clock-maker/amateur scientist, created a time machine to try to save his son who had died in a car accident.

When Jonas and Martha learn the truth, they travel and prevent the accident from occurring. They do so at the cost of their own lives, for now, the entangling relationships which led to their birth never take place.

The idea of possessing a time machine is so popularly seductive, but if Dark illustrates anything, it is monumentally difficult to change one’s events without changing oneself. It’s fascinating to see the characters journey across the worlds, across, time, across generations, almost uncontrollably repeating themselves. It’s like the Old Testament concept of generational propensities and sins played out on the small screen. They can’t escape themselves. It may take an “Apocalypse,” a revealing, for we humans to see our need for a heart change, as one might say, repentance, to honestly see ourselves and our need for redemption, which alone can provide hope for the future.

What I walked away with was being reminded that even if I had a time machine, I couldn’t make it right. I have been broken from my beginning, and I need Someone from outside of me, and outside of time, to rescue me. The world of Dark was (in a manner) both created and eventually redeemed by love. Fortunately, in our very real world, Love redeems us too, no other Sci-Fi trope needed.

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