Dark Season 1, Episode 4
"Double Lives"
Original airdate: December 1, 2017
Writer: Martin Behnke, Jantje Friese
Director: Baran Bo Odar
Cast: Louis Hofmann, Maja Schöne, Oliver Masucci, Stephan Kampwirth, Angela Winkler, Jördis Triebel, Daan Lennard Liebrenz, Lisa Vicari, Moritz Jahn, Paul Lux, Karoline Eichhorn, Gina Alice Stiebitz, Deborah Kaufmann, Tatja Seibt, Hermann Beyer, Peter Benedict
After a brief interlude in the past, we return to the present with "Double Lives."
One of the joys of rewatching Dark is noticing how much has been there from the beginning. Tannhaus is a perfect example. In Episode 1, he's already on TV lecturing about black holes. When the story jumps to the past, his book ends up in Claudia's hands via Helge. And here in Episode 4, he resurfaces once again. The show keeps weaving him into the fabric of Winden long before his true importance is clear.
Much of this episode focuses on Charlotte and Peter Doppler's fractured marriage. Peter, in particular, stands out as the shadiest named character so far. He prays alone, cries, and now we learn he sleeps in a separate room from his wife. Other than the hooded figures roaming around in the woods, Peter feels like the show's most obvious red flag at this stage.
In this episode, we also meet Elizabeth, Charlotte and Peter's youngest daughter. With her fox hat and unshakable attitude, she makes an immediate impression. Even as a child, she refuses to be pushed around, even if Franziska doesn't buy any of her schtick.
Hannah tells Jonas he doesn't have to go to school if he doesn't want to. Honestly, who wouldn't take their chances at school in a town where kids keep vanishing over spending the day with Hannah?
Elsewhere, Peter visits his father Helge (the same Helge who handed Claudia Tannhaus' book back in the '80s). Now older and lost in his own mind, he wanders the halls of an eerily under-supervised retirement home, muttering his trademark "tik tok" and saying "he has to be stopped".
Suspicion of Peter isn't just in the audience's mind as Charlotte clearly shares it. While driving Elizabeth, she pulls over to snag footage from a wildlife camera, explaining to her daughter that it isn't stealing when you're a cop, it's "confiscating." When she drops Elizabeth off, the girl is more focused on her boyfriend, Yasin. Still, mother and daughter share a tender moment, pressing their foreheads together. For all the cracks in the Doppler marriage, this little exchange shows there's still warmth in the family.
The Doppler women's romantic choices are another story. We get more insight into Franziska's budding relationship with Magnus. He barges into her classroom, awkwardly hovering until she excuses herself to the bathroom. He trails after her, and later, he spies on her digging something up in the forest.
Charlotte's work finds her looking at the red soil and its connection to the case. At the station, she pushes Woller, the one-eyed detective to dig deeper into the missing persons files, going back 15 years, while quietly following her own hunches. Surveillance footage reveals that Peter's car was on the road that night. Peter, for his part, is seen dumping red dirt from his car mats before insisting to Charlotte that he was at the office the night Mikkel disappeared.
Meanwhile, Ulrich grows more desperate. Denied a warrant to search the power plant, he takes matters into his own hands, hopping the fence. Aleksander catches him bloody and trespassing, but Ulrich refuses to back down, furious that everyone treats his son's disappearance as just another case file. His grief and rage boil over. He's a father being told to wait while time keeps slipping away.
Jonas explores the caves, stumbling upon blocked passages and eerie markings. The Stranger breaks into Jonas's room and marks new routes on the maps he found.
After watching her in gym class, Magnus confronts Franziska about what she dug up. She gets frustrated since she's dealing with a lot at home. Her parents are basically on the verge of divorce. While things get heated at first, the two then kiss and have sex in the locker room.
Meanwhile, Charlotte continues to be on the hunt. First, she finds the red dirt at the location of a bunker. It's a property owned by Helge, furthering her suspicions that whatever Peter is hiding, it has to do with the missing children. Then, she talks to Bernadette, a trans sex worker who lives in a trailer.
Bernadette reveals that Peter used to come visit her but it's been a while. Perhaps what release he used to get from Bernadette, he found elsewhere the night Mikkel went missing.
But the real horror belongs to Elisabeth this episode. While waiting to be picked up, she ends up walking home alone in the rain because Peter never shows. The Doppler parents are worried that another kid has gone missing in Winden but hours later, Elisabeth arrives home. When she finally makes it back, she reveals to Charlotte that she met a man named Noah who gave her a pocket watch engraved "For Charlotte." The revelation shakes Charlotte to her core. Helge, meanwhile, mutters that he has to stop Noah, though it's unclear if he even knows what that means.
The episode closes on another child in danger. Yasin walks alone through the woods, only to be lured by a figure with one of the small pinecone figurines. The man tells him, "Noah sent me." And just like that, another boy vanishes from Winden.
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