Dark Season 1, Episode 7
"Crossroads"
Original airdate: December 1, 2017
Writer: Jantje Friese, Marc O. Seng
Director: Baran bo Odar
Cast: Peter Benedict, Hermann Beyer, Ludger Bökelmann, Karoline Eichhorn, Louis Hofmann, Stephan Kampwirth, Ella Lee, Daan Lennard Liebrenz, Lydia Maria Makrides, Oliver Masucci, Christian Pätzold, Tom Philipp, Andreas Pietschmann, Anne Ratte-Polle, Maja Schöne, Peter Schneider, Tatja Seibt, Nele Trebs, Jördis Triebel, Mark Waschke
Episode 7 of Dark is all about choices. In the events that unfold in "Crossroads," Jonas, Ulrich, Helge, and Charlotte are confronted with decisions that could either break the cycle or deepen it. Some grasp for control, others retreat into denial, and a few glimpse the enormity of what is at stake. The title of the episode is not subtle. The characters we follow in this episode are deep in the caves, standing at a crossroads.
The hour splits into these main threads. Jonas, stranded in 1986, must face the paradox of rescuing Mikkel and erasing himself. Ulrich, obsessed with finding his son, doubles down on his conviction that Helge is responsible. Charlotte, following the trail of the investigation, uncovers more about Helge's past and her own family than she is ready to confront. And Helge, who we discover is in some way responsible for the death of at least one child, seems haunted by what he's done over time. Together, these threads make one thing clear: free will may be an illusion in Winden, but the torment of choice is very real.
The episode opens with a boy waking up in the wallpapered room, his face streaked with blood. Then, Helge stirs in his nursing home bed in 2019. "I remember," he mutters. While we don't know exactly what happened to Helge yet, we know that he's in the same room the boys who have been killed were in (with that signature wallpaper) and that something terrible happened to him that left him disfigured.
Jonas spends the night in a watchtower, trying to make sense of where he is. In the morning, he wanders through a school plastered with missing posters for Mads. Regina sits alone and listens to music. When Jonas asks what day it is, she tells him November 9. He pushes further: what year? (It should be noted that characters asking what year it is will continue to be one of my favorite recurring things in the show). She tells him it's 1986. Jonas tries to find Michael Kahnwald, but Regina has never heard of him. When he suggests he is Ines's son, she says she has no son. Jonas is searching for his father, only to discover the paradox of a boy who does not yet exist.
In 1986, Egon Tiedemann studies a photo of Mads and Ulrich, scribbling a question mark beside Ulrich's face. He begins to suspect the teenager had something to do with his brother's disappearance. In the present day, Ulrich is looking over Egon's notes.
Charlotte, still following leads, arrives at the power plant armed with a warrant. Aleksander has no choice but to let her in. She eventually finds tracks leading into a cave and rappels down into the earth, discovering yellow paint chips and a sealed door. (Another note: this is already the second time a character seems to have the ability to rappel down into these caves and it won't be the last!) Her investigation is literal and metaphorical. The deeper she digs, the more she uncovers that Winden, and more specifically the power plant, may be trying to bury something.
Jonas trudges through a rainy day in Winden (my favorite motif of the show) when Egon pulls up and offers him a ride. Egon interrogates Jonas about who he is, who is parents are and why he isn't in school. Egon observes how much the plant has changed Winden and then catches a glance at Jonas's modern-day Apple headphones, curious. Aloof detective Egon is both somehow incredible and also extremely frustrating as he not only can't make out that Jonas is lying, but he also misses an opportunity to invent the Apple headphones years before they were a thing! Egon eventually drops off Jonas at the hospital.
There, Jonas watches from a distance as Mikkel sits with Ines. Before he can approach, The Stranger appears. Their conversation reframes everything Jonas thought he knew. He is not crazy, The Stranger says, and neither was Michael. The caves are real. The crack in time is real. And Mikkel is Jonas's father. That means Ulrich is his grandfather, Martha is his aunt (fair enough if you're out on the Martha/Jonas relationship at this point), and Jonas's very existence hangs on a paradox. Jonas insists he will take Mikkel back, set things right. The Stranger warns him that if he does, Jonas himself will vanish. "Every decision for something is a decision against something else," he says. "A life for a life." Jonas looks at Mikkel, torn between saving the boy and saving himself.
Back in 2019, Ulrich confronts Helge at the nursing home. Shaking him awake, he demands answers. Helge panics, shouting, "I know you! It was him! I can change the past and the future!" Charlotte later dismisses his theories, especially considering Helge has dementia. But Ulrich has crossed his own line. He's pretty sure he's onto something regarding Helge. Seeing Ulrich unravel and harass Helge, she suspends him.
At home, Ulrich faces Katharina's fury. She knows about the affair with Hannah. She admits she must have known all along but refused to see it. He pleads that he is here now. She refuses to hear explanations. Later, Jana Nielsen offers Ulrich a softer truth. She says she would rather believe Mads is alive, free and happy, than accept his death. Hope, even false hope, has kept her alive for thirty-three years. She recalls seeing a priest arguing with a scarred man the week before Mads vanished. She saw the same man again that morning, unchanged.
Charlotte calls Peter about the family cabin. Why keep it? Why was Helge's accident in 1986 never spoken of? Peter insists he arrived in Winden after those events, but Charlotte presses. Their conversation is less about facts than about the growing distance between them. Charlotte no longer trusts her husband, or perhaps she never truly did. And more importantly, if there was a seed of doubt that Helge was involved in the boys going missing, Peter being involved might erase the doubts that Charlotte believes Helge is too frail to commit such crimes. Perhaps there isn't just one suspect but a pair of them.
Ulrich drives down the forest road and remembers what Mikkel told him in Episode 1 (it's not how but when). Meanwhile, Jonas returns into the caves and opens the Sic Mundus door just as Charlotte's flashlight flickers as she investigates Helge's bunker. It's there that she finds a piece of the wallpaper. Helge in 1986 and Helge in 2019 both walk into the woods.
The 1986 version of Helge appears outside the bunker and a boy lies dead, eyes charred with a red cord with a coin strung around his neck. Helge weeps as he wraps the body. Inside Noah scrubs blood from the floor. His back is covered with a tattoo of the Emerald Tablet, the mythical key to alchemy. On the wall, chalk scrawls two dates: November 5, 1953 and November 9, 1953. Time is marked, and the cycle continues.
Episode 7 is aptly titled. Jonas chooses not to take Mikkel, preserving his own existence but damning his father to remain in the past. Ulrich chooses to pursue Helge, convinced he has found the source of his pain, though the truth is larger than he can imagine. Charlotte chooses to keep digging, even as the ground gives way beneath her family. Each decision leads only deeper into the labyrinth.
Crossroads is an episode about the illusion of choice. The characters act as if their decisions matter, but the cycle keeps repeating itself. Jonas may feel he sacrificed his father to save himself, but the larger structure was already written. Ulrich may think he has identified the culprit, but Helge is both victim and pawn. Charlotte may believe her investigation will lead her to answers, but the more she uncovers, the more she realizes how little she knows.
In Winden, choice is a crossroads that always leads back to the same place. The cycle repeats. The maze never ends.
