Dark Season 1, Episode 3
"Past and Present"
Original airdate: December 1, 2017
Writer: Jantje Friese, Marc O. Seng
Director: Baran Bo Odar
Cast: Anne Lebinsky, Daan Lennard Liebrenz, Anne Ratte-Polle, Stephanie Amarell, Christian Pätzold, Julika Jenkins, Lydia Maria Makrides, Nele Trebs, Ella Lee, Peter Schneider, Felix Kramer, Ludger Bökelmann, Michael Mendl, Christian Steyer
Episode 3 of Dark finally pulls us headfirst into the past. At the end of last episode, Mikkel arrives in 1986 and this episode is almost entirely dedicated to spending time in this world, fleshing it out and layering it into the story. We get to see Winden, the same town as before, but adding depth to the younger versions of characters we know in the present. Much like the machine we see at the end of the episode, more pieces begin to fall into place.
This episode begins to explore the central theme of the show: time doesn't move forward in a straight line. It bends back on itself and repeats in cycles. Mikkel has fully time travelled, Ulrich is experiencing the loss of his brother in the past and the loss of his son in the present. We see how life in Winden affects three generations of a family (Egon, Claudia and Regina). Every storyline, whether in 1986 or 2019, is another turn of the same wheel.
Mikkel wanders through Winden like a ghost, a literal lost child out of time. Disoriented, he makes his way to the school, searching for his mother. And in a cruel twist, he does find her, only it's Katharina in 1986, who mocks him instead of recognizing him as her son. Rejected and still desperate for help, Mikkel heads to the police station in hopes of finding his father. Instead, he runs into Ulrich's nemesis: Egon Tiedemann.
Egon, already suspicious of Ulrich, sees Mikkel's claim of being Ulrich's son as a joke. Convinced it's just another Nielsen prank, he calls for a nurse to pick up the boy and leaves him alone. It's the first of many questionable decisions from Egon. He then storms over to Ulrich's house to confront him, only to be met with scorn. Ulrich fires back with accusations about Egon's drinking and dismisses him outright, deepening the animosity between them. The sight of Jana learning that the police officer has showed up but has no news about Mads is rather heartbreaking.
Meanwhile, we're introduced to Claudia Tiedemann. She hasn't been much of a presence in the present-day storyline yet, but here a large chunk of the episode revolves around her appointment as head of the nuclear power plant. We see her practicing her speech in the car, though she still finds time to sharply criticize her daughter, Regina. She also brushes off Tronte, who shows up hoping for an affair to distract him from his home life. It's worth remembering that while Tronte may be charming, his son is missing in this very timeline, and yet he's chasing Claudia. This detail goes a long way toward explaining why, decades later, he's still lying to Jana. Once a cheater, always a cheater?
Egon, meanwhile, has other problems in Winden. An entire flock of sheep has turned up dead. There are no visible wounds, but the sheer number makes foul play hard to dismiss.
When the farmer quotes scripture, we also learn that a new priest has recently arrived in town, a detail the show will circle back to in future episodes. Later, the coroner determines the sheep all died of cardiac arrest and suffered ruptured eardrums, as if something unnatural swept over them. Side note: this coroner might be the most genial character in Dark. He even invites Egon over for Yugoslavian meatballs. After finding a hoof in Ulrich's room, he begins to suspect that perhaps it's a Satanic ritual. The coroner notes that Satanists normally take credit for the killings, so it's unlikely for this to be the cause of death here.
Meanwhile, Claudia officially steps into her role as head of the nuclear power plant. Early on she notices discrepancies in the reports handed to her by her secretary, and when she presses Bernd Doppler (Helge's father and the plant's longtime director) he hints that not everything has been above board. He tells her that ever since Chernobyl, there is more scrutiny on nuclear power and her job is to not only protect the plant but the town of Winden.
His advice is chilling: some things are better left unknown. Still, he hands her a key, and before long we see Claudia repelling down into the caves, unsettled by what she finds. Later that night, still absorbed in work, Claudia leaves a message for Regina telling her to heat up a pizza for dinner. Regina pulls up her sleeves and we see the scars on her arms, a quiet but devastating reminder of how neglected she feels at home.
Mikkel is taken to the hospital by Ines, the same woman we briefly saw with a mysterious letter in Episode 1. Earlier in the day, she volunteered to cover both the day and night shifts since she has no family at home. With Mikkel, she shows real warmth. She gently encourages him to talk, trying to make him feel safe. Mikkel mostly stays silent, overwhelmed by everything that's happened, but eventually he blurts out the only thing he feels sure of: that he's from the future. She catches sight of a comic called Captain Future and likely dismisses his notion. Later, as the lights begin to flicker across town, Mikkel slips out through the hospital window, desperate to find his way back home.
Next, we get one of the things Dark does best: a haunting montage that cuts between the past and the present. Claudia studies the book Helge gave her, A Journey Through Time. Regina appears both as a teenager putting on makeup in 1986 and as an adult in 2019 checking herself for lumps. Jana is shown in bed with Tronte in the past, then lying alone decades later. Charlotte sketches dead birds as a child, and in the present examines their bodies in her freezer. And Ulrich, broken in both timelines, sits on Mads's bed as a teenager and then on Mikkel's empty bed in 2019. It's in moments like this that you can really see just how stellar the casting is. The younger and older versions of these characters don't just look alike. Few shows have ever pulled off this kind of casting with such precision, and it's part of what makes Dark so good.
The montage fades into one final parallel: Ulrich heading into the caves in 2019 to search for Mikkel, while his son in 1986 stumbles through the same tunnels trying to find a way home. The boundaries between their timelines seem paper thin. They can hear each other's voices echoing through the rock, but neither can cross over. They're so close, yet trapped decades apart, and both collapse in frustration.
The episode closes with a key figure stepping into focus. H.G. Tannhaus, the clockmaker we briefly glimpsed earlier on a television, and the author of A Journey Through Time, carefully fitting pieces together on a strange machine. As the gears hum to life, the sense deepens that all of Winden's mysteries are converging on something far larger than anyone yet understands. However, the pieces are starting to fit into place.
This recap was originally accessible to paid subscribers only, and future recaps in this series are available now for paid subscribers. If you haven't already, consider supporting worker-owned media by subscribing to Pop Heist. We are ad-free and operating outside the algorithm, so all dollars go directly to paying the staff members and writers who make articles like this one possible.
