Dark Season 1, Episode 10
"Alpha and Omega"
Original airdate: December 1, 2017
Writer: Jantje Friese, Ronny Schalk
Director: Baran bo Odar
Cast: Stephanie Amarell, Peter Benedict, Hermann Beyer, Karoline Eichhorn, Luise Heyer, Louis Hofmann, Sebastian Hülk, Moritz Jahn, Julika Jenkins, Stephan Kampwirth, Deborah Kaufmann, Arnd Klawitter, Lisa Kreuzer, Walter Kreye, Daan Lennard Liebrenz, Paul Lux, Oliver Masucci, Valentin Oppermann, Christian Pätzold, Tom Philipp, Andreas Pietschmann, Anne Ratte-Polle, Peter Schneider, Maja Schöne, Tatja Seibt, Christian Steyer, Gina Alice Stiebitz, Anatole Taubman, Antje Traue, Jördis Triebel, Lea Van Acken, Lisa Vicari, Mark Waschke, Cordelia Wege, Angela Winkler
The first season of Dark wraps up with a pretty incredible episode. While the show has previously taken us further and further into the past, the finale launches us in the opposite direction: into the future. It’s both the closing of a loop and the start of another. A cycle complete, and the cycle continues.
The beginning of the episode is the first reveal of what the boys in the bunker are really up to. Peter is seen driving towards Bernadette, the trans woman near the truck stop, but he changes his mind and leaves. As he’s reciting the Serenity prayer in the bunker, a body drops out of a worm hole. Should have just cheated on your wife, Peter! He finds the boy’s ID and it’s for Mads Nielsen. He calls the boy’s father, Tronte. The two are in the bunker when they are joined by Claudia. The ominous gray-haired figure says that they need to move the body to where he’ll be found. Creepy!
Jonas continues to experience nightmares and not just while he’s awake! This time, it’s Mikkel’s hand on his shoulder while he lies in bed. He throws out his bottle of pills, grabs his orb light and Geiger counter.
Meanwhile, Martha is weeping in her room while Bartosz supports her. She hasn’t been herself since Mikkel disappeared.
Charlotte visits her father-in-law but he’s not there. Clara tells her that while Helge has been gone before (not a great look for the care home), he’s never been gone for this long before. She asks if Ulrich’s been back but that’s a no.
Jonas decides to confront perhaps the only woman who would understand what he’s talking about: his grandmother! He lashes out at her for allowing Mikkel to be kept in the past. She sits in silence, then hands the letter he burned over to him. Jonas wails that he just wants things to be normal again. Sorry, friend… not going to happen!
In the '80s, Mikkel shows Ines a magic trick. She brings up Master Zhuang’s paradox about a butterfly. Mikkel, knowing he is both a boy in the '80s and the boy from the future, tells Ines that in Zhuang’s paradox, he must be both a man and a butterfly.
Helge does the only good bit of police work he’s ever done and has Ulrich in custody. Ulrich can’t help but laugh when he realizes Egon is his old nemesis. He quotes the song Egon will hear in the future when he stumbles upon Ulrich in his bedroom. These are the seeds for the hatred Egon will have for Ulrich in the '80s. The two have a fundamental difference of opinion about whether to kill children. One thinks it’s bad and the other thinks it saves children! Pretty far apart, I’d say!
Jonas heads to school on another rainy Winden day. Bartosz confronts him about Martha and the two end up in a fight. Bartosz yells at Jonas and tells him never to come back again.
Meanwhile, the Stranger returns to H.G. Tannhaus’s shop to collect his repaired time machine. Tannhaus now has two versions (the original and a new one he’s built by studying it) believing that to understand something fully, you must see both its beginning and end. The Stranger inserts a vial of Cs-137, radioactive waste stolen from the yellow barrels, into the device as Tannhaus wonders aloud whether they’re acting out of choice or simply following a chain of cause and effect. Maybe, he says, this moment is what his entire life has been leading to. When Tannhaus asks what the future is like, the Stranger replies simply, “I hope by tomorrow, everything will be different.”
Charlotte continues to chase leads. This time, she calls Peter to ask about Helge’s incident as a child. While Peter tries to divulge something personal, she’s not having it. Business only, this Charlotte! She realizes that Helge was hurt in 1953 and that just like Ulrich suggested, it’s all connected. Later, she’ll find the police file and see Ulrich’s mugshot staring back at her.
Not for the first time in Dark (let alone this episode), we get an older version of someone meeting themselves. This time, old Helge sits and waits for '80s Helge to return home. Older Helge tries to warn himself that Noah is lying to him. He hugs him but '80s Helge is too in shock (who wouldn’t be!) to listen to him. Meanwhile, Jonas decides that bringing Mikkel back is worth erasing his own existence for, so he grabs his things and leaves.
In the bunker, Tronte and Peter sit, speaking of Claudia and the information she’s given them. She had a notebook and everything that she said would happen has occurred. Tronte believes that following her will bring back Mads and end the suffering. Peter doesn’t seem so sure.
Helge goes to the worst possible person to be convinced of Noah’s evil doings: Noah. The priest tells Helge that pain is not in vain. Every scar is a memory that shapes who you are. Helge follows Noah and asks who’s next. The priest refers to a notebook (the same one referred to by Peter & Tronte) and says “Jonas Kahnwald.”
In 1986, Mikkel is adopted and Jonas runs into Charlotte. He tells her he’s going there to bring someone back from the dead. She asks if this is possible, to which he replies that it is, but only if you find a younger version of them. This is one of my all-time favorite scenes in the whole show! As Jonas goes to retrieve Mikkel, he’s ambushed by Noah and Helge. He wakes up in the wallpapered room.
It’s here that we get yet another massive reveal for the show. The Stranger tells Jonas that he can’t bring Mikkel back and that he’ll have to carry the letter forward years into the future for Mikkel to give to Ines. He knows this because… well, he’s him. The Stranger is Jonas. This scene really messes with my brain because here, The Stranger would remember this moment and learning the news. He’ll then proceed through time to be in a place where he delivers it back to Jonas, exactly as it was said originally. We’re stuck in a loop!
Meanwhile, older Helge, realizing the damage his younger self is about to cause, drives head-on into his own car in a desperate attempt to stop himself. In the future, Charlotte hangs up a newspaper clipping about the accident in the evidence room.
Bartosz and Noah meet up again. Noah says that everything is about to begin and that as The Stranger tries to stop the wormhole from being created, he’ll actually create it. The Stranger is merely a pawn in a war for time, being manipulated by Claudia (Bartosz’s grandmother). He tells Bartosz that it’s a fight between light and shadow. He gives Bartosz the notebook.
The Stranger travels through the caves and turns on the time machine. A dome of dark matter is created above the device. As the Stranger activates the machine in the caves, the effects ripple across time. Lights flicker, the ground shakes, and the three timelines begin to overlap in eerie synchronization.
In 1953, a bloodied young Helge hides in the bunker, clutching his coin necklace. In 1986, Jonas is trapped in the same room, now a torture chamber, as the ground quakes around him. A portal bursts open between the two years, a vertical tear in space and time. Jonas and Helge lock eyes through the light and reach toward one another. Their fingers touch and both are hurled to different points in time. The next morning, November 13, 1986, Helge wakes on the blue carpet of the bunker.
Jonas wakes up with a gasp. The bunker is the same, yet completely changed as the wallpaper is stripped. Weapons line the walls, and a red-string map connects his photo to the Stranger’s. He stumbles outside into a wasteland. Ash falls like snow, the forest reduced to a toxic ruin. The nuclear plant stands collapsed in the distance, marked off by radiation warnings and barbed wire. A truck full of soldiers pulls up, guns raised. Jonas drops to his knees, dazed and disoriented. “What year is it?” (a classic) he asks. A drone buzzes overhead. A teenage soldier stares him down and says, “Welcome to the future.”
