Netflix’s Dark season 2, episode 4 recap: The Travelers

Photo: Dark: Season 2.. Netflix

We are halfway through the second season of Dark, and the characters are beginning to learn about time travel and the toll it takes on them emotionally and physically.

Jonas Kahnwald fixed the time-traveling sphere in 2052 and went in hoping to return home. He awakens in episode four of Dark season two in a field. Jonas is found by a couple of farmers who take him to a nearby village to recuperate. Jonas’ throat is scarred from the attempted hanging and he continues to limp after being shot by Elizabeth. Seeing his injuries, the people around him keep talking about a war they’ve lost and believe Jonas is a POW.

Jonas lies about his posting while nourishing his starved self in a tavern. As a young girl named Agnes (the same girl who becomes Agnes Nielsen?) is asked to clear out her brother’s room for Jonas, he asks the people around him what year it is – they tell him it’s 1921.

The Nuclear Power Plant

Clausen is continuing his investigation into the Nuclear Power Plant, but Charlotte Doppler has taken the day off to investigate her Helge’s files. Instead, Clausen commandeers Wöller, who reluctantly falls in line. Clausen interrogates Aleksander Tiedemann about his relationship with Ulrich Nielsen, and pursues his favorite line of questioning – why did Aleksander take his wife’s name? Aleksander has a plausible answer – Regina was an only child and the last in the line of the influential family, so Aleksander didn’t want to let the name die out. He tells Clausen that his real name is Köhler. Satisfied, Clausen heads to meet Hannah Kahnwald. On the way there they almost run over Claudia Tiedemann – the younger version from 1987. Clausen seems to identify her, or does he?

Still, in 2020, the younger Claudia Tiedemann is trying to piece together her past. She’s already seen Regina’s fate, and when she heads to the power plant, she learns that someone called Aleksander is in charge. So, what happened to her, Claudia wonders? She’s a fish out of water with 21st-century tech, but Claudia is a fast learner. She searches for herself at the library and learns that she never returned from her time-traveling excursion. Claudia then reads about Regina and Aleksander’s marriage, the opening and closing of Regina’s hotel, as well as the death of her father in 1987.