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

Photo: Dark: Season 2.. Netflix

The Truth about the Travelers

Hannah is in the midst of a difficult conversation with older Jonas. He’s found her gun and some passports that she is using for blackmail. Jonas doesn’t recognize this person as his mother, but then Charlotte arrives. Hannah had called her with the precise intention of revealing everything about older Jonas. Charlotte doesn’t bat an eyelid at the truth. Instead, she recognizes Jonas as the stranger Regina told her and Clausen about. She asks him about the photograph of Adam and Noah; Jonas confirms Noah’s identity and explains that the group are called Sic Mundus (the Travelers). Charlotte decides to take the Kahnwalds to the cabin in the forest.

Charlotte’s husband Peter found Mads Nielsen’s time-displaced body and was told about time-travel by Tronte Nielsen and older Claudia Tiedemann. As Hannah listens and sees all the information collected about Ulrich, Mikkel and Mads, she insists that Ulrich’s wife, Katharina, is informed of his whereabouts.

Katharina arrives at the cabin hoping to find her husband and son, and when confronted by all the temporal talk and older Jonas, she can’t help but laugh. Katharina doesn’t believe a word that’s being said, no matter how many times Jonas and Hannah reiterate the truths they’ve witnessed.

Katharina has to find proof for herself and she goes to the local school to check the records. There she finds an image of Michael Kahnwald from 1987 – he looks exactly like Mikkel and Katharina breaks down seeing the picture.

Older Jonas explains that he’s in this era to stop Adam. He has three days to do it before Sic Mundus begin the last cycle. It was Claudia’s job to stop the apocalypse, but Jonas says that in the end, Claudia became exactly what she was trying to stop.

The Cave

The Doppler and Nielsen children, Franziska, Elizabeth, Magnus, and Martha are tired of their parents acting strange in Dark season 2. They decide it’s time to investigate the cave themselves. Martha tells her friends that sometimes she dreams about Jonas and it feels so real that she can’t believe he’s dead. Franziska believes Jonas knew something before his disappearance.

Jonas wakes up in 1921 to be confronted by Noah – not the one who has been tormenting Winden for two seasons of Dark. This is the younger version and he seems to know who Jonas is. Once Noah leaves, Jonas makes a quick getaway. Still limping from the gunshot wound, Jonas makes his way to the cave.

As Jonas searches for the door leading to the wormhole in 1921, he is faced with nothing but a stone wall. Young Noah has been charged with chipping away at it, and he hasn’t quite succeeded in his mission. While Jonas is seemingly trapped in the past, his friends are in 2020 looking for the same thing. They feel the cave vibrate and out pops Bartosz Tiedemann. What is he doing here?

Martha and Magnus tie up Bartosz and unlock the case he’s carrying. It’s the time travel device, and obviously, a gift belonging to Noah. The Nielsen siblings decide to take the device, though they don’t know what it is, and leave Bartosz alone in the cave.

A despondent Jonas leaves the cave only to find Noah waiting for him. Young Noah tells him that it’s going to take another 32 years before the door will work. In the meantime, Sic Mundus is waiting for him. Older Noah arrives to greet Jonas at Adam’s house, and Jonas is left speechless.

At the end of this Dark episode, the Doppler girls return once again to an empty home, while Martha and Magnus find their mum staring at a picture of her erstwhile perfect family. Claudia Tiedemann returns to 1987, and in 2052, Elizabeth finds her interpreter in the lab and reveals that there is no prophecy, but that she believes the sphere is a part of ‘god’.

The two Noahs lead Jonas deep into the heart of Sic Mundus headquarters, where Jonas meets Adam. Adam explains that time-travel takes its toll on the body, hence his physical disfigurements. Adam asks Jonas if he wishes to ‘begin’, but Jonas only wants it all to end. Adam assures him that it will end for everyone, including them. And then Adam removes his collar to reveal deep scarring. ‘I am you’, he tells a horrified Jonas. Time-travel is so confusing!