Netflix’s Dark Series recap: What you need to know before Season 3

Here’s a summary of everything you must know before Dark Season 3.

As Netflix‘s Dark Season 3, which is also the show’s final installment is almost upon us, there are a lot of key things one must remember before jumping into this intricately complex yet beautiful show’s final set of episodes.

Although it would probably just be easier to rewatch the entire thing, it’s understandable that one might not be able to do so. So, here we are, diving back into the twisty world of Winden, Germany.

Okay, so buckle up, we are going to try our best to go through all the major plot points of the series so far. It’s possibly about to get super complicated because we have a lot to go through, but before that, if you want to get more familiar with the events of Season 1, you can read our Season 1 refresher here.

Before Dark Season 3: Winden and Timelines

So, Dark is set in the German town of Winden and the story revolves around four families who are all interconnected through generations of relationships, connections and events, and a 33-year old tragic timeline cycle. The primary timelines are 2019-2020, 1986-1987, and 1953-1954, but the story also takes place in 1920-1921 and 1952.

So, what about Jonas, Adam, Claudia, and Martha?

There are four main people in the center of these events; Jonas, Adam, Claudia, and Martha. Adam claims that he is the older Jonas himself and has the same scar in his neck as Jonas but his face is almost unrecognizable.

Martha and Jonas are both teenagers who are in love, but Martha is also the aunt of Jonas because Jonas’s dad, Mikkel, is Martha’s younger brother who got stuck in the past. Mikkel got stuck in 1986 and got settled there as he changed his name to Michael and made a life there but eventually killed himself before his younger self went missing in 2019.

Now, that’s already complicated but what is even more complicated is that Adam lied to Jonas and told him that he can stop this entire shitstorm from ever happening if he stops his dad from killing himself, which actually ends up plotting the idea of suicide in Michael’s head in the first place.

WHEW! Yeah, I’m with you, and I know that’s a lot but we are just getting started here.

Meanwhile, the main battle of control over time is going between Claudia and Adam, we see Claudia as the director of Winden’s powerplant in the 80s timeline, she knows her way around time travel and is against Adam but is also teaching and helping both the versions of Jonas about it.

We don’t even know if we can truly believe that Adam is actually Jonas since both of their goals seem to be widely opposing as well as the fact that what in the world could have actually happened that made Jonas turn into this completely different person known as Adam, who is leading a cult-like group of people in order to create paradise on Earth, a world free of time.

Dark: How do they time travel?

Throughout the course of Dark‘s past two seasons, we see multiple devices that play a significant role in traveling to one of the timelines mentioned above, whether it be The Passage, The Chair, or the Tannhaus Device, portals and dark matter.

We were first introduced to The Passage in the Winden cave system, and then we’re introduced to the Tannnhaus Device created by HG Tannhaus, who was a clockmaker and an expert in time travel and paradoxes. This device was often used by Claudia and Jonas. The Chair was used by Noah and Helge, and one of the dark matter sources is controlled by Adam and is under the church in Winden.

In both the seasons of Dark, we see Jonas working with either Adam or Claudia to alter the events and change the course of everything that’s happening. You can read more about the time-traveling devices in detail here.

Noah, Charlotte, and Elisabeth

Noah was like Adam’s right hand, he was one of the main people working for him. He used to dress up as a Pastor and had been kidnapping children over different timelines for experiments. He thought by working against Claudia and with Adam, he was working for the “light”.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky, in Season 2, we found out that Noah is Charlotte’s father and is married to Elisabeth, who is Charlotte’s daughter. Meaning, Elisabeth is Charlotte’s mother and Charlotte is Elisabeth’s mother. Yes, super complex paradoxes.

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Well, the teenage versions of both Noah and Elisabeth met in 2020, and it is safe to assume that they grew up together, and fell in love, and had baby Charlotte somewhere there.

Although someone took baby Charlotte to the 80s and for unknown reasons, she was raised by her adoptive grandfather, HG Tannhaus. She grew old in that timeline and had Elisabeth.

Off to the evil deeds done by Noah, which were all in efforts to find his daughter/mother-in-law, Charlotte. Noah killed the older version of Claudia since he thought, she had the answers in regards to his daughter’s whereabouts, but she didn’t.

So, he was probably just manipulated by Adam, and when he went to confront him, he was shot and killed by his sister, Agnes. Although he did manage to find out about Charlotte and revealed to the adult Charlotte that he was her father, an episode before dying.

And, as we all know, Charlotte in 2019-20 is a detective working to uncover the mysteries of Winden and is married to Helge’s son, Peter. You can read all about family histories and connections here.

Peter was the one who came across the mysterious bunker where Noah used to experiment on the kids he kidnapped, and test The Chair. And, he and Charlotte together started learning more and more about time travel.

It is worth a mention that they had a notebook with the trinity knot symbol on it, containing information regarding time travel and the three primary time cycles.

And a similar notebook was under the possession of Noah, and sometimes with Adam or Claudia, and is believed to have a complete record of every single instance of time travel people have gone through so far and all the cycles.

Before Dark Season 3: So, what was Jonas up to during Season 2?

Instead of diving straight into Dark  Season 3, remember that in Dark Season 1 ended with Jonas in 2052. After stumbling upon the future, he soon realizes that Jonas II, the middle-aged version of him had set off the apocalypse. Jonas gets more motivated so than ever to fix everything and somehow stop this shitstorm altogether, and wants to get back to 2020.

Jonas attempts to trespass into the power plant, where the dark matter which can teleport him is hidden. But sadly, he was caught by Elisabeth, who is sort of running this rebellion of survivors or something and was almost hung to death before Elisabeth changes her mind and lets him go, although it leaves him with a nasty scar around his neck.

Jonas eventually gets back into the powerplant and was able to travel back in time, with the help of this girl named, Silja. Although the dark matter doesn’t take him to 2020, instead he ends up in 1921, where he encounters his so-called unrecognizable disfigured self, Adam.

Somehow, Claudia manages to get a hold of him and brings him back to “her side.” And, Jonas learns as much as he can about Adam and Sic Mundus. She also sent him to 1987 to her younger self, he was the one who showed her The Passage in the caves of Winden.

Right before the apocalypse, both versions of Jonas were working in order to stop it from happening, Claudia was accompanied by the younger version of Jonas while The Stranger aka the middle-aged version of Jonas was with his mother, Hannah, and had also been helping Katharina.

Before Dark Season 3: Hannah, Katharina, and Ulrich

As you all might remember that during Season 1, Ulrich (Mikkel’s dad and Katharina’s husband) went to 1953 to stop Mikkel from disappearing, and almost beats young Helge to death, which explains the disfiguration around his ear but he was unable to kill him and was jailed with the intent of murdering and for the murder of the kids who Noah kidnapped and experimented on.

And we all remember how much we hated Hannah right? I mean she was always a viciously manipulative one. She was always jealous of the fact that Katharina and Ulrich were dating ever since the start of their relationship, and even falsely accused Ulrich of sexually abusing Katharina to sabotage their relationship. She and Ulrich were also having an affair when Mikkel died.

During Season 2, Hannah learns about time travel from Jonas and she goes to 1954 and claims that she is Ulrich’s wife. She went to see him at the prison, but after realizing that Ulrich will never leave Katharina for him, she refuses to help him and left him to be imprisoned there.

When we last saw Hannah, it looked like she was gonna stay in 1954, and that she was seducing Egon, whose wife is having an affair with Agnes. So, it’s all just a light incest.

Meanwhile, we also saw Ulrich trying to escape from the mental institution and spend a meaningful day with young Mikkel in 1987. When he gets caught, he also saw his other kids on the way to the institution in a heartbreaking scene.

And, now that both Ulrich and Mikkel are missing, Katharina is determined to find both of them and goes through The Passage in the Dark Season 2 finale.

Before Dark Season 3: So how did Dark Season 2 ended?

During Dark Season 2’s finale, Noah gives this letter to Jonas, which he claims is from Martha. Whatever it was that was written in the letter shakes Jonas to the core and he could not believe it.

Noah advises Jonas that he must go through the next cycle in order to save Martha and his friends.

Meanwhile, Jonas II has brought Martha to the bunker and makes her promise that whatever happens, she won’t leave the bunker. Like that would work?

Martha storms out of there and goes to Jonas’s place and finds her Jonas there. They finally end up kissing one another even with everything, after everything.

And, then Adam appears out of nowhere and shoots Martha because for Jonas to become the man that he is meant to be, her death is necessary.

Although before Jonas could even process her death, a different Martha, from another world with bangs and a different hairstyle shows up and introduces the concept of multiverses into the show’s mix.

In the midst of it, Jonas II went to get Bartosz (Claudia’s grandson), Magnus (Mikkel’s brother), and Franziska (Elisabeth’s older sister, her and Magnus are in a relationship), so that he can save them and get them to safety. And those four time-traveled out of Winden 2020 to somewhere right before the apocalypse.

Also, Charlotte went to the power plant, where a wormhole opens and she sees her daughter/mother, Elisabeth, in 2053. They both reach out to touch each other’s hands through the portal which presumably is one of the major events that sets off the apocalypse since they are a paradox themselves.

When the explosion happens, Young Noah, Young Elisabeth, Peter, Claudia, and her daughter Regina were all in the bunker, so they all probably made it out.

And that just about covers most of the major events that you need to remember before starting Dark Season 3.

For more detailed information regarding the characters, their relationships, and their story arcs in Dark, you can visit the official website of Dark here.

Dark Season 3 is now available to stream on Netflix.