Dark Season 3, Episode 2 recap: What happened to the survivors?
By Monita Mohan
Dark Season 3, Episode 2 takes us to three different timelines.
While Jonas was taken to a different Earth, it’s time to discover what happened to the rest of Winden following the dark matter explosion. We had briefly visited the apocalyptic future of Winden in the previous season, but in Dark season 3, some of the people are living it. Other members of the core group, however, have been dispersed through time.
In this second episode, the main storylines take place in three time periods and build on our previous knowledge of how these characters are interconnected.
Dark Season 3: Katharina’s in 1987
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Katharina’s final moments before the apocalypse were spent in the cave system that led her to 1987.
She has taken up the search for her long-lost son Mikkel, but he’s nowhere to be found. This is because old Ulrich escaped prison to spend a day with his boy, but the ‘kidnapping’ led to Mikkel and Ines being locked away in protective custody.
Much like the other time-displaced characters, Katharina is a shocking sight to behold with unkempt hair and clothes, raving like a lunatic about memories of past events that haven’t even taken place yet.
She meets her younger self (Nele Trebs), young Ulrich (Ludger Bökelmann), and Hannah (Ella Lee) and tries to warn Hannah away from her budding relationship. I guess that doesn’t work!
Related Story: Netflix’s Dark season 3 premiere recap
When Katharina hears about the ‘madman’, she visits him and promises old Ulrich (Winfried Glatzeder) that she’s going to get him out of there. Katharina also meets her mother Helene Albers (Katharina Spiering), and while adult Katharina is emotional seeing her, young Katharina hates her mother. In her defense, Helene is downright abusive.
The Nielsens are still in turmoil over the loss of their young son, Mads, but what makes the matter worse is that Tronte Nielsen (Felix Kramer) seems to be more inclined to search for his missing love Claudia Tiedemann (Julika Jenkins) than Mads. Also, Tronte is the father of Regina, Claudia’s daughter. How long has that affair been going on?
The affair drives his wife Jana (Anne Lebinsky) to give him an ultimatum – he has to choose between his family or Regina. He chooses his family, leaving young Regina (Lydia Makrides) with no one to turn to for support other than Aleksander (Béla Gábor Lenz), the man who will become her husband.
1987 is also the year when the trio of creeps is going around murdering people connected with the power plant. Who are they, and why are they killing people?
Dark Season 3: The Tannhaus Device in 1888
One of the time travel devices used was created by Tannhaus, but we realize it’s a different Tannhaus than the owner of the property in 1888. This is where older Jonas/ the Stranger meets alt-Martha, and in this episode of Dark season 3, we discover that the Stranger is not alone.
In the season 2 finale, the Stranger had gathered Franziska, Magnus, and Bartosz for a safe journey to before the apocalypse but they’d instead landed up in 1888. Martha explains that she’s from an alternate world, which the others struggle to believe.
It doesn’t help that the Stranger is distressed and on edge because he can’t recreate the time travel device without nuclear energy. Not much of that lying around in this era.
The Stranger has a benefactor in Tannhaus, who evidently has made it his life’s mission to create a time travel device. If the Stranger doesn’t succeed in creating a device quickly enough, it could explain how his prolonged anger and bitterness turn him into the evil Adam of the future. Considering older Magnus and Franziska are by Adam’s side, this hypothesis may be correct.
I am a little disappointed that Martha is given little to do in this episode. She seems to be little more than a catalyst for older Jonas’ actions, but she’s not given any initiative of her own. Bartosz shows her around Tannhaus’ old lodge, which will later become Adam’s headquarters. In the previous season, Bartosz briefly worked with Noah, so he has some insight into complex time-game being played.
He interrogates Martha about Adam, asking who he is and if he killed his Martha. To his horror, Bartosz learns that Adam is none other than Jonas himself.
Dark Season 3: The Apocalypse in 2020
Winden was the epicenter for the destruction of the world, but the Earth is still turning and people are surviving.
Claudia Tiedemann, having discovered that her daughter Regina (Deborah Kaufmann) is ailing from cancer, decided to stick around and care for her in the apocalypse. Claudia is already documenting her discoveries and attempting to create a time travel device. While she’s away, old Tronte Nielsen (Walter Kreye) arrives and kills Regina. He tells his daughter that ‘she’ said it’s for the best. Who is she? Old Claudia, old Martha, or someone else?
The Dopplers, Peter, and Elisabeth, are among the other survivors, desperately searching for Charlotte and Fransizka. Every day they search through the catalog of dead bodies to find any sign of their family. Every day they don’t see their names gives them hope that they’re alive, somewhere or somewhen. Soon, Winden will be walled up and the townspeople will be trapped inside.
Their search takes them to the Kahnwald home where young Noah (Max Schimmelpfennig) tries to interact with Elisabeth. But Peter interrupts because he already knows what Noah will grow up to be – a pawn in Adam’s evil game as he kidnaps and kills children. What Peter doesn’t know is that Noah and Elisabeth are fated to be together and have Charlotte. Young Noah is investigating the caves and plants the same idea in Elisabeth’s head to search for her sister and mother.
We already know that Fransizka is in 1888, but where’s Charlotte? She’s in 2053 with adult Elisabeth (Sandra Borgmann), now a grizzled old leader of the survivors.
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What do you think of the new connections added in Dark Season 3 Episode 2? Let us know in the comments.