Dark Season 3, Episode 5 recap: Did they really kill off [SPOILER]?
By Monita Mohan
Say goodbye to a few favourites in Dark Season 3, Episode 5!
Final seasons usually herald untimely deaths of characters, but while these are expected, they’re still no less shocking. Dark Season 3, Episode 5 drives home the point that this show is closing in on the end. The fight between Eva’s Light and Adam’s Shadow will end in deaths – whether it be the end of just one world or both remains to be seen.
But, before we dive into who died in Dark Season 3, Episode 5, there are a few new details we learn about the timelines and the characters.
Ever since Eva (the German version of Eve) and her world have been introduced, it seems like the timelines we were following have been thrown out of kilter. The Stranger knew nothing of Earth-2 Martha, and in this episode, we see Claudia Tiedemann meet her same-age doppelganger. This is probably the first time on the show that someone has met themselves at the same age.
Earth-2 Claudia tells her Earth-Prime counterpart that she mustn’t listen to Jonas, instead, Eva is her salvation. Claudia must keep the timeline intact, including the apocalypse. This is the only way for the black matter to appear in the strategic locations and times that will allow time travel to be possible.
Related Story: Netflix’s Dark Season 3, Episode 4 recap
We also get a little background into Charlotte’s life. We know that she grew up with her ‘grandfather’ HG Tannhaus, but Charlotte (Stephanie Amarell) learns that they’re not related. Tannhaus lost his family the day two women arrived with a baby for him to care for. Could the two women be adult Charlotte and Elisabeth? We see them head into the time machine in 2053, but we don’t know where they’re going.
When young Charlotte learns of this deception, she briefly runs away only to run into the man who will become her future husband. Peter Doppler (Pablo Striebeck) arrives in Winden after his mother’s death to be with the father he never knew he had. This probably explains why Peter seemed so devoted to Helge in the future.
Dark Season 3: Who gets killed?
In 1987, Katharina makes a plan to get Ulrich out of the mental hospital and escape to the future with their son Mikkel. The lead nurse is her mother Helene (Katharina Spiering) and Katharina knows her route home by heart.
When Helene leaves, Katharina follows her, but Helene spots her stalker. Katharina tries to get her mother’s keycard, but Helene is alarmingly strong and holds the other woman at bay. The situation gets a lot worse when Katharina accidentally refers to Helene as ‘mom’.
This sets Helene off – in the previous episode, we discovered that young Helene had aborted an unwanted child. She was of a religious bent of mind before Hannah set her at ease. Hearing this adult half-crazed woman call her ‘mom’ has Helene believing her unborn child has returned from hell. If we’re perfectly honest, it seems like Helene had a lot of issues and it shows in this episode of Dark Season 3.
Katharina and Helene end up in an altercation, and Helene somehow wins. She bludgeons Katharina’s head in with a rock and drowns the body, not realizing Katharina’s St Christopher pendant has been left in the mud to be found by later generations. Then Helene returns to her house, verbally and physically assaulting young Katharina because she’s just a really horrible person with anger management issues.
In 2020, Elisabeth and Peter also have a fight. The child is tired of holding out hope that the other members of her family are alive. While Peter continues his search, Elisabeth returns to their trailer to find a man who has broken in. He’s in there for food but once he’s incapacitated Elisabeth, the thug tries to assault her.
Thankfully Peter arrives in time to save his daughter, but he is stabbed and killed during the ensuing altercation. Elisabeth kills the attacker in a rage and escapes to find young Noah. We know these two have a future together, but seriously, there was a better way to plot the death of Peter and Elisabeth’s character growth. There’s a lot to love about Dark, but the writers are leaning into boring old tropes for many of their female characters.
That’s two characters from Earth-Prime down. But wait for it. There’s one more.
Dark Season 3: A main character dies
Remember how we called Jonas an idiot in our previous recap? Well, he heard and finally uses his brain in this episode. Jonas feels like everyone is lying to him so it’s time for him to confront Eva about whether he can save his world or not. He’s especially certain of this course of action because Earth-2 Martha gets a scratch on her face that makes her look like the version who rescued him from his world.
Martha follows Jonas to Eva’s secret lair and pretty much declares her undying love for the man. It’s still unconvincing that this Martha would feel this way about Jonas – I wish they’d included some version of Jonas on Earth-2, a lookalike or something so that it made their connection stronger. Right now, their bond feels contrived.
Eva arrives to tell Jonas that he’s meddling with the plan. Jonas’ actions could untie the infinity knot and break the cycle that Adam and Eva have been fighting to keep together. Older Martha and yet another version of young Martha – this one bears a long scar along her left cheek like her older counterparts – join Eva to gang up on Earth-2 Martha and convince her that she has to listen to them to save her world.
When Martha dithers too much, the other younger Martha apologizes and shoots Jonas. In a scene mirroring the final moments of Dark Season 2, Martha cradles Jonas’ dying body as he hands her his copy of the St. Christopher pendant.
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Do you think Jonas is really dead in Dark Season 3? How will this impact the timelines? Let us know your theories.