Dark Season 3, Episode 7 recap: Did [SPOILER]’s plan work?

Dark Season 3, Episode 7 fills in even more gaps.

It’s the penultimate episode of Dark Season 3 and we’re left with more questions than answers. We last saw Adam in the midst of his evil plan to kill Earth-2 Martha and the origin. He’d set his pawns in motion by sending them throughout space and time.

This entire episode is dedicated to answering one question – does Adam’s plan succeed? Will he finally find the paradise he’s looking for?

Paradise is a constant refrain in this episode, as Elisabeth in 2020 keeps asking young Noah about it. Noah, of course, has heard all about paradise from Adam, who claimed it is a free land where people who love each other can live forever. As we know, Adam’s idea of paradise is actually different – he foresees nothing but eternal darkness.

Related Story: Netflix’s Dark Season 3, Episode 6 recap

Let’s break down how Adam’s plan comes together in Dark Season 3, Episode 7.

Dark Season 3, Episode 7: The Past Catches Up

One of the anomalies in the timelines has been Silja (Lea van Acken), the girl in the future who helped young Jonas and has resurfaced once again in this season. Adam sent her and Agnes somewhere in the past – while we don’t know where Agnes went, Silja arrives in 1890.

She meets young Bartosz, who is disillusioned by older Jonas’ failure to return them to their time. A few years later, they welcome their first child Hanno, and Bartosz looks… devastated?

Silja has obviously been sent to the past with the intent of creating offspring that will play a part in the plan, but Bartosz knows nothing about this. He’s stuck in the past and this is his life. Paul Lux’s expression is brilliant – the unspoken horror of realizing he has sealed his fate with this child is tragic.

What’s worse, Silja dies giving birth to their baby girl a few years after. Before her death, she named the girl Agnes – the same Agnes who will become Agnes Nielsen, steal Doris Tiedemann’s heart and leave Tronte an orphan. The same Agnes who will shoot her brother dead. But isn’t her brother Noah?

Yes, Hanno and Noah are the same. Noah traveled through time when he found his baby daughter, Charlotte, missing in the 2040s. He promised his wife Elisabeth that he would bring their baby back and Elisabeth never saw either of them again.

As we had surmised, Charlotte was kidnapped on Adam’s orders by adult Charlotte and Elisabeth to take back to the 1970s and leave her in the care of Tannhaus. Noah was killed long before Charlotte reappeared in the timeline, but not before he recruited his younger self – Hanno – into the cause and was indoctrinated by Adam to experiment on children to create a viable time machine. And so, that cycle continued.

Dark Season 3, Episode 7: The Road to Adam

[Content warning: Suicide]

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We learnt in the previous episode that Jonas’ fate differed depending on whether Martha from Earth-2 rescued him or not. So far, the reality we followed included Martha. She saved Jonas, followed Adam’s orders to go to 1888 and return to the future of Earth-Prime and then ended up being at the centre of the black matter ball.

In a different reality, Martha was stopped by Earth-2 Bartosz from helping Jonas. Bartosz explained that Adam was full of lies and they went back to confront Eva.

Eva explained that by choosing to side with her, Martha chose life, whereas, with Adam, there was nothing but death. To drive home the difference, Eva slashes Martha’s face, so that she bears the same scar as her older counterparts. The scar is probably just a visual differentiation between the two Marthas because it doesn’t seem to play a part in the story.

So, what became of this Jonas, the one who evolves into the Stranger and then Adam? Jonas was shell-shocked by Martha’s death and he and Claudia attempted to fracture the God Particle and harness it for time travel. Three years into their failures, Jonas hit a low enough point that he attempted to kill himself in the same fashion as his father.

Jonas is saved by young Noah who reveals a terrible truth to him – Jonas can’t die because Adam already exists. He proves it by handing Jonas a gun that refuses to fire when he points it at himself, but successfully makes a hole in the wall. As tragic as it is to see Jonas in the depths of his depression, this scene needed a trigger warning.

Noah and Jonas become allies, but only because Adam said they will till Jonas apparently betrays Noah. For years, the two of them, along with Claudia, attempt to crack the particle, but it doesn’t work. Noah believes it’s because Claudia is sabotaging their experiments. He’s right.

Claudia is following Earth-2 Claudia’s orders, but she’s disillusioned now. Her older self had promised time travel would save her daughter, but it hasn’t worked. Claudia kills her counterpart, disguises herself and dupes Eva into revealing the next steps in her plan. Was Eva fooled?

Jonas and Noah become older and then Charlotte is captured. Noah believes Jonas did it, and since Jonas isn’t a confrontational person, he can’t seem to convince Noah of his innocence. So, that’s the ‘betrayal’ Adam mentioned.

Everything proceeds as we’ve seen throughout Dark, including Jonas getting stranded in 1888 with the others. He relentlessly experiments with the little black matter left to him by Earth-2 Martha, becoming increasingly obsessive to the point that he foregoes precaution and gets injured.

How reckless is he? Well, in the early 1900s Hannah turns up with her daughter Silja in tow. She finds Bartosz and explains that an old woman ordered her to come to this time. Eva told Hannah that Jonas was searching for her. That’s a lie.

Hannah finds Jonas and he looks as disfigured as Adam. Andreas Pietschmann is in heavy makeup and prosthetics to capture the look of his older self. Jonas is cold and distant, hiding his obvious emotions at seeing his mother again. He’s already addicted to the idea of finding paradise by placing all the pieces in the right place.

Jonas thinks that Silja is in the wrong time period. To successfully place her where she belongs, Jonas kills his own mother and takes Silja away. We know Silja is a young woman in the 2050s, while Adam is an old man, but how does she get there?

Jonas continues to work on his plan until he becomes the man who watches Martha perish in the black matter. The ball of light disappears as does Martha. If the origin is gone, what is Adam still doing here?

After 66 years of planning, Adam has failed. He’s not looking at paradise. He hasn’t changed time. Adam is just alone. And then, the door to his lab opens and old Claudia (Lisa Kreuzer) appears and greets him.

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Were you surprised that Adam’s plan didn’t succeed in Dark Season 3, Episode 7? Let us know in the comments.