‘Dark’ on Netflix Season 2 Finale Recap: Apocalypse Now

For several episodes now, Dark Season 2 has fired pronouncements about the nature of human life that live up to the series’ title straight at the audience’s gut. It’s only too fitting that, in its final episode, it should do so to its characters as well.

The final episode of Dark‘s relentlessly gripping second season is entitled “Endings and Beginnings,” a reversal of the season premiere’s title “Beginnings and Endings.” And believe me, that cheap symmetry is the only cheap thing about it. Whether you’re talking about Stranger Things on Netflix, Westworld on HBO, or even the letdown of (sigh) Mr. Robot Season 3 on USA, Dark is the science fiction show to beat. Its take on its sci-fi concept is wholly original. Its grasp on its complex story is sure. Its creation of characters worth caring about—not necessarily liking; there’s a difference, and it cuts in Dark’s favor—is unmatched. Its refusal to pull punches is glorious.

And its resistance to recapability is substantial. But I’ll do my best!

It’s July 27, 2020, the day of the apocalypse. As Peter & Elisabeth Doppler and Charlotte & Regina Tiedemann hide out in the time travelers’ bunker, where they’re joined by the young version of Noah, a combination of factors triggers the dark-matter apocalypse.

In part it’s the time-traveling teenage Jonas and Claudia, reopening the underground time passage.

In part it’s Katharina Nielsen, seeking out that passage 33 years later.

In part, possibly at least, it’s the adult Jonas, activating the portable time machine to save himself and the teenage trio of Bartosz Tiedemann, Magnus Nielsen, and Franziska Doppler.

In part it’s Inspector Clausen, bulldozing his way through countless safety regulations and cracking open a buried barrel of God Particle sludge in hopes of nailing Aleksander Tiedemann, his brother’s likely killer, to the wall.

In part it’s Elisabeth Doppler, reaching through the God Particle portal in the future in order to touch her mother Charlotte, who tried and failed to stop Clausen from unlocking it in the present.

In part it’s Charlotte doing the same and reaching out to touch Elisabeth, her mother; yes, as predicted, Charlotte is Elisabeth’s daughter, and Elisabeth is Charlotte’s daughter, ad infinitum.

And in part it’s down to the overall malfeasance of Adam, the horrifically scarred elder self of Jonas. With the help of his future disciples Magnus and Franziska, he has his one-time right hand man Noah executed by his own sister, Agnes. He then straps up and heads to the present, where he murders Martha just after her extremely romantic and hot reconnection with Jonas. The pain he inflicts here, he says, will be what turns his younger self into a man willing to destroy the entire world, which has been Adam’s goal all along.

Of course, if you thought it’d be that simple (simple???), then you don’t know Dark. Forget multiple timelines—we’ve now got multiple worlds to worry about.

Yes, that’s an alternate-reality Martha, who shows up equipped with a miniature, spherical time machine and some killer bangs in order to rescue teenage time-traveling Jonas from getting wiped out by the apocalypse while grieving over the corpse of her counterpart. It’s the surest proof yet that Jonas and Claudia and Adam and everyone else who’s claimed there’s a way to break the cycle and start a new world is right. We just don’t know what kind of world it is, and whether starting it is a good idea at all.

Despite juggling more balls than a time-displaced circus act, this episode remains true to Dark‘s core principles. It’s a brilliant, nearly fractal examination of time travel as a subgenre, keeping the audience guessing even while it pretty much confirms that the existence of a future self means the past is beyond changing.

It’s also a searing small-town melodrama, in which love is the prime mover. That means Jonas and Martha’s love of each other despite their time-displaced incest. It means Bartosz’s unrequited love of Martha, and how it both embitters and drives him. It means Claudia’s love for her daughter Regina, which is so strong she essentially risks driving her adult child mad by traveling through time to appear to her. It means Peter and Elisabeth Doppler’s love for Charlotte and Franziska, whose survival you can all but watch them give up on in real time. It means Katharina’s love for her son Mikkel, for whom she’ll go to any length to save. It means Noah’s love for Elisabeth, his wife, and Charlotte, his daughter and his mother-in-law simultaneously. Amazingly, absurdly, beautifully, it means Clausen’s love of his brother, a relationship that’s entirely tangential to the rest of the plot yet which triggers the apocalypse more directly than anything else on the show.

Loose ends? Sure, there are a few, as you’d expect from a show with a plot described by its own characters as a knot that can only be destroyed rather than untied. Who is the scarred girl from the future who lives in the apocalyptic Elisabeth’s community? Where did the alternate Martha come from, and who broke the cycle to create her world? Are we ever going to find out what happened to Wöller’s eye? Why are there gigantic spiderwebs in the future? Did the dark-matter time bomb create Shelob the Great???

I don’t know. I don’t really care. All I do know is that I was, as the cliché runs, on the edge of my seat for the entire hour. (Like, seriously, my upper thighs hurt.) I want these tormented families to heal, I want these star-crossed lovers to love, I want the weird town of Winden to emerge whole on some other strand of the spacetime continuum. Not happily ever after, because no one gets that, but just…ever after. Just continuing despite it all.

Dark, at its heart, argues that survival as people who love one another is a future worth fighting for. It’s not optimistic, and it’s under no obligation to be so. But I’m clinging to that hope as hard as any of the time travelers. All I have to do is wait until the third and final season. I suspect it will debut next year, right around the date of the apocalypse. Hang in there, everyone. Hang in there.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Dark Season 2 Episode 8 ("Endings and Beginnings") on Netflix