15. Sic Mundus Creatus Est: Thus the world was created

The Right Way to Watch Dark

Imagine a sinister time-traveling conspiracy, spanning over three generations. That is Dark for you, the German science fiction thriller web television series. Co-created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the series is the first German-language Netflix original series, debuted on 1 December 2017. The series is often compared to another Netflix series, Stranger Things. But trust me on this, you cannot compare apples with oranges.

The story itself begins with dark unresolved mysteries: suicide and the disappearance of a child in the fictional town of Winden, Germany, where things are not quite what they seem. The story is revolved around four estranged families and their secrets. While centering on metaphysics, the show wrestles with various themes: time, family, friends, relationships, guilt, and fear. The characters throughout the two seasons discover something strange: the existence of a wormhole beneath their small town, which connects two different periods in history, 33 years apart.  Throughout the episodes, Dark explored the implications of time and its effect on human beings. The story takes place in five different time zones- 1954, 1987, 2019, 2020 and 2052, with characters being portrayed at various ages by multiple characters.

Dark feels like a compilation of all the time-traveling stories you have ever heard. The principle theory, however, is, in time, there is no free will, and we are all trapped in time. You cannot alter the past to change the future, on the contrary, you are changing the present to alter your past. This confusion is dramatized by the monotonous and eerie backdrop: endless rains, dead birds, Latin inscriptions, sinister priests and so on. In Dark, the community suffers because everybody is hiding their deepest mysteries.

The best way you can understand the story is through a chart or graph. In Dark, time travel is a massive puzzle, and you just don’t watch the show, you solve the puzzle along. If time travel puzzled you, Dark will blow your mind off. The show will make you think twice before entering a cave. The plot is immensely complicated, but rewarding at the end. Dark is creativity at its best!