Dark Season 1 and 2 Recap | Complete Story So Far Explained!

Dark Season 1 & 2 Recap

The past influences the future and the future influences the past in the upcoming final season of the Netflix series, Dark. So strap into this time travel chair, put you're thinking caps on, and maybe you'll get lucky... with your aunt.

Characters In Dark

Confused yet? We are too. Guten tag from Winden, Germany, 2019 where the motto is "It's sad here". After the suicide of his father Michael Kahnwald, grief-stricken Jonas returns to school to discover that fellow classmate Erik Obendorf has gone missing. Jonas' mom Hannah deals with grief  in her own way: by having an affair with local police officer Ulrich Nielsen. Ulrich's wife, Katharina, is the high school principal. They have three kids: Magnus, Martha, and Mikkel. Magnus has a little thing for Franziska Doppler, whose mother Charlotte is also a police officer with Ulrich.

 

Dark Season 1 Recap

Martha had a little thing for Jonas, but now has a little thing for Bartosz Tiedemann. I mean, who doesn't, right? His mom, Regina, owns a hotel and has cancer, and her husband, Aleksander, is the director of the nuclear power plant and, hey, oddly enough, doesn't have cancer. And finally, Mikkel has a little thing for getting lost in time. After tagging along with the rest of the German Brat Pack and getting spooked by a creepy tunnel in the woods.

Mikkel ends up being missing kid number two. Well technically, missing kid number three because Ulrich's brother, Mads, went missing in 1986. Oh, what's that? They find his body in the woods still somewhat preserved after missing for exactly 33 years, but his eyes have been burnt and eardrums blown out exactly like 33 dead sheep and a whole lot of birds around town? Whoa, OK. Speaking of 33 years ago... hey! That's where Mikkel time-traveled to. Guten tag from Winden, Germany, 1986, where the motto is "It's sad here, but hey, remember this fun song?"

 
Mikkel runs into a younger version of his dad who's a rebel without a cause, and his mom, who's ironically the school bully. Mikkel eventually gets adopted by young nurse, Ines Kahnwald, and changes his name to Michael, which means Mikkel is Jonas' father, Ulrich is Jonas' grandfather, and Martha is... oh. Jonas discovers all this after he too travels back to 1986 via a wormhole deep in the Winden cave.

 

All this was achieved thanks to the mysterious Stranger who gave Jonas a map for the tunnels. Jonas also bumps into a fourteen-year-old version of his mother, Hannah, who's crushing hard for Ulrich. She loves him so much that she falsely accuses him of assaulting Katharina which leads to police officer Egon Tiedemann arresting Ulrich for the second time. Don't worry we'll explain the first arrest in a minute. It actually happened 33 years prior. Meanwhile, Claudia, mother of Regina, becomes the new head of the Winden nuclear power plant and discovers a hidden stockpile of waste in the tunnels that the plant fudged the books about.

 

Back in 2019, Charlotte's deaf daughter, Elisabeth, comes into contact with the mysterious Noah, a creepy time-traveling priest with a sick back tattoo who's behind all these boy abductions. He's been teaming up with Charlotte's father-in-law, Helge. Not the confused old man version in 2019, but the confused middle-aged version in 1986, to kidnap kids to use as test subjects for his incredibly boring-looking time machine. Eh, it's a chair. That's all it is.
 

Convinced that Helge is involved with the abductions, Ulrich follows him into the tunnels and through the wormhole, but Ulrich takes a left when he should have taken a right and time-travels 66 years into the past. So... Guten tag from Winden Germany, 1953, where the motto is "It's sad here, but at least we don't have a Berlin Wall in our town. I've been lookin' for freedom!

 

And, oh! OK, that's where those missing kids went: the construction site of the future nuclear power plant. You know, it's always the last place you look. Ulrich bumps into his father, Tronte, and his grandmother, Agnes, as well as a watchmaker, H.G. Tannhaus, who wrote this book that everyone keeps passing around, "The Theory of Time Travel", which probably has something to do with time travel. Tannhaus will eventually go on to make a time machine thanks to blueprints from future Claudia. Hot on the case, our hero Ulrich tracks down confused little kid version of Helge, beats him over the head with a rock, then dumps the body in an underground bunker. Case closed.

 

Thankfully, young Egon Tiedemann arrests Ulrich under suspicion of murdering kids. Case closed. Again. 66 years later, Charlotte discovers Ulrich's 1953 mugshot and thinks "Huh. That's odd." Meanwhile, future Claudia provides some time travel spoiler alerts to Tronte Nielsen, Ulrich's father, and Peter Doppler, Charlotte's husband, after they discover a body-dumping portal in the bunker days before Mikkel went missing. Meanwhile, poor 2019 Helge tries to kill himself in 1986, but he just kind of ends up killing himself. I mean, the old one dies. 1986 Helge is still good. Although, not really. He's extremely confused now. Just like all of us.

After all the lies and secrets and affairs and time travel headache egg-or-chicken-came-first stuff, Jonas just says fuck it and decides to go back to rescue Mikkel in 1986, but Noah, who specializes in abducting children in different time periods, nabs Jonas and locks him in his creepy bunker which is directly above the wormhole. It's there Jonas learns that the Stranger is actually a future version of himself.
 

Future Jonas then takes the Tannhaus time machine to the middle of the wormhole to close the time tunnel once and for all. In doing so, a rip in time appears in the bunker leading Jonas and the definitely-not-dead-but-pretty-confused child 1953 Helge to touch hands which sends them both 33 years into the future. Helge ends up in 1986 and Jonas in 2052. Guten tag from Winden, Germany, 2052, where there's a new motto: "Everyone you love is dead!"

Dark Season 2 Recap

Season 2 starts off six months after the end of season 1, so it's now 2053, 2020, 1987, and 1954. Jonas is trapped in this post-apocalyptic future with no way home and this Mad Max version of Elisabeth is his only friend. Luckily, Jonas finds a giant floating blob Higgs-Boson-God-particle thing in the collapsed nuclear power plant that enables him to travel back in time... to 1921. Yeesh. Overshot by about a century. And the tunnels won't be built for another 33 years,  so he's kind of stuck again. But a young Noah, who's been digging the time tunnel and is been mentored by the older version of himself introduces Jonas to the puppet master pulling all of the time strings: Adam. He runs a secret time traveler club called Sic Mundus which has a cool logo that can be seen everywhere. Oh, and Adam is a future version of Jonas. So the apocalypse will happen on June 27, 2020. Hey, that's when Dark season 3 premieres!
 

Future Claudia, who people nickname "The White Devil", gives her younger self the time machine back in 1987. Claudia and Adam are having a big old time beef. You see, one wants change while the other wants to keep it all the same. You know, sort of. I don't--which came first: the chicken or the egg? We don't know. We don't know. Meanwhile, 2019 Ulrich has spent 33 years in a mental institution since time-traveling back to 1953. He eventually escapes and finds young Mikkel in 1987, but that doesn't last. Case closed again again.

Ulrich's grandmother, Agnes Nielsen, is also the sister of Noah. She knows where to find the missing pages to the Triquetra notebook which details the final days leading to the apocalypse. Claudia has them. But after Noah takes her to confession with a shotgun, he has them. Noah also drops a big time truth bomb when he reveals that Charlotte is his daughter. So who's Charlotte's mom? Well, it's Elisabeth. She's also Charlotte's daughter, so Charlotte's own daughter is her... she's her mother. Uh... my brain can't do the things the show wants me to do with it.
 

Uuuuhhh... anybody else smell burnt toast?

 

Oh yes, of course. The Bootstrap Paradox: a theoretical paradox of time travel that occurs when an object or piece of information sent back in time becomes trapped within an infinite cause-effect loop in which the item no long has a discernible point of origin—

Anyhoo... new character alert! Inspector Clausen takes charge of the task force to figure out where all these missing people went, but the parents have already pieced together all the time travel shenanigans thanks to future Jonas. The kids also find out about time travel thanks to Bartosz, who got a time machine from Noah. Meanwhile, Adam, with the help of Jonas, wants to break this 33-year time cycle that has been making Winden sad.

To do that, Adam sends Jonas back in time to prevent his father from committing suicide in 2019 which, in turn, will prevent Mikkel from getting lost, living in 1986, marrying Hannah, and becoming Jonas' father. Essentially, Adam/Jonas is going to wipe himself out from existence in an effort to reshape the world. But back in 2019, the day before Michael/Mikkel will commit suicide, he reveals to Jonas that it was actually Jonas that led him into the time travel tunnels in the first place.

 

Jonas, who just wants to stop all this confusing madness, is more confused than ever, and that's when Claudia shows up and reveals that this is all actually a part of Adam's master dark plan. It turns out that instead of breaking the cycle, Jonas was just doing exactly what he was supposed to do and continuing the cycle. To fix things, Jonas has to fight himself.

 

Claudia also reveals that she's seen a world without Jonas, and it ain't good. Then, for twelve months offscreen, she Rocky Balboa trains him to be a better time traveler. So Michael still commits suicide, Jonas still leads Mikkel into the caves, and everything is kind of back to where it was supposed to be. Back in 2020, future Jonas lets Martha in on the whole "you're my aunt" thing, and the totally emotionally-stable Hannah takes the time machine back to 1953 to break up with Ulrich

 

And maybe start a little thing with young Egon? But poor old Egon in 1987 pieces together all the time travel stuff and figures out Claudia has a connection to it, which leads to her accidentally killing her own father. Guilt-ridden, Claudia teams up with young Jonas to restart the time tunnel in the cave.

 

And now, it's a countdown to the end of the world. Aleksander Tiedemann gets arrested for identity theft by Clausen. This leads to a search warrant in the power plant revealing all that buried nuclear waste. And whoops! That opens up that big God particle!
 

Noah comes to the realization that he's been used by Adam, but is unable to kill him because that's not how all this time-travel destiny-determined game is played. Agnes then kills Noah. However, young Noah, who's all about drinking that Adam savior Kool-Aid, travels to 2020 to prevent future Jonas from killing himself. That would definitely throw out the whole Jonas-becoming-Adam thing. Adam, with the help of future Magnus and Franziska, travels to 2020 and kills Martha in front of young Jonas.

So then future Jonas, Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz DeLorean out with a Tannhaus time machine. Katharina heads into the cave and finds the time tunnel, which is all lit up now, while Charlotte and future Elisabeth touch hands in a rip in time at the nuclear power plant. And then this happens. Luckily, 1987 Claudia, 2020 Regina, 2020 Peter, 1921 Noah, and 2020 Elisabeth find refuge in the 2020 bunker. And not to make things more confusing: alternate timeline (Maybe? We don't know?) Martha shows up to rescue Jonas from the impending apocalypse with her own fancy time machine.

 

Well, that was all simple enough. See? Time travel is easy to explain. Especially when you're visiting five different decades with about 60 variations of characters. Hopefully, season 3 will clear up some things. Like how did Adam get all wrinkly? What's the deal with Martha's alternate timeline? And will Winden get a new town motto? Maybe something like, "Hey, please stop with all the time travel because we can't keep track of who's related to who." Find out in season 3 of Dark.