Created by Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Starring Louis Hofmann, Maja Schöne, Oliver Masucci, Mark Waschke
“Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive, they are connected in a never-ending circle.”
Take Twin Peaks – a chilling supernatural mystery centred around a murder in a misty small town whose residents hide dark secrets – and add in a time-travel enabling wormhole buried beneath the lumber mill… I mean nuclear power plant… and you get Netflix’s original German-language series, DARK.
Season two picks up several months after the events of season one, which you’ll want to have seen to stand any chance at keeping up. In fact, even having watched season 1, a refresher wouldn’t go astray as the series wastes no time in delivering a barrage of new, skilfully written and revealed intersecting, paradoxical timelines that will leave you pausing to consult an online guide (Netflix has even published its own online resource). While at times it can be hard to follow, the execution of this richly shot, mind-melting mystery makes it even harder to stop watching.
The latest season covers the events of the ‘second cycle’, which is set (or fated) to culminate in the apocalyptic event that leads to the dystopian future in which we left Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hofmann) in the season 1 cliff-hanger. While the series satisfyingly answers a number of burning questions from season 1, intersecting and competing storylines set across multiple timelines present many new ones, as well as a number of mind-boggling ‘bootstrap paradoxes’.
This is where DARK really shines (no pun intended), though, and makes it such a rewarding investment; is the confidence it flaunts in its writing – its willingness to lean in to these paradoxes which it uses to propel the story forwards… or is it backwards?
With the third season set to be its last, one of the biggest mysteries still remaining is, can it maintain momentum?
BLAIR ADAMSON
