“There is strong shadow, where is much light”
Johann Wolfgang, von Goethe
We, the viewer, have traveled back in time to when the cataclysm engulfs Winden. A shocked Jonas sits by his dead Martha and holds her hand, as if she might still arise from her enchantment of death. He promises he will make everything right. But the shock-wave is about to hit and he rushes to the cellar. As it hits we see mature Jonas wake up in 1888 in a disturbed state. He opens the letter from Martha. We hear her tell him not to give up ”hope” in finding a way out of the ”maze” and a way to ”save” them both (Theseus and Ariadne?) and that he will keep his promise to her. Cryptically and Eva-like, she intones, ”In light and in shadow”. We see the other Martha holding the bloody St Christopher and the body of Jonas prostrate upon the marble memento mori killing floor. The three murdering Martha’s are looking at the portal as she tells Jonas that we must both do terrible things to untie the knots that connect everything which includes letting her die. To know how precious something or someone is we must first lose it? Perhaps. Martha describes them as ”the perfect match” slightly ironic, now given, they have both watched each other die. Jonas looks up, unconvinced, and proceeds to burn the letter.
Bloodied Martha returns home to her Red House. It is the ‘Day of the Apocalypse‘ in the other Winden. She’s in shock and attempts to wipe herself clean of the bloody remnants of Jonas. Magnus enters and she tries to tell him that today is when the world ends. He tells her she is talking ”psycho-crap”. Now Martha knows just how Cassandra must have felt every time she warned her family. Martha looks at the St Christopher and we cut to her in Eva’s sacred space where Mad Max Martha is telling her that she and Jonas do not belong together. They stand in front of an almost completely destroyed diptych. As we close in on Martha’s deeply scarred face she is told that she will forget him. Not so sure about that. This time.
The other Young Martha who delivered the letter has been locked up in a cage, like an animal, by Adam. Martha shouts at him that he promised to stop the Apocalypse and he lied to her just like her older self has. He responds that he has finally realised that the world Old Tannhaus and Sic Mundus wished to create without ”pain” and without human ”destiny’‘ is not the true Paradise. This true Paradise is where ”nothing exists” and all is ”eternal darkness” and can only be caused by the Apocalypse.
We cut to Bartosz home and his father is talking to Obendorf about those barrels of waste. He explains to Bartosz that he is being blackmailed. Out of the blue he tells his son that his name is Boris Niewald and he was involved in a murder 33 years ago but he is innocent. Bartosz is not shocked but angry and he asks if his mum knew. She did not. Charlotte turns up at heavily pregnant Hannah’s home with Ulrich. (Check out the painting on the main wall, more trees). Charlotte has the results of the analysis of the 2 coins. They are exactly identical. Charlotte can only conclude that: ”it’s as if the penny has somehow traveled through time”.
Martha looks at herself in the mirror and begins to slash at her hair with scissors. The scars are now not just on her face. As her mum, Katherina, wakes, she questions her about ‘fate‘. It is a thematic thread running through this episode of ‘Dark‘ and has been endlessly debated and pondered upon since man could write down his thoughts on clay or papyrus or recite from memory the ‘Iliad‘ and the ‘Odyssey‘ of that (blind) bard, Homer. Martha looks different. With that black jumper on she is becoming as she will be in the future. (Or is that the past?)
Claudia enters the destroyed power plant and finds an orb of light containing tentacles of black matter. Light, and shadow within. As she attempts to touch it a voice shouts for her to stop. She turns and it is Jonas. He is alive. The murdering Martha is sitting at a table in Eva’s kingdom and she has just finished writing that letter which Jonas will burn. But why is he still alive in his world she asks Eva. Eva draws the mathematical sign for infinity (or the ‘endless circle‘ in ‘Dark‘) and explains that the ”switching point” (where the line returns upon itself) creates 2 overlapping realities, one on the ”inner side” and the other on the ”outer side” of the same line. On one of these possibilities Jonas dies but on the other he lives, again and again. This is ”quantum entanglement” she tells Martha. She looks bemused. She is not alone. Anyone seen my cat? And this is what Adam has been trying to cut (the ‘Gordian knot‘ ?) declaims Eva so as to prevent what is growing inside of you, the origin. We return to Claudia and QE* Jonas as he gets angry with her and her for not telling him what was to happen. But I know what is in the barrels she tells him and I can help you to save them. All of them. Here we go again.
It is now just 3 hours to the Apocalypse. The other Apocalypse. Martha tells Bartosz what is going on to which he listens. Ulrich confronts Helge in the cell. She told me to send the boy in the bunker to the future to fill the gaps. Ulrich asks about the pennies. ”I must stop him” says Helge. Ulrich responds ”Who?” and Helge answers, ”You” which momentarily bewilders Ulrich. Ulrich lets him go. Meanwhile Martha is convincing Bartosz she is not crazy. And we see the origin, the dark progeny of Martha and Jonas, open up the portal to transport his other two iterations. He has a portable device. How? And where are they going?
Martha is being taken to Adam through a post-apocalyptic labyrinth by the girl who knocked out Jonas at the end of Season 1. She tells Martha she is one of the ”chosen few”. (Its never the ‘chosen many‘ as its so much easier to control a few followers). Adam opens the portal telling Magnus and Franziska to carry out their task. It isn’t good as they hold each others hand tightly for support. Immediately, we cut to the parallel world and there is only one hour to go before the Apocalypse. Franziska in sign language asks Magnus what all the strange events in Winden could mean. Magnus tells her that Martha is convinced that today the world ends. If it does Franziska responds then ”we die together”. ”Together” Magnus repeats. That metallic beat begins again as if some giant doomsday clock was ticking down the time left and we see Bartosz and Martha heading for the plant, Charlotte and Boris in the plant and Ulrich following Helge into the caves.
Suddenly, the original, mature iterations, of Magnus and Franziska appear in the road to stop Martha. You have been lied to they tell her. If you come with us now you can save Jonas but you must choose our world. The parallel world must die. Magnus hands her the portable device. What a dilemma. Whom to trust? We hear Eva’s voice telling us that Adam has positioned his pieces. This must now be the endgame of light against shadow. She is standing beneath the fluctuating portal telling her pawns it is their move now. She continues her battle-cry telling them that the knot has given them life and that they are the ”keepers” of that knot in both worlds. Eva touches Martha’s stomach and tells her that Adam will never untie the knot because he does not know where it begins and ends. Alexander the Great (356 BC – 323 BC) had no problem with an unsolvable knot in Gordium a few millennia back during his conquest of the known world, he just took his sword and hacked it clean through with a mighty blow.
Eva inspects her troops: Bartosz, Claudia, Egon (protect his family tree?), Martha and Noah, and gives them their own specific orders for the campaign. As Eva switches on the machine and the portal descends we see the other portal that Adam is using. Beneath it is a distraught Martha tied to a chair and desperately demanding Adam tell her, why he has lied to her, as she believed he was going to help her save them all. He responds that everyone is ”fulfilling their destinies” to make this moment happen and tells her that the origin growing inside of her must die. But as it is born of two worlds (light and shadow) it can only be killed with the power from both worlds which is created from both Apocalyptic events. The force that created the origin will annihilate the origin and everything in existence, ”Absolute annihilation” declaims Adam. No light and no shadow. Nothing. ”You’re insane” Martha shouts. Problem is, he isn’t. Adam grabs the St Christopher off her neck and tells her that there is ”no paradise” and that ”we (Martha and Jonas/Adam) are wrong”. That’s exactly what Eva has been saying.
And we end this episode with Eva intoning the mantras we have become very familiar with. But now they make complete logical sense as the connection between the world of light and its parallel world of shadow are shown as being fundamental to both the creation and destruction of the origin. Precisely because of the symbolic (and visual) complementarity of these two elements, light and shadow have always represented an important topos in Christian eschatology and philosophy. (I have already discussed at some length the ‘Myth of the Cave‘ by Plato). Light, to be appreciated, needs its opposite Shadow, which in return exists only as a consequence of it. Without the one there cannot exist the other. Absolute annihilation.
*Quantum Entanglement
Marc Barham
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- ‘Dark’ Season 3 Episode 8 ‘Paradise’ - August 25, 2020
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- ‘Dark’ Season 3 Episode 6 ‘Light and Shadow’ - August 12, 2020