Dark Season 2 Episode 7: The White Devil

~ Metacrone ~ 9 Comments

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Dark season 2 episode 7, The White Devil, grants the wishes of some of the characters, but some dreams come true as nightmares. Old Claudia’s body is found in 1953 and identified by Child Helge as the White Devil. Hannah takes a trip to 1953 to visit the other White Devil, Ulrich. She meets the Young Adult version of Egon while she’s there.

In 2020, Katharina goes full warrior goddess. She remembers she has a daughter to protect from incest and sketchy boyfriends who have become old men. Plus, she decides she’s ready to become a time traveler.

Martha meets Stranger Jonas and learns the truth about their relationship. Thanks, Mom.

Adult Claudia puts off the French delegation again, then takes the day off to prevent Egon’s death. It’s her turn to learn that the past/time can’t be changed, even if the events she’s focusing on feel to her like they are in the future.

If you are into drinking games, taking a shot for every apology given during this episode could be fun. Or it might be necessary to help you get through the episode.

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Fair Warning: Misogyny Is an Ideology Which Leads to Violence Against Women and I Won’t Ignore It

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While this looks like a stranger, women are much more likely to be injured or killed by a man they know. Photo by Sebastiaan Stam on Pexels.com

I’ve gotten some new followers lately, so, Hi and welcome! There’s something I need to say to everyone, before we go any further.

Currently, most of you are here to read Dark, a show we all love. But the character of Hannah is the target of so much misogyny it’s scary, on the show and in the real/online world. This pertains to other shows as well, with other characters who become the target for misogynists. On Altered Carbon season 1, it was Kristin Ortega. On Agents of SHIELD, it’s Daisy. Women who think and act for themselves, without regard to what the men around them want. Just like men do.

In the real world, women like Hannah, Kristin, Daisy and me (and you, if you are a woman) die every day because misogyny isn’t recognized, so, even though some of you would like me to, I won’t shut up about it. While racism is getting the attention it needs, the hatred and oppression of women, the other motivator for mass shootings, everyday killings and abuse, is largely being ignored, even though it was the motivator for the second shooting of the weekend of August 4, 2019, in Dayton, OH. Even though violence against women is on the increase, separate from mass shootings.

Racially motivated violence is described as being ideologically motivated, a label that gives it more weight and prompts calls to action to stop the white supremacists and white nationalists. Meanwhile, “experts” and law enforcement officials acknowledge the misogynist opinions and activities of violent criminals but refuse to acknowledge that misogyny is an ideology that leads to living a violent, cult-like lifestyle just as religious and racial extremism do.

Yet we know that many of the most recent mass shootings have been perpetrated by misogynist extremists who identify as such, calling themselves by such names as Incels (involuntary celibates) or Red Pillers (anti-feminists). It’s time we started calling out extremist misogyny as the dangerous, cult-like IDEOLOGY that it is.

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From the Horned God to Dionysus: The Men and Mythology of Netflix’s Dark

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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This Seems Like a Good Time to Talk About Ulrich as a Horned God (Who Is Tied in Knots)

**Spoilers through Season 2 Episode 8**

Okay, let’s give this a whirl. As you might imagine, Horned Gods aren’t my specialty, so I’ve done some research. But also, by the end of season 2, everything metaphorical in Dark is twisted and tangled together, just like the storylines. In season 1, we had nice, neat metaphors presented in ways that couldn’t be missed, with deeper meanings there if you wanted to search for them.

But, before we go any further, a warning. I can’t ignore current events while I’m writing this, and that’s not what I’m about, anyway. This piece was always going to examine the characters, mythology and their connection to the real world. Then the real world didn’t give me a choice. The creators of Dark didn’t choose to have boys be the ones to disappear simply to give women a break from victimization. The boys of the real world are making themselves disappear, and they’re often doing it while armed to the teeth.

They set the show in a town which was losing its main source of employment and then put that town through a slow dystopia which led to a fast apocalypse. This is what Western culture has put itself through since the 1970s, when corporations began moving manufacturing jobs from their traditional bases, and the towns whose original farming and small business economies were destroyed by the factories in the 19th century were now destroyed by the factories leaving.

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Dark Season 2 Episode 6: An Endless Cycle Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 7 Comments

Dark S2Ep6 Jonas & Martha with Medal1.png

Episode 6 of Dark, season 2, An Endless Cycle, answers questions which have lingered since the beginning of the series. The episode follows Young Jonas back to June 20, 2019, the day before Michael Kahnwald hung himself, and gives us a baseline for normal Winden life in 2019. The theme of the episode is betrayal.

On the time travel side, as expected, Jonas’ visit with Michael doesn’t go the way he wants. But he makes the most of his time in 2019 before he meets with his father, and has some unexpected encounters.

Recap

The episode begins with a voiceover by Adam and a visual showing the highpoints of the series, in reverse chronological order, ending at the beginning, with Michael’s suicide. Adam is, as usual, focused on beginnings as endings and looking for the ultimate terminating point, the end of the beginning, the exact moment where it all began, so that he can pull the plant out and get its entire root. With nothing left of the root, the plant can’t grow back. The time loop is extinguished. Or so he hopes.

But the beginning of the narrative is the moment I’ve been waiting for. The iconic, unaltered, Jonas Kahnwald morning routine, viewed in its natural state. The one we should have been comparing all of his other mornings to, for the last 15 episodes. And that one morning of Martha’s, too.

Ready?

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Dark Season 2 Episode 5: Lost and Found Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

Dark S2Ep5 Road Warriors

In season 2 episode 5 of Dark, Lost and Found, Young Jonas and Adam have a long fireside chat, while Bartosz spills the beans and the rest of the teenagers become time travelers. Old Ulrich and Young Mikkel are reunited, but Egon and Ines tear them apart again. Katharina and Clausen continue to look for answers.

Recap

It’s Stranger Jonas’ turn for a sex dream with Martha, but his doesn’t go so well. Martha develops black veins in her abdomen, which lead to the God Particle bursting forth from her belly to envelop him like it’s The Blob.

Stranger Jonas startles awake. He turns and sits up, still in his childhood bedroom in June, 2020.

Love hurts, y’all. 34  years later, at home again, with Mama Hannah sleeping in the next room, he’s still having nightmares. Specifically, time travel nightmares about time consuming the love of his life and then himself, as soon as he finds her again. He must hate the God Particle and what it’s done to his life and family.

I believe that everyone who has been born would have been born even if the God Particle had never been created. Time in Winden has become twisted and warped, warping the relationships of the people who live there. Dark may go darker than that, but I believe in the power of Martha and Jonas. They are Ariadne and Dionysus, saviors who each have their own story but are meant to end up together.

Dark is the story of Sic Mundus, a possibly sinister mystery cult created by a desperate man who wants to change the laws of physics. It’s the story of Winden, a small town with a nuclear power plant and a history of mysterious deaths and tangled, often sordid, interactions between the townspeople. It’s the story of the evolution of time travel and how it affects the people who use it. And it’s the story of a series of star crossed pairs and trios, separated through space, time, and the circumstances of their own births.

The last one might be the most important.

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Dark Season 2 Episode 4: The Travelers Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 4 Comments

Dark S2Ep4 2 Noahs Escort Jonas to Adam

In S2 Ep4, of Dark, The Travelers, Jonas wakes up in 1921 and meets both younger and older versions of characters he’s seen before. We discover that Sic Mundus really is part of the Underworld and Agnes was always a fashion maven. In the 21st century, the secret of time travel finally comes out.

Some well deserved justice is served up on Bartosz, who’s known the secret of the caves since a few days after Mikkel disappeared, but kept it to himself, among his other, smaller, betrayals.

Katharina is also forced to confront the past. If she and Ulrich had been less harsh and more patient with Mikkel the day he arrived in 1986, could things have been different?

Everyone gets what they deserve.

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Dark Season 2 Episode 3: Ghosts Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

Dark S2Ep3 Older Claudia & Agnes

Dark season 2, episode 3, Ghosts, follows some of Winden’s living ghosts across two time periods, 1954 and 1987. As a police officer, Egon has dealings with the missing who are still alive: Helge, Ulrich and Mikkel. He’s a dying man who is trying to solve a mystery while he still has time. Claudia, the white devil-witch, is trying to save her daughter and her father, and in doing so sacrifices her own life.

Death magic is powerful magic, which Adam, who orders Claudia’s death, surely knows. But I don’t think he understands the difference between taking another’s life in order to achieve the murderer’s goals and a willing sacrifice of one’s own life for the sake of love. There’s a reason Claudia remains above ground at the end of the episode and Adam is buried deep in the underworld.

Adam’s long-term accomplices, Helge and Noah, grow more conflicted about the time war. We learn that Agnes is Noah’s sister and has been on both sides of the war, most recently siding with Claudia. In Ghosts, Claudia asks for a huge favor From Agnes, which will surely take an emotional toll. Agnes is somewhat of a ghost herself, since she usually projects the Femme Fatale image and keeps her true self in hiding.

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The Rook Season 1 Episode 1: Chapter 1 Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

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The Rook is a new series from the premium cable network Starz, home of Outlander and the recently cancelled Counterpart. It’s loosely based on the 2 book series of the same name by Daniel O’Malley, about a woman who wakes up with amnesia and secret powers, surrounded by bodies, then discovers she works for a secret government spy agency in London. Myfanwy (rhymes with “Tiffany”) has unknown enemies who continue to hunt her, and probably have supernatural abilities of their own. It’s not the most original concept in today’s TV landscape, but I’m always up to try another dark, gritty scifi series with female leads, so let’s check it out.

The TV series is veering away from the books, so for the most part, I’m going to write about The Rook as its own separate entity. Before I do that, though, let me say that this show is crying out for a Greek chorus or narrator to provide 1940s noir style sardonic commentary. Myfanwy’s inner voice provided that point of view in the book, and you can feel the loss all through the pilot. (I haven’t even read the book, I could just tell something was missing and went looking. Check out the difference in the Amazon book sample.) Hopefully she’ll find her voice again in the show, because otherwise, the characters’ intense seriousness could start to drag the show past darkness and into dullness before long.

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Dark Season 2 Episode 2: Dark Matter Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

Dark S2Ep2 Mikkel&Noah

In season 2, episode 2, Dark Matter, the characters confront the darkness of their pasts and their inability to repair their mistakes. Egon revisits Helge’s kidnapping and Mad’s disappearance. Jonas take Hannah back to 1987 to prove to her that Michael and Mikkel were the same person. Mikkel continues to process his new circumstances, including facing younger versions of his family. Clausen takes Charlotte to interrogate Regina, who’s kept the items that Stranger Jonas left in his hotel room. Older Claudia assigns a mission to Adult Claudia. And Young Jonas attempts to escape from the future, at any cost.

Recap

Recording of Claudia, found in Bunker:

“We have managed to successfully stabilize the God Particle, and consequently the resulting mass as well. In a stable state, it seems to create a kind of portal which possibly allows for time travel. If the matter is supplied with sufficient voltage, it can be kept in a stable state in the long-term. Sending objects through the stabilized matter has already proved possible… A generator has to provide sufficient AC current for that. Despite lengthy observation, we have yet to determine the matter’s energy source. It would appear to be running entirely on its own. The readings indicate that there is no loss of energy. It appears to be a type of self-sustaining recursive system. The matter’s radiation levels exceed control values. Still, no signs of decay have been observed. While this is consistent with conservation of energy, it does contradict the second law of thermodynamics. The matter seems to exist, independent of external temperatures, in solid, liquid and gaseous states simultaneously. Its molecules are continually rearranged in a cyclical process. The presence of the field explains why…”

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Dark Season 2 Episode 1: Beginnings and Endings Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

Dark S2Ep1 Jonas & God Particle

Welcome back, fellow travelers! Let’s jump right into season 2 of Dark, since that’s what the show itself does. The action picks up in the far future of 2053 and the distant past of 1921, because why start with anything familiar?

I’ve started a new character list at the bottom of the post. You can also find a list of the characters for each episode of season 1 with the recaps and a season 1 character master list post at my Dark tag.

Dark season 1 recaps and posts

Recap

“And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Winden, the darkest place on Earth, where it almost always rains, is apparently sunny in June. Judging from the quote, in season 2 the characters will be facing the minotaur/beast/darkness within themselves. Even Ariadne can’t save you from yourself.

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