Dark Season 1: Complete List of Characters

~ Metacrone ~ 6 Comments

Dark S1Ep9 Jonas & Martha Argue

Here are all of the characters, with photos and descriptions, from season 1 of Dark. If there’s anyone you think I should add, let me know. There are spoilers in these descriptions.

Each of my Dark season 1 recaps also has a character list which only shows the characters and their connections up to that point in the season- no spoilers!

Cast from the Episode 1/Secrets Murder Board:

Charlotte Doppler in 1986 and 2019. Granddaughter of HG Tannhaus, the Clockmaker. Married to Peter, mother to Franziska and Elisabeth, daughter-in-law to Helge. High school student and amateur science detective in 1986. She investigates the unusual deaths of birds she finds. Dedicated and thorough Police Chief in 2019.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 10: Alpha and Omega Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 7 Comments

Dark S1Ep10 Stranger Listens to Clockmaker

In the finale of Dark season 1, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the season comes full circle. It’s confirmed that Winden is caught in a time loop. Working with Gnostic/Hermetic imagery, Noah is the Demiurge/Old Testament God, who benefits from the control he has over the world that’s caught in a mistake. Claudia is Sophia/Wisdom/Holy Spirit, the completion of a trinity which includes the Clockmaker and the Stranger. She is Noah’s, and now Bartosz’s, arch enemy. Bartosz grows closer to both Martha and Noah, which leads Jonas down a path he’s walked before. Like Ulrich and Jonas, Helge tries to understand the nature of the universe and to fix what’s broken.

Recap

“Everything is fixed and you can’t change it.” -Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar- Jesus to Pontius Pilate)

“Everything is now.” -Dark

It’s the night Mikkel disappeared and Peter is considering breaking his promise to remain faithful to Charlotte. He’s sitting in Benni’s parking lot, watching her from a distance. We haven’t been told if he’s obsessed with Benni specifically or if Benni’s the only one in town providing a particular experience, particularly one which Charlotte can’t provide. Or maybe they are another pair of Winden’s star-crossed lovers. The photographic evidence suggests the latter.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 9: Everything Is Now Recap

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Dark S1Ep9 Jonas & Martha

“Humanity has always puzzled over our true origin. Our genesis. Were we created by God? Or are we a product of evolution? If we could somehow see yesterday and tomorrow at the same time, the origin and the end, if we could feel the entire universe in a single moment, then we might finally find answers to the biggest questions of all. What is humanity? Where do we come from? What is it that drives us? And what, ultimately, is our purpose?” -HG Tannhaus

In this episode of Dark, Everything Is Now, the Clockmaker’s opening voiceover suggests that the initial time travelers were exploring the mysteries of the universe and using reality as their laboratory. Humans are not particularly willing lab rats, so later time travelers have been trying to fix the timeline which was broken by earlier experiments, whether they want to get themselves home or to right wrongs committed by people outside their normal time. So far, their efforts seem to either have a neutral effect, or to help create what they’re trying to prevent.

Episode 9 brings us as close as possible to seeing the entire universe in a moment, by showing what’s happening simultaneously in all three time periods (1953, 1986 and 2019) and allowing the cause and effect loop play out between the three. After the Clockmaker and Stranger expressed their beliefs about the nature of time and the universe in episode 8, Noah finally has the chance to speak for himself, as he shares his worldview with Helge. And we reach the point in the timeline where several of the events that have been referred to, but so far left unseen, now occur on screen.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 8: As You Sow, So Shall You Reap Recap

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In this episode, Ulrich follows Helge from 2019 back to 1953 and we’re introduced to a generation of new characters. Most shows wouldn’t introduce an entirely new cast just 2 episodes before the season finale, but most shows aren’t Dark. I love this show so much. It takes no prisoners.

The new characters are an intriguing bunch, including middle school Helge, Jana, Ines, Claudia and Tronte, and some of their parents. Tronte’s mother, Agnes, who comes to town as a single mother, wearing a red dress and a confident, flirtatious air, is particularly worth noting. She’s hiding something.

This episode also begins to explore Helge’s origin story and to explain why Egon has always been suspicious of Ulrich. But, while he’s had some good reasons to dislike Ulrich, he’s also always been an incompetent investigator.

1953 Winden alternates with the Stranger and the Clockmaker in 1986, having a physics discussion that starts with wormholes and proceeds through time loops and the creation of time machines.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 7: Crossroads Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 6 Comments

Dark S1Ep7 Ulrich Visits Helge

In episode 7 of Dark, Crossroads, people, locations and time periods begin to converge and interact that both deepen the mystery and begin to solve it. Our three lead characters, Charlotte, Ulrich and Jonas, are the focus for much of the episode. Jonas explores Winden in 1986 and makes a decision about Mikkel the boy vs Michael the man. Ulrich continues to investigate Mads’ disappearance and death, using Egon’s botched 1986 investigation as a starting point. Charlotte is granted the long awaited search warrant for the power plant, which leads her to some suspicious findings. Both Charlotte and Ulrich find new connections to Helge, his cabin and the cave.

At the end of the episode, we get a cameo by Noah and the infamous back tattoo of the Emerald Tablet. Mikkel is also connected to the framed version of the Hermetic/Alchemic text. 

It’s all connected.

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Dark Season 2 Teaser and Full Length Trailers

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It’s only one week until Netflix releases season 2 of their German time travel mystery series, Dark. They’ve recently released a teaser and a full length trailer for the Dark 3 season trilogy.

The full season will be released on June 21, 2019, the day of Michael Kahnwald’s death, with which the series began. Season 2 will consist of 8 episodes that are each one hour long. The ensemble cast returns, joined by Sandra Borgmann, Winfried Glatzeder, Dietrich Hollinderbäumer and Sylvester Groth. No news that I’ve been able to find on who’ll they’ll play.

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Daenerys Targaryen and Natasha Romanoff: Two Powerful Women Meet Demoralizing Ends

~ Metamaiden ~ 2 Comments

In the Age Old Choice for Female Characters Between Powerful or Good, Wh*re or Madonna, Modern Writers Frequently Land on a Third Choice: Insane or Suicidal, Then Dead

When Joss Whedon’s dream came true and Natalia Alianovna Romanoff willingly flung herself to her death, I felt nothing. I knew from the moment she and Clint went off for the Soul Stone that she would die, but, stupidly, I didn’t quite get to the realization that she would be the one to kill herself – one of the few decisions she’s made for herself in her time in the MCU.

There aren’t a lot of options for women and girls to look up to as role models in media – not female ones, anyway. Growing up, I was always looking for female role models in media, and I frequently ended up in love with the ones who had agency, above all else. The “powerful or good” dichotomy that I wrote about in a post in response to the Frozen musical details the struggle I’ve always found in female characters. You can be powerful or good, have agency or compassion, intelligence or charm, be sexy or moral – wh*re or madonna.

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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 Episode 2: Mary and Martha Recap

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In Season 3, episode 2, Mary and Martha, June begins to find her place in the complicated Lawrence household, Luke and Moira get used to having a new baby to take care of, and Emily tries to find the parts of herself that her wife would recognize. Everyone except Head Gamemaker Commander Lawrence digs deep inside themselves to meet their new challenges. As usual, Lawrence surveys the system he’s put in place and makes minor tweaks to keep it interesting and functioning at a certain level.

Recap

June’s voiceover: “I used to be bad at waiting. ‘They also serve who stand and wait,’ Aunt Lydia said. She also said, ‘Not all of you will make it through. Some of you will fall on dry ground or thorns. Some of you are shallow-rooted. Think of yourselves as seeds. What kind of seed will you be, girls?’ I pretend I’m a tree. And I wait.”

This is a lovely little metaphor, until you realize that the seed is consumed in the creation of the new plant. The baby is all, the mother is nothing. It’s also a story you’d tell to children, as is typical of the infantilization that’s programmed into the women at the Red Center.

But June turns it into a metaphor of empowerment. She doesn’t grow a baby who consumes her, she grows into a strong, immovable tree, who waits for the right time to act. Childbearing is a small part of her. She has a family of trees to help with the baby.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 6: Sic Mundus Creatus Est Recap

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In Dark episode 6, the Nielsons sink deeper into grief over the loss off Mikkel, with each expressing it in a different way. Jonas goes deeper into the caves than he ever has before. Regina and Alexander get some bad news. And Ulrich does the thorough investigation into Mads’ disappearance that Egon failed to do in 1986, answering more than one question in the process.

Recap

Episode 6 opens on a flashback to 1986, when Ulrich and Katharina tied Regina to a tree near the cave and left her there for hours, long after it was dark. She sees something that frightens her enough to scream.

Regina wakes up in bed in the present day. Alexander wakes up too, and comforts her that it’s only a nightmare.

The next morning, Charlotte instructs the entire police department that they’re intensifying their search. She wants them to knock on every door, question everyone, coordinate with other agencies in the area, search the records for similar cases going back 50 years, search every basement. They’ll be working double shifts until they solve this case. They just have to find the one clue that breaks the case.

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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 Episode 1: Night Recap

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Handmaid's Tale S3Ep1 June & Serena in Fiery Bedroom 1

We’re back for season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale in Gilead with June and the gang, since June selfishly nobly didn’t escape in the season 2 finale. She stayed to rescue her first born daughter, Hannah, who had ordered June to try harder to be her mother just a few weeks before the escape attempt. June sent baby Holly/Nichole safely to Canada with fierce mama bear and dragon slayer Emily, knowing that she could trust Emily with the life of her child.

June also stayed in Gilead to help the Resistance, so that all women and girls could be safe from rape, torture and murder. Even if she can’t get Hannah out, she can try to make a better place for her to grow up in. Most of the people in June’s life take a while to understand the sacrifice she’s made. Serena is inspired to make a big change in her own life, as well.

Recap

The season opens with the standard reminder of what’s come before. Season 2 ended with June handing Baby Holly Nichole to her fellow handmaid Emily, and telling her to call the baby Nichole. Then she sent her younger child to safety in Canada, where she knew her loved ones would take care of her. Having fulfilled the promise she made to Holly before she was even born, that she wouldn’t grow up in Gilead, now June turns away from saving herself and toward her older daughter, Hannah. She made Hannah a promise, too, a promise to try harder.

In season 3, June will try harder.

June prays for safe passage for Nichole and Emily as she runs away. She worries that Nichole won’t know her or forgive her if they ever meet again. But, she’s at peace with her decision. “I’m sorry, baby girl. Mom’s got work.”

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