If there is one thing that people wants more than anything in this entire world is probably the

ability to time travel so that we can get back to our past, change the mistakes that we've made
and live a better present. But we know better that there's no such thing as time machine,
because time keeps passing and life keeps going forward. And all we have to do is to keep
growing, reassess our mistake and learn from it so that we won't repeat it in the future. The
big elephant in the room, however, what if that mistakes and all the things we do to avoid
repeating it is actually not the result of our free will? What if everything that has happened
and will happen in our life has been predetermined and we're just a pawn living in a line
controlled by whoever created us?
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We may say that we have free will because life has given us a lot of choices and we're the one
that make the decision, but at the same time, we can never be sure that it is actually free will.
I know it's hard to hear, but it really is not impossible. This debate between fate and free will
is at the core of this Netflix first German-language series, Dark season two, an emotionally and
twisty character-driven, time-travel shenanigan show that surprises a lot of people when it
came out two years go.
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Season two begins in six months after the disappearance of six different people in the grayish,
nuclear-driven town of Winden, where everyone are hiding secrets and no one really knows
what exactly is going on. A special force chief by Charlotte Doppler and the town newest
resident Clausen, is formed to investigate this enigmatic case. Meanwhile the main hero of the
show, Jonas who is stuck in 2053, is trying to get back to 2020 to alert the people of Winden
of the upcoming apocalypse, unaware that he may be the trigger of everything that's about
to happen.

Jonas' determination to save Winden from this annihilation is heart-breaking to watch, and
Louis Hoffman's amazing performances adds more depth to it. He thinks that he knows how
to stop this, but what he doesn't realize is that what if everything is meant to happen and no
one, including him, is actually able to stop this. This question keeps running at every moment
in this season, creating some kind of doubt to both the characters and the audiences.
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If season one is driven by withholding information until the very end, the dam that holds all of
that are now leaking slowly, creating a big pond of secrets, lies, and deceits, with a much
bigger, darker conspiracy lying underneath it. We never know what's about to happen in this
show, and that is exactly the reason why Dark is such a delight. The showrunners, Baran bo
Odar and Jantje Friese, know when to reveal the information without giving too much or too
little of it. They build every elements in this maze with a fascinating level of detail, slowly but
sure.
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And unlike most of the other shows that shares the same philosophical concerns, Dark tends
to keep the story keeps moving forward in a pleasant paced, even when it gets pretty
convoluted as the season progresses by. And I think that is why it's so easy to follow the flow
of the story. One of the most important thing about making a time-travel scifi show is how to
establish its own rules, and Dark does exactly like that. They adapt real sciences and use it to
build their own boundary, creating a world where everything looks impossible but somehow
still feels very logical. Of course there are gonna be a lot of questions along the way, but Baran
bo Odar and Jantje Friese have established a method to answer all of our concerns.
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At first, I thought how would season two can top the excellency level that its inaugural season
has established two years ago. But turns out, in this sophomore season, Dark ables to not only
continue the fundamental narrative that's been built perfectly, but also expanding the story
while keeping all the threads small yet very intimate.

Dark keeps rolling the steam while peeling more layers, creating suspense and surprises along
the way. Part of the reason why Dark so accessible, even when it gets complicated by using
five different time zones, is because of how grounded the show is at the emotional and
psychology of the characters. All of this disappearances lead the characters down to
unexpected avenues, confronting them with the vicious nature created by the labyrinth of
secrets, lies, and deceits that this show has used as the main fuel right from the get go.
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The despair that follows after the suicide of Mikhael and the disappearance of Mikkel does
not only persists but also deepened as all of the characters slipping in the state of
helplessness. Katharina who lost her husband right after his son's missing, is neglecting her
two other children, Magnus and Martha, leaving them with no choice but to figure out all of
this conspiracies by themselves. Meanwhile the desperate Hannah, whose husband took his
own life, followed by the disappearance of her son and her secret lover Ulrich, --who is actually
Katharina's missing husband, is ready to take her own life too.
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Human being is indeed a complicated creature. We feel thing and like to challenge ourselves
eventhough we know exactly that we may get hurt in the process. But when we got nothing
else to lose, we will desperately do anything to regain the control that's slowly slipping from
our hand no matter how bad the consequences are, and that is what Jonas, Katharina, Hannah,
and Martha are displaying this season. They'll do everything to figure out what happened to
their loved ones. They wanna change and repair things because they think that they deserve
to have a better life. But if there's one thing that Dark has taught us, is that everything is
connected, and all of our actions in the present are actually the results of the past.

Among the four aforementioned names, Jonas is the only one who knows about the time
loop in Winden, and he tries to reassess his past so that he can save the future and live a better
present. But when we're talking about time, we talk about something that cant be stopped
and paused no matter how hard we try it. Jonas may have the knowledge and ability to get
back to the past, or in this case to present, but he can never stop the time that keeps passing,
he can never stop the threat of apocalypse because it supposed to happen. The more time he
spends on the future, the less time he has to figure out how to save all of the humankind.
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The show's analysis about the connection between past, present, and future to human
emotions is exactly what makes Dark feels thoroughly different than most of the shows sharing
the same premise. But what I adore the most about Dark, though, is how even when it becomes
insanely mind-bending, the core exploration about people confronted by the hard truth of the
secrets that's been kept from under their nose for a very long time, is why the show is so
emotionally cohesive in the first place. They capture the very vital thing about human
behaviour by letting this characters go shenanigans once they are faced with the truth of how
we are actually an imperfect creature.
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For those who has watched the first season must begin to question what exactly is good and
evil or dark and light the minute they finish season two. This happens because of how the
show portray every characters in a spectrum, there's no clear villain, even when we first thought
that Noah and Adam are actually the bad guys here. But deep down, they are just human being
with their own agenda, trying to justify their action for the sake of their own purpose.

One try to create a new world because he thinks that there's nothing left in this world, and one
try to save the humankind because she thinks that everyone deserve second chances and that
by preserving the world, everyone can start to reassess their past actions so that they can learn
from their mistakes. This battle between two parties constantly challenges us to pick side, but
what matters more here is actually not about whose side is right and instead how it deepens
the show's core thesis about people determination to reach their own goals.
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I have to admit that season two offers way a lot more complicated threads, yet somehow
everything is delivered palatably because of the clear method and references that bo Odar and
Friese use to condense every elements. In season one, the Greek myth of Theseus and Ariadne
is how the show reflects Jonas and Martha's complicated relationship. Now in the second
season, it's getting more apparent because we see Martha, both version, is trying hard to help
Jonas defeat the Minotaur in the maze. Inside the structure of the myth, Ariadne is abandoned
by Theseus once he defeated Minotaur, and it is proved by Martha's fate at the end of the
season. But which Jonas is a stand-in for Theseus is the real question here, especially with the
new appearance from Adam whose goal is to create a new world which could easily mean that
he is actually the real Theseus, and his leaving Martha could mean the future of this new
universe he's longing for.
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This mythology is not the only reference that Dark uses in season two, there's also a Biblical
reference that connects Adam and Noah's relationship. Throughout season two, we see Adam
perceives himself as the origin humankind that will inherit whatever it is the world he wants to
create. And just like in the Bible, Noah helps him to preserve some of the creatures, and in
Dark's case, it is the people that populates the Sic Mundus sect, which begins by The Stranger
helping Franziska, Magnus, and Bartosz at the end of the series right before the apocalypse
wipes out the entire Winden. But if this theory is somewhat true, then we're gonna see an Eve
next season.

The biggest mythology of Dark, however, revolves heavily around the Bootstrap Paradox,
embodied by the book & the time travel machine built by H.G. Tannhaus. But as the series
progresses by, we come to learn that this book is not actually written by him per se, & instead
given by the older Claudia Tiedemann which later he'll give to her younger version until. This
raises a blunder of who is actually write the book & build this apparatus, or it could actually
just recirculates inside a never-ending loop with no clear ending & beginning. This paradox
applies as much to the characters too, with a twist that connects Charlotte, Noah, & Elisabeth
serves as the further proof of this concept. Later during the season, we learn that Noah is
actually Charlotte's father & that her own daughter, Elisabeth is his mother, meaning that this
women are actually the grandmother to themselves. It's just one complex proof of the show's
many incestuous nature.
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Winden itself is also a town that circulates on a never-ending loop, no matter how much the
characters are struggling to change things, every actions simply wind up repeating the cycle.
It is not impossible that Winden is isolated from the rest of the existence and trapped in their
own dimension. The juxtaposition between all of this paradoxes manifests deeply to the show's
main thesis about free will, constructing a deep understanding of the passage of time & how
it affects our action, and that is exactly why Dark is one of the best Netflix at the moment,
because it invites us to contemplates about many things.
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Dark season 2 is indeed a lot to take in, but the show's tendency to ground everything in the
characters, emphasized by amazing performances from Louis Hoffman, Jördis Triebel &
Karoline Eichhorn, along with grim visual & scores, makes it much easier to digest than it
looks. With the introduction of a multiverse at the end of season, it is no brainer that the last
cycle next year will be a deeply complex show like nothing before. A 9.2 for me