124 Fun Facts About Dark (Netflix)

In Dark's first episode, which classmate has already found the missing dealer's stash when the friends reach the caves?

Franziska Doppler has beaten them to it; one of the boys snatches the bag from her, and moments later strange noises and flickering torches send the whole group running.

In Dark, which saint is shown on the pendant Jonas finds in the sand at the lake and gives to Martha?

Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers: a year later the adult Jonas slips into Martha's empty room and leaves the pendant on her bed.

What does Jonas Kahnwald's father do for a living in Dark?

Painter: after his death, Jonas finds a different side of his father in the attic of the family home, a stash of maps and notes on the Winden caves.

What is the title of Dark's final episode?

The Paradise ends at a dinner party in a world where the time travel never happened, with a pregnant Hannah saying she has always liked the name Jonas.

Which paradox does the Winden clockmaker explain by name in Dark's second season?

The bootstrap paradox: the clockmaker's example is his own book, which reached him from the future before he had written a word of it.

Which actor leads Dark's ensemble cast as Jonas Kahnwald?

Louis Hofmann plays Jonas as a teenager; two older actors share the part, because the boy keeps meeting his adult and elderly selves.

In Dark's first season, what does Hannah demand of the power plant's director when she blackmails him?

Ruin Ulrich's life: Ulrich has just ended their affair, so she turns a secret she has kept about the director since her teens into a weapon.

How is Martha Nielsen related to Jonas Kahnwald, as he learns soon after kissing her?

She is his aunt, as a distraught Jonas spells out to his grandmother days after the kiss, once he has learned how their two families are tied.

Which condition afflicts the elderly Helge Doppler in Dark's 2019 storyline?

Dementia: Helge keeps slipping out of his nursing home to roam the forest, insisting that he has to stop Noah.

Whose 25th wedding anniversary party do Jonas and Hannah attend in the summer of 2019?

Ulrich and Katharina: while their party goes on, a second Jonas, sent back from the future, is across town trying to talk his father out of dying.

The time travellers' motto 'Sic Mundus Creatus Est' is a line from which text?

The Emerald Tablet: the line is set into a metal door deep in the Winden caves, and when Jonas goes through it he comes out in 1986.

Which Winden residents still exist in the origin world at the end of Dark?

Those not born of time travel: Regina, Katharina, Hannah and Peter sit down to dinner, while everyone whose family tree runs through the loop has vanished.

Which of Jonas's companions in 1888 turns on him after learning he will become Adam?

Bartosz hears it from Martha, the visitor from the other world, and the two old friends come to blows over the secret Jonas kept.

In Dark, who steals the baby Charlotte from her parents and leaves her with the Winden clockmaker to raise?

Her own adult self, travelling back from 2053 with one companion, takes the baby; the theft sends the child's father on a search through time for his daughter.

Which musician's song "Goodbye" is Dark's opening theme?

Apparat did not write it for the show: the song dates from 2011 and had already played over the climax of Breaking Bad's fourth season.

In Dark's second season, what does the captive Ulrich promise Hannah when she finds him in 1954?

To leave Katharina for her, if she will only get him out: Hannah does not believe a word of it and walks away, leaving him locked up.

Dark's producers Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann made their name with which German film?

The Lives of Others: Berg and Wiedemann set up their company while still film students in Munich, and their very first feature won the foreign-language Oscar.

Who are the parents of the Winden police officer Ulrich Nielsen?

Tronte and Jana: Ulrich learns in 2019 that his mother lied to the police back in 1986 to hide where his father had really been that night.

What is Jonas known as when he appears as an adult time traveller?

The Stranger is the name given to the adult Jonas, played by Andreas Pietschmann, who guides his younger self from the shadows in the first season.

How does Peter Doppler die in the aftermath of the apocalypse in Dark's final season?

A marauder kills him: Peter walks in on the man in the trailer where he and his daughter are living, and she then kills the intruder herself.

Who plays the teenage Martha?

Lisa Vicari plays the teenage Martha, who starts the series dating Jonas's best friend Bartosz and breaks up with him as season two begins.

Whom does Claudia Tiedemann kill in Dark's third season?

Her double from Eva's world: Claudia realises the other woman has been steering her, kills her, and then poses as her to spy on Eva.

What is the profession of Hannah, Jonas's mother?

Massage therapist: Hannah counts the plant director among her clients, and it is during one of his sessions that she starts to blackmail him.

Who plays the police officer Ulrich?

Oliver Masucci plays Ulrich, the officer whose search for his missing son carries him back to 1953, where he is arrested and never makes it home.

What is Katharina Nielsen's job in 2019?

School principal is Katharina's job in 2019; back in 1986 she was a headstrong pupil herself, the girlfriend of the rebellious Ulrich.

What is Charlotte Doppler's job in 2019?

Winden chief of police is Charlotte's post; she leads the hunt for the missing boys and ends up suspending her own officer, Ulrich.

Which of Charlotte and Peter's daughters is deaf?

Elisabeth is the deaf daughter in the first world; in the parallel world of season three it is her older sister Franziska instead.

What is the title of the Winden clockmaker's book?

A Journey Through Time (Eine Reise durch die Zeit): when Ulrich turns up in 1953 holding a copy, the clockmaker insists he knows nothing about the book.

Who is Bartosz's father, the plant director in 2019?

Aleksander Tiedemann is Bartosz's father and the plant's director; he married Regina and took her surname after arriving in Winden as a fugitive in 1986.

What is Aleksander's real birth name?

Boris Niewald took over the identity of a man killed in a robbery he was caught up in, and the teenage Hannah learned his secret soon after he reached Winden.

What business does Regina Tiedemann run?

A hotel is Regina's business, the Waldhotel Winden, where the adult Jonas takes a room in the first season.

Who founded the Winden nuclear power plant?

Bernd Doppler founded the Winden nuclear power plant and ran it until 1986, covering up an accident whose waste was hidden in the caves.

Who succeeds the plant's founder as director of the power plant in 1986?

Claudia Tiedemann succeeds the founder as plant director in 1986; Egon's daughter and Regina's mother, she later becomes a time traveller herself.

What is Noah's real name?

Hanno Tauber takes the name Noah and means it: he calls the time machine he is building an ark that will carry people out of a doomed world.

Who plays the priest Noah?

Mark Waschke plays the priest Noah in 1953, 1986 and 2019 without ageing a day, a sign that the man is moving through time.

Who is Noah's younger sister?

Agnes Nielsen is Noah's younger sister; she is the grandmother of the police officer Ulrich, which makes the priest his great-uncle.

Who is Silja Tiedemann's mother?

Hannah Kahnwald is Silja's mother; she travels to 1954 and conceives the child with Egon Tiedemann, which makes Silja half-sister to both Jonas and Claudia.

Who is the child known as the Unknown?

The son of Jonas and Martha is the Unknown; he appears as a boy, a man and an old man acting together, and is the origin of the knot, the root of every Winden family tree.

What is the name of the police inspector sent to Winden in 2020?

Clausen takes over the missing-persons case in 2020 for a reason of his own: an anonymous note has told him the truth about his long-lost brother lies in Winden.

Which real nuclear disaster do characters in Dark link to contaminated rain and dead birds?

Chernobyl: when Jonas first steps into 1986, a man offers him a lift out of the contaminated rain, and the girl in the van is his own mother, aged 14.

Which of Ulrich and Katharina's children disappears in Dark's first episode?

Mikkel, the youngest Nielsen child, vanishes in the caves during the first episode and wakes up in 1986, where the story's central loop begins.

Which local drug dealer has been missing for two weeks when Dark's first episode begins?

Erik Obendorf is the missing dealer; his father Jürgen drives a truck for the power plant, and Erik's hidden stash is what the teenagers go hunting for in the caves.

What is the name of Ulrich's brother, who vanished in 1986?

Mads is Ulrich's younger brother, who vanished in 1986; his body, not a day older, turns up in the Winden woods in the first season.

Who does the boy who vanishes in Dark's first episode grow up to become?

Michael Kahnwald is the man the vanished boy becomes; raised by the nurse Ines, he marries Hannah, fathers Jonas and hangs himself in the series' opening scene.

What injury do the dead boys and the dead birds share?

Burst eardrums mark both the birds and the dead boys, who were killed in Noah's failed attempts to build a time machine.

Which Winden resident is Jonas's therapist after his father's death?

Peter Doppler, Charlotte's husband, is Jonas's therapist; he is hiding that on the night a boy vanished, a dead child's body appeared from nowhere in front of him.

What is inside the package Regina delivers to Jonas?

A light, a Geiger counter and a letter are in the package; with the first two Jonas ventures into the caves and comes out in 1986.

What hangs on a cord around the neck of the dead boy found in the forest in Dark's first season?

An old coin, a pfennig minted in 1986, hangs from the cord; two more dead boys turn up wearing the same coin in 1953, decades before it was struck.

How many years apart do the wormhole's connected time periods lie?

33 years separate the linked eras, which is why a boy who vanished in 1986 can turn up in 2019 looking not a day older.

What false accusation does teenage Hannah make against Ulrich in 1986?

That he raped Katharina was Hannah's lie, told out of jealousy once she saw the two together; Egon arrested Ulrich and brushed aside Katharina's own denial.

What does Ulrich Nielsen accidentally leave behind in the clockmaker's shop in 1953?

A smartphone: Ulrich forgets it at the shop in 1953, and decades later the clockmaker uses it to finish the brass time machine.

Whom does Ulrich bludgeon and leave for dead in 1953?

The nine-year-old Helge is Ulrich's victim; believing the boy will grow up to abduct the missing children, Ulrich beats him with a stone and leaves him for dead, but the boy survives.

How does the elderly Helge die in 1986?

Crashing his car into his younger self: the old man has come back from 2019 to stop the abductions, but he alone dies in the wreck and his younger self lives on.

Where does Jonas wake up at the end of season one?

Post-apocalyptic Winden in 2052: a wormhole opens in the room where Jonas is held and pulls him forward, and an armed woman knocks him out among the ruins.

What is the title of Dark's very first episode?

Secrets (Geheimnisse) opens the series and ends on its first shock: a hooded figure strapping a missing teenager into a chair and clamping a device to his head.

What is the title of the finale of Dark's first season?

Alpha and Omega is the season-one finale; in it the man who has shadowed Jonas all season reveals that he is Jonas himself, grown older.

Why does young Noah kill his fellow digger in the opening scene of Dark's second season?

He has lost his faith, Noah decides; as an older man, Noah loses his own and turns a gun on the very leader he once killed for.

Who leads the survivors in post-apocalyptic 2053 Winden?

The adult Elisabeth leads the survivors in 2053; in the season-two finale a portal opens in front of her and shows her mother Charlotte, standing in 2020.

What is the floating black blob in the power plant's Dead Zone called?

The God Particle is the name for the black mass in the dead zone; Claudia's recordings teach Jonas that, once stabilised, it can serve as a portal for time travel.

Who frees Jonas from the survivors' leader's custody in 2053?

Silja, her interpreter, frees Jonas out of curiosity and walks with him into the Dead Zone, where he steps into the black mass alone and leaves her behind.

Who kills the elderly former plant director in the forest in 1954?

Noah shoots her soon after she has handed the clockmaker his finished book, then lies to his own leader about the notebook pages he was sent to find.

What does the elderly former plant director give her younger self in 1987?

Coordinates of a buried time machine: she digs the device up in her own garden and uses it to travel to 2020, where she finds her daughter dying.

Why can the injured Jonas not get home through the cave passage in 'The Travelers'?

It has not been built yet: Jonas has landed in 1921, crawls in until he hits solid rock, and is told the way will not open for decades.

What does Noah reveal to Charlotte in season two?

That she is his daughter is what Noah tells Charlotte in season two; she was taken from her parents as a baby and given to the Winden clockmaker to raise.

Who convinces Michael that he must die so that Jonas can be conceived?

Old Claudia persuades Michael: Jonas had travelled back to stop the suicide, but his father had not been planning one, and the visit itself sets it in motion.

What does the young Helge call the elderly Claudia when Egon asks him about her in 1954?

The White Devil is the name Helge says he was told for her; more than thirty years later Egon repeats the same words with his dying breath.

How does Egon Tiedemann die in 1987?

He slips during a struggle with Claudia over the telephone and hits his head; she had read of his death in the future and moved to prevent it, only to cause it herself.

Who kills the adult Noah?

Agnes shoots Noah dead moments after his own gun jams when he tries to kill Adam for lying to him.

Whom does Adam shoot in Dark's season-two finale?

Martha Nielsen is shot by Adam moments after she and Jonas reunite, as the apocalypse begins; Adam tells Jonas that this is a pain he will carry for the rest of his life.

What does the visiting inspector open in the power plant, triggering the apocalypse?

Drums of rocks soiled with dark matter are what the inspector opens, brushing aside Charlotte's plea to stop; the waste hidden since the 1986 accident fuses into the black mass that destroys Winden.

Where is the elderly Ulrich being held when Egon visits him in 1987?

A psychiatric hospital holds the elderly Ulrich in 1987, 34 years after his arrest; he later escapes to reach his lost son, but police seize him before the two can get to the caves.

Which two Winden teenagers reappear as adults among Adam's followers?

Magnus and Franziska, the teenage couple, flee the apocalypse into the past with the adult Jonas and are next seen decades older, serving Adam.

What does the Unknown burn down in 1987?

The Sic Mundus church, the lodge's headquarters, is set alight by the Unknown, who arrives as a boy, a man and an old man at once; they then murder the plant's former director for his master keys.

In the alternate 2019, who is Hannah married to?

Ulrich Nielsen is Hannah's husband in the alternate world, where Katharina is his ex-wife and Jonas was never born.

How is the industrialist Gustav related to the Winden clockmaker?

He is his grandfather; Gustav carries on the work of his own father, Heinrich, who tried to build a time machine in a secret lodge to undo his wife's death.

Who smothers the ailing Regina in September 2020?

The elderly Tronte smothers Regina in September 2020, three months after the apocalypse; he does it reluctantly, having long believed she was his own daughter.

What is the name of Eva's faction?

Erit Lux is Eva's faction, which fights to keep the cycle turning so that both worlds survive.

Who kills Katharina in 1987?

Helene Albers, Katharina's own mother, bludgeons her with a rock on the lakeshore in 1987 and pushes the body into the water.

Who shoots Jonas dead in Eva's world in "Life and Death"?

Another teenage Martha, a version from Eva's own world, shoots Jonas on Eva's orders after Eva tells him he has served his purpose.

Which two characters are the parents of the priest Noah?

Bartosz and Silja are Noah's parents: Adam sends Silja back from 2053, she meets Bartosz in 1890, and she dies giving birth to their second child.

Whom does the ageing Jonas murder in 1911?

His mother, Hannah, tracks him down in 1911 hoping to stay with him; Jonas, by then hardening into the lodge's future leader, kills her instead.

What is the name of Claudia's dog?

Gretchen is Claudia's dog; she chases a stick into the caves when Claudia is a girl and reappears alive decades later, when her owner is a grown woman.

What shape describes the knot linking Adam's and Eva's worlds?

A triquetra is the shape: Claudia tells Adam that he and Eva are bound inextricably because their knot began outside both their worlds, in a third one.

Who created the time machine that split the origin world in two?

H. G. Tannhaus, the clockmaker, built the machine in the origin world; when he switched it on it destroyed that world instead, splitting it into the twin worlds of Adam and Eva.

How is the cycle finally ended in Dark's last episode?

By saving the clockmaker's family: Jonas and Martha enter the origin world and stop the car crash that killed his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, so the machine is never built and both their worlds vanish.

Who is Hannah expecting a child with in the origin world?

Torben Wöller is the father of Hannah's baby at the origin world's dinner party; there the eye he hides under a bandage or a patch through the series is healing.

What triggers Hannah's déjà vu at the dinner party in the final scene?

A yellow raincoat like the one Jonas wore catches Hannah's eye as the lights fail and brings on the déjà vu; asked what she will call her baby, she says she has always liked the name Jonas.

Which German pop act's 1984 hit plays over the end credits of Dark's series finale?

Nena's 'Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann' closes the series; the song had featured in all three seasons, so the finale signs off with music the show had played since its opening episodes.

Which animals does a Winden farmer find dead in his field in 1986?

Sheep: a farmer, the father of the teenage Katharina, reports his whole flock dead at once, and the vet who examines one finds that their hearts simply stopped.

What instruction is written on the farewell letter left by Jonas's father in Dark?

Open only after a set date: the envelope reads 'Do not open before 4 November, 10.13 pm', the very night a boy goes missing in the caves, and months later it is opened at exactly that minute.

What tells the boy who vanishes in Dark's first episode that he has come out of the caves in 1986?

A newspaper lying outside his own home gives the date, just after a teenage Ulrich, the boy who will grow up to be his father, has answered the door.

Which relative, said by his mother to be long dead, visits Bartosz Tiedemann in Dark's first season?

His grandmother appears at the house, admits she was not a good mother, and leaves him an old photograph of herself and his mother to pass on.

Who becomes the third boy to vanish from Winden in 2019?

Yasin Friese is approached one morning by a hooded figure and is not seen alive again; his disappearance, the third in a matter of weeks, spreads panic through the town.

In what resolution was Dark filmed?

4K is the format: the series was shot in it on large-format ARRI Alexa 65 cameras, and each location was filmed out in one visit rather than episode by episode, the only way the budget would stretch.

Which two shows did many early reviews of Dark compare it to?

Twin Peaks and Stranger Things were the comparisons: Vox likened the remote forest town to the first and the missing boy to the second, while The Guardian called the Stranger Things echoes a distraction from Dark's own quality.

How does Dark's third season mark out Eva's world from Adam's on screen?

Everything is mirrored: the director flipped the image for Eva's world, so sets were reversed, book titles had to be printed backwards and the actors had to open doors with their left hands.

With whom does Agnes Nielsen begin an affair after lodging at the Tiedemann house?

Doris Tiedemann, the policeman Egon's wife, falls for her lodger; when a visitor later tells Doris that Egon is unfaithful too, she decides to divorce him.

Which award did the actor who plays Jonas receive at the 2018 Goldene Kamera?

Best Newcomer went to Jonas's actor at the 2018 Goldene Kamera for his lead in Dark and several film roles, on a night when the series and two of his co-stars were nominated and went home empty-handed.

Netflix released Dark's second season on the in-show date of which event?

Michael Kahnwald's death opens the series on 21 June 2019, and Netflix released season two on that exact day; season three then arrived on the date of the show's apocalypse.

Which famous fictional time machine is named in a track title on Dark's first soundtrack album?

The DeLorean: the track is 'Kein DeLorean', German for 'No DeLorean', a nod to Back to the Future from a series whose own time machine is a clockmaker's brass device.

Which 2014 hacker thriller did Dark's creators make together before the series?

Who Am I, with Tom Schilling as a hacker, was the calling card: when Netflix confirmed Dark in 2016, The Hollywood Reporter introduced the series as coming from that film's director.

Which 2017 Hollywood thriller starring Jamie Foxx did Dark's director make?

Sleepless, a remake of the French thriller Sleepless Night, stars Jamie Foxx as a policeman out to rescue his kidnapped son; it opened in January 2017, the same year Dark arrived.

The next Netflix series from Dark's creators, 1899, is set aboard what?

A migrant steamship, the Kerberos, sails from England towards New York in a drama played in several languages; Netflix cancelled the series in January 2023 after a single season.

Who does Dark's second season reveal led the boy who vanished in the first episode through the caves?

An older Jonas, travelling back in time, took the boy through the passage that night and left him alone on the other side, a trip the Jonas who hears of it has yet to make.

Which Danish film won the actor who plays Jonas a Bodil Award before Dark?

Land of Mine (Under sandet), Martin Zandvliet's 2015 drama about German prisoners clearing Danish beaches of mines, brought the actor the Bodil for his role as Sebastian Schumann.

Which Mark Twain character was the first lead film role for the actor who plays Jonas in Dark?

Tom Sawyer was the title role in Hermine Huntgeburth's 2011 film, with Leon Seidel as Huck Finn; the two boys also sang on its soundtrack, and a sequel, The Adventures of Huck Finn, followed.

Which infamous figure did the actor who plays Ulrich portray in Look Who's Back?

Adolf Hitler, awakened in the present day, is the role the actor played in the 2015 satire Look Who's Back, which mixed scripted scenes with candid reactions from passers-by.

In which Wizarding World film did the actor who plays Ulrich portray Anton Vogel?

The Secrets of Dumbledore, the 2022 third Fantastic Beasts film, cast the actor as Anton Vogel, the German wizards' leader who clears Grindelwald of all charges so that he can stand for election.

In which 2020 Netflix film did the actress who plays Martha play the lead?

Isi & Ossi, a 2020 Netflix romantic comedy, starred the actress as Isi, a billionaire's daughter who fakes a romance with a boxer from the wrong side of town.

Which warning does the elderly Helge Doppler keep repeating in Dark's first episode?

It's going to happen again, Helge tells a town meeting called over a missing boy, having wandered off from his care home; later he slips out again, set on stopping the abductions himself.

What mark on the face do the boy, the man and the old man known as the Unknown all share?

A cleft lip marks all three as one person at three ages; in 1954 the adult stops the schoolboy Tronte Nielsen in the woods and hints that he is the boy's father.

When Adam confronts Eva with a gun in Dark's final episode, what does he do?

He refuses to shoot: Eva remembers once finding her older self dead after this meeting, so when he spares her she knows that something has finally changed.

Which Caroline Shaw work featured prominently in season one via Roomful of Teeth?

Partita for 8 Voices was written by Caroline Shaw for the ensemble she sings in; it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and its third movement is the one that recurs through the series.

Which act, also heard on Dark's opening theme, covers 'What a Wonderful World' in the series finale?

Soap&Skin's cover of the Louis Armstrong standard plays in the finale, a pointed choice for an episode in which two whole worlds are erased so that a third can go on.

In Eva's world, what is Peter Doppler's occupation?

A priest: Jonas meets him at the cemetery in Eva's world and asks after his father's grave, only to be told that no such man is buried there.

Which actress plays the elderly Ines Kahnwald, Jonas's grandmother?

Angela Winkler plays the elderly Ines; known since the 1970s for The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and The Tin Drum, she was one of three actors the Grimme-Preis jury honoured on behalf of Dark's whole cast.

At which city's film festival did Dark's first two episodes premiere in September 2017?

Toronto hosted the world premiere: the first two episodes screened in the festival's Primetime section nearly three months before the series reached Netflix, so the German show was first seen in Canada.

Dark holds what distinction among Netflix's original series?

First German-language original is Dark's distinction: Netflix confirmed it in February 2016, and viewing around the world was strong enough for a second season to be ordered within three weeks of release.

Besides Berlin, season one was shot in Saarmund and Tremsdorf, villages in which German state?

Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, holds both villages; the cave mouth seen in the show was a set built in the woods between them, and even the rocks around it are fake.

How were the Winden nuclear plant's reactor towers created for Dark?

Computer-animated cooling towers were added digitally over the filmed entrance, since no real reactor stood at the location used for the plant's gates.

Which thought experiment does the Winden clockmaker explain at the start of a third-season episode of Dark?

Schrödinger's cat, at once dead and alive: the episode uses it to show the apocalypse going two ways, with Jonas rescued by a Martha from the other world in one and left to save himself in the other.

In Eva's world, with whom is Ulrich Nielsen having an affair?

Charlotte Doppler is his lover there, an echo of the first world: Ulrich is unfaithful again, and again a stray hair on his clothes gives him away.

What does Regina Tiedemann learn about her health in Dark's first season?

She has breast cancer: Regina gets the diagnosis in the first season, and in the second she is slowly dying of it.

In Eva's world, the policeman Torben Wöller has two good eyes but is missing what?

An arm: Eva's world repeats the first with small swaps, so Wöller, whose eye is bandaged in Adam's world, has both eyes there and an empty sleeve instead.