The latest bingeable horror series on Netflix is Dark, a German sci-fi horror which begins with a missing child in the small and very rainy German town of Winden and ends with a total and utter mind-flip of interlinked timelines. Some are calling it the next Stranger Things, but we reckon it's a bit more... well... dark.

It is very good. But it is also very complicated. In an attempt to get our own heads around exactly what happened by the end of the last ep we've prepared this handy explainer.

Bring some water and some Kendal mint cake, it's going to be a tough journey...

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON

Very handily, Christianlorenz97 has created this family tree of the key residents of Winden. We're going to leave this here so you can scroll back and look at it again when needed.

Wikimedia Commons/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Christianlorenz97</a>

To recap:

The series begins in 2019 with Michael Kahnwald, father of Jonas, husband of Hannah hanging himself and leaving behind a note saying 'not to be opened until 4 November at 10:13pm'.

Cut to November 4, when we learn that a red-haired boy called Erik Obendorf has been missing for two weeks and the case is assigned to police officer Ulrich – the case is very personal to him because his teenage brother went missing in Winden 33 years ago and has never been found.

On the 4th, Ulrich's son Mikkel goes missing in the woods near the caves, then the next day a dead kid turns up in the woods wearing '80s togs and a nickel with '1986' on it round his neck. He's carrying a Walkman and he has severe burns around his eyes and his eardrums are completely burst.

Julia Terjung/Netflix

Teenager Jonas was with Mikkel on the night of his disappearance and resolves to try to find him.

The next morning we see Mikkel emerge from the cave in the woods where he went missing. Only when he gets back into the town he realises it's not 2019, in fact it's 1986.

That's the basic setup of a show focused on time-travel between three eras: 1953, 1986 and 2019. The action is entirely set around Winden and is focused on four families – the Kahnwalds, the Nielsens, the Dopplers and the Tiedmanns, who have lived in the town for generations (which is convenient since characters regularly encounter younger versions of themselves and their relatives when they time-travel via the cave).

Unsurprisingly, it gets complicated. Here's what we think is going on.

Time Travel

Netflix

This centres around an underground cellar where Noah (more on him later) has built a machine which opens wormholes in 33-year increments (it's 33 years because of a theory that because a year isn't actually exactly 365 days it's only every 33 years where things are completely aligned and 'reset' – apparently).

The missing kids are being used to test the time machine, which currently doesn't work properly and just kills them and dumps them back in the cellar in another era. At the same time it opens a wormhole in the caves so Helge (more on him later too) can go through, find the bodies and move them out of the cellar to be found. The boy found in episode one is Mads, brother of Ulrich, who went missing as a teenager in 1986 and turns up in 2019.

The Stranger

Stefan Erhard Netflix

We learn that the stranger is in fact Jonas Kahnwald as an adult. The Stranger is a time-traveller who wants to destroy the time loop and plans to do this with the help of a machine built by clockmaker and time-travel expert Tannhaus. Noah claims that it's The Stranger's attempt to close the loop that actually created it in the first place.

Noah

Netflix

Noah is a murderous time-travelling priest, and he's at war with Claudia (more later) to control time travel.

At the end of season one Noah's origins are still unclear, though there are clues. While most of the other characters we meet at different ages, we only ever see Noah as a middle-aged man – or at least we think so. His priest's get-up is a massive advantage since his clothing doesn't tie him to one era in particular.

Netflix

There's an implication that Noah could be the estranged husband of Agnes Nielsen and the father of Tronte – Tronte has cigar burns on his arms which seem to have been inflicted by his father. His mother Agnes says she was married to a priest.

In 1953, the farmer who has had 33 of his sheep turn up dead one day also says: "There's a new priest at the church". Agnes and Tronte are new in town (and rent a room from Claudia's mother).

Claudia

Claudia is an expert time-traveller – and at war with Noah to control time travel.

In 1986, Claudia is the head of the nuclear power plant that's at the centre of Winden. She learns that there's been a radioactive leak over the summer. Barrels of nuclear waste are stored in the caves – these chemicals are stolen by The Stranger and power the device made by Tannhaus which he uses to destroy/create the time loop.

Netflix

Claudia's dog goes missing in 1953 through the caves and turns up again in 1986 where Claudia finds her. Claudia is aware of time travel (and in 1986 is given Tannhaus' book A Journey Through Time by Helge) and seems to be the main opposition to Noah. Or is she? We're really not clear if she's a goodie or a baddie by the end.

It's Claudia who gives the blueprints of the device to Tannhaus and convinces The Stranger to fix it so that he can destroy the time loop. Noah says she lied to The Stranger – but it's not like he's terribly trustworthy anyway. There is a sense that the two sides we might follow in season two are Helge and Noah vs Jonas (The Stranger) and Claudia.

Helge

Helge is the father of Peter and the father-in-law of Charlotte. He's also the owner of the time-travel cellar (in 2019 and 1986 certainly). Helge is a pawn of Noah, and works with him to abduct and then later cover up the killings of the children.

Helge's time line is super complicated....

Netflix

Helge is a child in 1953. Ulrich from 2019 goes back in time and meets the young Helge and tries to kill him by hitting him in the head with a rock and dumping him in the time-travel cellar. But Helge isn't dead. When adult Jonas sets off the machine built by clockmaker and time-travel expert Tannhaus (as ever, more on him later) with the intention of closing the wormhole, instead it creates it, linking teenage Jonas and child-Helge who are both in the time-travel cellar – Helge in 1953, Jonas in 1986.

They reach out for each other and in doing so, Jonas is catapulted into the future (presumably 2052). It's not clear exactly what happens to Helge at this point, but we'd imagine this is the point at which Noah would have gone to recruit him – this is borne out by Helge's son Peter, who says his father was kidnapped as a child in 1953.

Netflix

Meanwhile in 2019, we also learn from Peter that Helge had an accident in November 1986. Old Helge in 2019 has dementia, but begins to have several attacks of conscience (partly brought on by Ulrich's realisation that Helge was responsible for the killings). Old Helge claims he can fix things and change the past and the future, and he leaves the care facility where he lives to go back in time to 1986.

There, he attempts to talk middle-aged Helge out of working with Noah. But middle-aged Helge won't listen to his older self and instead goes back to Noah, prompting Old Helge to try to kill him in a car crash.

Old Helge only succeeds in killing his older self and injuring middle-aged Helge, who consequently misses the scheduled interview he was supposed to have with the police. An interview which might possibly have led the police to realise he was involved in the child disappearances and could have stopped the whole thing...

Causality

Throughout Dark there are paradoxes, such as the above, where someone time-travelling actually ends up being the cause of the thing they'd travelled back in time to prevent.

The Stranger creates the time loop by trying to destroy it. He's only able to do so with the machine built by Tannhaus, but Tannhaus only knows how to complete his machine because The Stranger brings him a completed (but broken) version back from the future.

Netflix

Noah has a book which seems to chart all of the events before they've even happened (certainly up to 2019) which implies he might be from a future further on – possibly 2052 – or just an expert time-traveller who has studied the events of the different eras. This also implies that there's an element of the idea of Fate here – that everything was always going to be exactly as it is and it's impossible to change the past or the future.

Peter

Netflix

Peter is Helge's son and the husband of Charlotte who's a policewoman working with Ulrich. Peter is gay and occasionally visits a transvestite male prostitute. He's roped into the time-travel thing in 2019 when he's in the cellar (which belongs to Helge) doing the 'Serenity Prayer' on the night of Mikkel's disappearance when the body of Mads (Ulrich's brother who disappeared in 1986) suddenly drops through the ceiling.

He calls Tronte (Mads' father) who turns up with Claudia, who says they must take the body to where it will be found. It's likely therefore that he is clued-in to the time-travel thing.

Mikkel and Jonas

Netflix

Mikkel is revealed to be Jonas' father – aka Michael (who kills himself in the prologue and leaves the note with instructions not to read it until Mikkel has already travelled back in time). Mikkel travels back to 1986 and is unable to get back to his own time. Dejected and on his own, he's eventually taken to hospital where he meets nurse Ines.

They form a bond and when it's time for him to be discharged, Ines takes Mikkel in instead. Mikkel tells Ines he's from the future, though she doesn't necessarily believe him initially. Later though, she realises (because Mikkel is born and grows up in Winden to become the boy she first met, before he disappears) but doesn't try to prevent his disappearing again.

Martha, Mikkel's sister and Jonas' love interest, is in fact Jonas' aunt – which he realises and therefore rejects her.

Bartosz

Netflix

He was a friend of Jonas in 2019 but because he finds out that Jonas got together with Martha (before he knew she was his aunt) even though she was Bartosz's girlfriend, he turns against Jonas.

Bartosz is contacted by Noah who makes various predictions about things that will happen via his special book – all of which he gets correct – and manages to convince Bartosz to trust him. Bartosz is therefore likely to join TEAM NOAH. Claudia is actually Bartosz' grandmother – however, his parents told him she was dead so they're very much estranged. Some people on Reddit reckon that Noah might actually BE Bartosz. We're not sure, but it's plausible.

Aleksander and Regina

Netflix

[This is a picture of Ulrich and Hannah]

Aleksander is a young man who helps out young Regina (Claudia's daughter) in 1986. Regina asks her mother if she'll give Aleks a job at the power plant and Claudia eventually does, though it's a top secret job in the cave.

Aleks has actually assumed the identity of another man. His real name is Boris Niewman – we see him burying two passports (his own and that of the real Aleksandr Köhler) along with a gun, in the forest. Young Hannah sees him do this in 1986. In 2019, she uses this information to blackmail him so he'll "ruin Ulrich's life" after Ulrich ends their affair.

The future

Netflix

At the end of the finale, Jonas is in some sort of dystopian future. He finds himself in a cabin with pictures of past, present and future version of the townsfolk pinned to the wall with articles and links joining them. As he ventures outside, he is hit in the head with the butt of a gun.

So there you go, crystal clear.

Season two, if it happens (which it really needs to) has a lot of explaining to do.

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