Dark: Everything is Now (Alles Ist Jetzt)
December 3, 2017 5:16 PM - Season 1, Episode 9 - Subscribe

Ulrich runs afoul of the law. Helge tries to dodge Egon Tiedemann, Claudia harnesses the cave’s powers, and Katharina lashes out at Hannah.

*We open with a headshot montage, and the suitcase device ticking away.

*1953: Bernd looks over the construction site, then goes home to discover Helge is missing, and leaves for the police station. Ulrich has sat through the night watching the shelter door. At the police station, Egon's boss tells him that Bernd is there to report Helge missing, and Egon remembers Ulrich had mentioned Helge.
*1953: Claudia and Tronte look for Gretchen in the woods (and flirt a little). Mrs. Egon tries on one of Agnes Nielsen's dresses. They also flirt (but Mrs. Egon loses her nerve). Helge's mother confesses to Noah (I think?) that she never wanted Helge, that he might have been the product of an affair, and the priest recites a super-creepy rendition of the Lord's Prayer.
*1953: Egon drives past Ulrich, then chases him through the woods and catches him by the cavern entrance. When Egon asks if he killed the boys, Ulrich insists that the boys can't be dead because he has changed the future by stopping Helge. Egon takes him into custody. Back in the shelter, Helge regains consciousness.

*1986: A masked man runs through the forest, with the sound of helicopters overhead. He stops to rest and examine his shoulder wound.
*1986: Hannah talks to Katharina outside the school, asking if she and Ulrich will stay together, and casting suspicion on Regina as the witness. In jail, Ulrich is released. Jana slaps Egon and says she'll get him removed from Mads' case. In the radioactive barrel cavern, Claudia checks the geiger counter readings, and is surprised by the sudden appearance of her lost 1953 poodle, Gretchen.
*1986: Ulrich and Katharina talk by the tower hut when Regina walks by; Katharina accuses her of being the false witness, and starts beating her up, when the formerly-masked teen comes out of the woods and tells Katharina to stop, brandishing his gun until she apologizes and she and Ulrich leave. He collapses, but doesn't want to go to the hospital, and Regina offers to patch him up herself. He introduces himself as Aleksander.
*1986: Claudia talks to Bernd Doppler, at his mansion, about the mysterious incident at the power plant and the cover-up. He says the danger was minimal and taken care of.
*1986: Middle-age Helge exits the shelter as old 2019 Helge watches from the woods. At the police station, Egon waits through Helge's appointed interview time, then drives out to the cabin to look for him. 1986 Helge hides in the cabin; Egon tries all the doors and the shelter door (padlocked), then drives away.
*1986: Aleksander buries a gun and one passport (for Boris Niewald) in the woods and keeps the Aleksander passport on him, as young Hannah watches from behind a tree. He goes to Claudia's office asking for a job.
*1986 Helge and Noah the priest work on the chair in wallpapered room. Helge has second thoughts, but Noah gives a super-creepy speech about the evil of man and nonexistence of God and how the time machine they're building will re-order everything.

*2019: Hannah opens a box in her kitchen which has the plastic bag with Aleksander's fake passport and gun from 1986. At the police station, Charlotte listens to Ulrich's last voicemail, when Katharina bursts in looking for him, then storms out again.
*2019: Franziska gets out of Magnus' bed after sex, and he gives her the necklace of hers he found in the woods. Downstairs, Martha leaves another message for Jonas, and is surprised to see Franziska leave.
*2019: Katharina goes to Hannah's looking for Ulrich. Hannah tells her it's over, in the most hurtful way possible -- saying that Hannah ended it, that Ulrich was the one who started it, that he had told her he wasn't in love with Katharina anymore and wanted to end the marriage and was in love with Hannah.
*2019: Bartosz is playing video games when old Claudia, his grandmother, arrives. Bartosz said he'd been told she was dead, and she says she wasn't a good mother to Regina.
*2019: Hannah gives Aleksander a massage at the plant, and shows him the plastic bag to show she has his gun and fake passport, and tells him she wants him to destroy Ulrich or else.
*2019: Jonas comes home to find Martha waiting outside, demanding to know why he's ignoring her. He tells her they're wrong together, and leaves her outside.
*2019: Aleksander calls eyepatch-cop, Wöllen, for dirt on Ulrich. Wöllen asks what about the truck, and Aleksander says it's fine where it is, and they'll move the barrels back when things quiet down.
*2019: Regina goes into the hooded man's room to vacuum, and sees the wall-o-crazy pin-ups everywhere. Somewhere/somewhen, the suitcase device whirs away.
*2019: Bartosz gets into Noah's car and says that everything Noah predicted has happened. Noah asks if he's reconsiders his offer, and Bartosz accepts.

*1986: Claudia hires Aleksander, has him weld shut the door in the radioactive barrel cavern.
*2019: The sex worker with the RV sees the hooded figure in the rain, then he breaks into the truck and opens up one of the radioactive material barrels.
*1953: Tannhaus tinkers in the shop, then old Claudia arrives with schematics of the suitcase device and asks him to build it for her.
posted by oh yeah! (19 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was so happy to see Gretchen the poodle survived, was not expecting her to survive the tunnels after all the other dead animals in the show, so, yay. Hopefully she'll survive the finale too.

Was Noah the priest Helge's mother was talking to? Is it the same actor in all 3 timelines? I think it is, but I wasn't sure.

Hannah is terrifyingly devious in every timeline.

One more to go! Sure hope it wraps up with an explanation and not a cliffhanger.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:24 PM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yes, I believe Noah was the priest she was talking to, and yes, I think it is the same actor.
posted by triggerfinger at 9:27 PM on December 3, 2017


Why did the eyepatch cop have an eyepatch? Do we ever know?
posted by triggerfinger at 9:29 PM on December 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


How does Aleksander get to be Aleksander Tiedemann (which he is in the credits)? The passport he uses says Aleksander Köhler. Does Claudia end up adopting him, giving him her name, and then marrying him to her daughter?
posted by neroli at 8:19 PM on December 4, 2017


Is Noah Agnes Nielsen's supposedly dead husband? What's up with the scars on 1953 Tronte's arms? The guy with the tattooed back we saw earlier was Noah, right? Who built the "Sic Mundus.." doors to the portal?
posted by neroli at 8:28 PM on December 4, 2017


More people should watch this show.
posted by neroli at 8:29 PM on December 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Does 1986 Egon know that Ulrich, who he has in a cell for supposedly raping Katharina, is the same person he had in his cell in 1953, when Ulrich was 33 years older than he was in 1986?
posted by neroli at 8:35 PM on December 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was also kind of thinking he was her husband. But, they were in the same (small) town at the same time, so you think he'd have discovered her if she ran away. The scars on Tronte's arms looked like cigar burns, and his mom was smoking in one scene, but it was a cigarette, which was much to small to have left those marks. I kind of took her at her word that her husband was probably abusive, but I'm sure there's more to come on that.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:38 PM on December 4, 2017


OH! And my theory is that the reason Egon hates teenager Ulrich so much (he hated him well before the rape charge) is because he somehow remembers him from when they met in the 50s (even if it is subconsciously).

It seems unlikely, but I don't know if Ulrich ever gave the police his name in the 1950s, so maybe teenage Ulrich reminds Egon of a very bad dude he arrested once, years before.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:43 PM on December 4, 2017


OH! And my theory is that the reason Egon hates teenager Ulrich so much (he hated him well before the rape charge) is because he somehow remembers him from when they met in the 50s (even if it is subconsciously).

Yes, I think it's the moebius strip/ouroboros paradox effect -- Egon's hatred and suspicion of 1986 teen Ulrich was created by his interaction with 2019 Ulrich in 1953, but 2019 Ulrich wouldn't have been so insulting to 1953 Egon if he didn't have such a grudge against him for the false rape charge arrest and the apparent bungling of the Mads investigation. The one grudge creates the other, but neither one was first.

More people should watch this show.

I think they will -- I don't expect it to gain some huge 'Stranger Things'-sized following, but I do think people will check it out on a whim or recommendation and get sucked into a binge over the year.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:16 PM on December 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can't figure why modern Aleksander even cares that Hannah has a gun and a 33 year old passport of some random teenage boy named Boris.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:05 PM on December 5, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah that whole subplot was incoherent and unnecessary. Waste of time toward the end, and an obvious setup, along with the "DESTROY ULRICH" nonsense, for more drama in season 2. A shame, really.
posted by mediareport at 8:51 PM on December 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


that he might have been the product of an affair

wow that was not at all how I understood the implication of "maybe he wasn't a child born out of love." I guess it is technically a possibility but it does not fit with her treatment of him at all, which looked a lot more like tightly suppressed hatred than externalized guilt.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:52 PM on December 14, 2017


I started watching this about 4 days ago and I'm trying to drag it out but I can't!

I thought it's interesting how Noah uses religion where he can, and drops it when Helge tries to stab him (that was this episode, right?). For him to see that God is no longer an adequate justification for Helge and to immediately say, "Yeah, you're right, God has nothing to do with this," I figure Noah was maybe never a priest, or if he was, he lost his faith somewhere in the free will/God's will debate.

I don't see how anything can possibly be resolved in episode 10, but I'm waiting to watch it. I am fairly firm that the hooded man will be Jonas, first preventing young Jonas from reaching out to Mikkel in 1986 so he can be born, and then, once that task is accomplished, destroying the mechanism that allows people to travel through time.

I am trying to work out who Agnes' grandmother, who used to live in Winden, is going to be. Did Claudia go back to 1920 and start a new life? Or maybe Martha will?
posted by tracicle at 12:36 AM on December 15, 2017


aaack Jonas stop kissing your aunt!
posted by numaner at 8:46 PM on January 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can't figure why modern Aleksander even cares that Hannah has a gun and a 33 year old passport of some random teenage boy named Boris
I'm guessing if she wants to press the issue that Boris will turn out to be a fugitive from around the time Aleksander showed up and Aleksander would then be in the uncomfortable position of having to show more documentation that he's who he says he is than just that old stolen passport. Not a slam dunk, but when you've been successfully living a lie for 33 years, finding out someone's onto you is probably a pretty disconcerting revelation.

That said, it seems pretty naïve of Hannah to think she can extort a man with enough power to "destroy" Ulrich and not have him come back at her. I do wonder if they're setting stuff up for season 2.

Also, how is it that Ulrich and Katharina never recognized Aleksander as the random stranger who pulled a gun on them? Is the implication that he lived an incredibly secretive life long enough as to be unrecognizable before becoming a normal figure in the community?
posted by Cogito at 10:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


that he might have been the product of an affair

I took that scene to mean he was a product of rape?


So a lot happens over the summer in Winden, I highly doubt we will get to see what ultimately changes Claudia’s course from CEO to time wanderer. One episode to go and so much to wrap up. At least there’s a season 2.
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:18 AM on February 9, 2018


"I am trying to work out who Agnes' grandmother, who used to live in Winden, is going to be."

Well, it's bound to be someone related to Egon, since there was the chemistry between them. I mean, I think the show is aware of the (true) fact that people unknowingly closely related to each other are often attracted. This would have implications for Egon's wife, too, although Agnes's intentional flirtation with her makes me think not, since she presumably wouldn't do so knowingly. (Assuming she's clued-in because of her mysterious origins.)
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:14 AM on November 26, 2018


So glad that Gretchen the dog survived. There aren't many happy moments, which I guess I should expect in a show about nuclear time-traveling child-murderer priests vs. steampunk time-traveling hobos.

Eye-patch Cop is corrupt?! Oh no, not Eye-Patch Cop! I'm very disappointed in you, Eye-Patch Cop.

Pretty sure Noah is Agnes' Ex & Tronte's dad, perhaps why Tronte may be somehow involved in working for or covering up his experiments.

how is it that Ulrich and Katharina never recognized Aleksander as the random stranger who pulled a gun on them?

They were teenagers, they probably just figured "let it go, better not to mess with him than risk pissing him off." It's clear from prior interactions over the Search Warrant that Ulrich and Aleksander have history -- probably resentment going back 33 years.

When Helge's Mom is talking to Noah in 1953, she says that Helge might not have been Bernd's child and not conceived from love, suggesting she was raped.

1986 Egon is clearly remembering 1953 and the interactions he had with time-displaced 2019 Ulrich. Will 2019 Ulrich do even worse things while trapped in the past, perhaps even becoming the reason Egon turns to drink? Tune in next time to find out!
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:21 PM on August 4, 2022


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