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Dark review: Too consistent for its own good
Before we start, be aware this review spoils the entire TV show!
1. The rules of the game: Determinism, consistency, and time loops
As a reminder, Dark is about a small group of characters in a German town that deals with the strange disappearance of (initially) two children. As we follow the characters' search for what happened, we gradually realize that time travel has occurred, and some people seem able to move through time. We learn that two doors through a local cave allow travelers to go back 30 years or forward 30 years.
The instinct of people discovering the passage is to use this opportunity to change what happened: By bringing back a lost child or preemptively killing a future kidnapper. Every single time, the operation fails. Moreover, we realize that the present is the way it is precisely because someone tried to prevent it. For example, Helge Doppler wouldn’t have been Noah’s pawn and involved in numerous kidnappings if Ulrich Nielsen, the father of the kidnapped Mikkel, hadn’t tried to kill him.
Time after time, during the first two seasons, this rule is continuously reinforced: It is impossible to change the past. It is impossible to do something in the past that would change the present in such a way that the past wouldn’t have happened.
This is the show’s answer to the Grandfather Paradox:
The Grandfather Paradox is a hypothetical situation in which a person travels back in time and kills their own grandfather before the conception of their father or mother, which prevents the time traveler's existence. The paradox is, if the person doesn't exist, then they could not have traveled back in time to kill their grandfather in the first place. — GPT 4
They are two easy solutions to this paradox:
Preventing any change in the timeline: The grandfather can’t be killed as it would prevent the time traveler’s existence. This is known as the Novikov self-consistency principle.
Changes in the past create new timelines: The time traveler kills someone that isn’t his grandfather as his actions create a new branch in the timeline. Causality is never broken, as the first timeline leads to the second. In fiction, this approach is usually less satisfying as multiple universes are confusing, and characters lose the satisfaction of changing the past.
To the despair of the characters in the show, Dark chooses the Novikov solution. This makes the show very satisfying as mysteries get gradually explained, and the timeline always stays consistent (at least most of the show — we’ll discuss that later).
Dark displays beautifully another time paradox: Causal loops.
A Causal Loop is a paradox of time travel that occurs when a sequence of events (actions, information, objects, people) in the future is among the causes of an event in the past, which in turn is among the causes of the first-mentioned event. This creates a loop of cause-effect events with no discernible origin, hence the name "causal loop." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_paradox
Dark embraces causal loops with key elements having no set origin in time. This is mainly the case of the time machines and H.G. Tannhaus's book “A Journey Through Time.” For the book in particular, it is given to its author before he even writes it making its origin impossible to define.
The downside of relying heavily on causal loops is that we lack insights into essential and mysterious elements of the plot. For example, we know nothing about time machines. They exist because they exist. If you're into science fiction, you'll miss this information, although I can understand that Dark chose not to do it.
Due to those conditions, the characters gradually discover that the world is perfectly deterministic. This realization is all the more tragic as they all wish to prevent the apocalypse or some other tragedy. And the ability to travel through time seems to be the perfect solution. Sadly, their meddlings create the reality they want to change in the first place as they fail to understand that it is impossible to change the course of events.
2. Quantum entanglement and the multiverse
During season 3, we discover they are multiple universes. First, the universe we were following is part of a set of two universes mirroring each other. The show uses visual representation that heavily emphasizes the mirroring and the link between those two universes.
Additionally, they are variations of those two universes, with multiple variations happening concurrently. For example, during the apocalypse, there’s a version where Jonas is teleported to Eva’s world and another where he isn’t. The show leans on quantum mechanics to explain that behavior: The two universes are supposedly in a state of quantum entanglement which supposedly explains why those multiple realities can exist simultaneously.
As is mandatory in shows dealing with quantum mechanics, Shrödinger’s cat is brought up to “explain.” But this is unconvincing, and it feels quantum mechanics is used to make this concept sound smarter than it is. The core idea is that multiple entangled universes were all created when H.G. Tannhaus tried to create a Time Machine in the origin world.
From that point forward, we follow the characters traveling between the two universes. If we go back to the Grandfather Paradox, nothing has changed: Yes, they are now multiple universes. But they are all linked together and fully consistent. The link between cause and consequence is maintained. Even in this setup, events cannot be changed. We continue to follow characters as they try to prevent the apocalypse and the existence of time travel, but systematically, they fail, and determinism is reinforced.
3. Choosing between consistency and a happy ending
Almost all the characters in Dark wish to alter the timeline, oftentimes by preventing the apocalypse that is understood to be the source of time travel and of their troubles. Initially, the deterministic and consistent nature of their universes is interesting. Still, it introduces a significant challenge to the show's writers: How could the protagonists succeed without breaking the established rules?
It turns out the rules were so strict and precise that the writers fail to find a satisfactory solution: They devise that during the apocalypse, there’s a short window where events can be changed. From https://dark-netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Quantum_entanglement:
Claudia Tiedemann of Adam's world utilizes quantum entanglement to send herself to 2053 to speak with him. She explains the concept to him, and how Eva has been using it to preserve the knot, but that there is a way to break the cycle. Adam creates a third version of events by going back to save Jonas from the apocalypse and sending him to Eva's world to save Martha before she can be taken to Adam's world. This allows them to travel to the original world, where they succeed in destroying both worlds at an instance and Eva's worlds.
Quantum Entanglement aside, the main issue arises when Martha and Jonas travel to the original world: Their goal is to save H.G. Tannhaus’ only son’s life. By doing so, they prevent H.G. Tannhaus from trying to create a time machine to save his dead son. Indeed, this time machine created the entangled universes in the first place and all the misery that came with it. Jonas and Martha succeed: They save the son’s life, and we see them gradually fade away from existence.
By showing them disappear, the show confirms that they succeeded. H.G. Tannhaus never created the time machine, the two parallel universes never existed, and finally, Jonas and Martha never existed. In a way, this ending is beautiful: A father did the impossible by creating a time machine to save his son, but nobody, not even him, would ever know.
But frustratingly, this ending brings us back to the grandfather paradox: How could Jonas and Martha save the son if his survival prevents them from existing? Sadly, I don’t believe the show resolves this contradiction. They try to partially answer by explaining that there’s a short window during the apocalypse during which the chain of cause and effect is broken. But I don’t believe that even the writers were convinced as they did not spend much time on this solution.
The fact is that the show continuously hammered determinism. In this context, it is impossible to save the world as you can’t change the timeline. Yet, the show insists that the world needs to be changed. [This is emphasized by the fact that the characters think of the suffering in their worlds as infinite. They believe that because time travel leads them to see terrible events happen multiple times, it means that the event happens continuously and suffering is infinite. This makes no sense. Watching twice a video of an event doesn’t mean the event happens twice.]
Dark desperately tries to build up a solution and comes up in the last season with quantum mechanics. They succeeded at bringing confusion but not the clean solution we were hoping for. A consistent happy ending wasn’t possible.
Finally, a simple heuristics leads me to think their solution wasn't coherent: If they had found a way out of the constraints laid out in the first two seasons, that would have been very impressive, and they would have proudly explained it to us. The fact the last season was so messy is a clear sign that they lacked an elegant solution.
4. A fourth universe as an alternate ending
Let’s look again at our constraints: We can’t change what happened, as that would introduce the grandfather paradox. Everything that has happened is immutable. A common solution to this problem in science fiction is introducing multiple universes. By doing so, when a time traveler changes the past, he is creating a new version of the past, not modifying it. Logical consistency is maintained as universe 1 is the cause of universe 2.
Back to the Future's solution was to create a new timeline.
Applied to Dark, Jonas and Martha could have changed the original universe and saved the son, creating a fourth universe. Not only does this solution maintain causality, but I also tend to find it more poetic, albeit a bit darker: All the suffering we experience in the show would still happen. Millions of people would still have to live with the fallout of the apocalypse. But by their sacrifice, they allow H.G. Tannhaus’ son to live.
5. Final rating: 85/100
Overall, Dark, and especially the first two seasons, are worth a watch. They provide an entertaining way to think about time paradoxes. As you watch, you’re discovering the story and continually thinking of potential solutions that fit the characters’ goals and the time travel rules.
As I discussed, the show fell short of expectations during the last season. After noticing how strict and unbreakable the rules were, the ending was disappointing. If you understood the ending differently, in a way that resolves the grandfather paradox, I would love to hear about it!
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