- Dark, a Netflix series, is one of the great mind-benders.
- In the Netflix series Dark, we can see many techniques for anyone to travel in time,
Dark, a Netflix series, is one of the great mind-benders that has perplexed everyone with its unique and intriguing supernatural tale. As a result, it’s understandable if you haven’t worked out how time travel works in the series yet.
When the series first began in Winden town, viewers found that the children of the area had gone missing in an unusual way.
As the series progressed, it reveal that the missing children have unintentionally travel to the past due to the existence of time travel in that universe.
However, even in the series’ early seasons, the time-travel events were perplexing, particularly the means of time travel and what could and could not change through time travel.
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Time Travel Methods in the ‘Dark’ Series
In the Netflix series Dark, we can see many techniques for anyone to travel in time, either past or future, in 33-year intervals.
They are as follows:
A wormhole or Winden Cave
The Winden Cave in the Dark series is a wormhole that allows time travel.
The Winden cave, located beneath the Winden forest, is one of the portals that allows time travel.
There are multiple routes in the cave, but only one leads to three hefty human-made doors.
Each door also bears the Triquetra emblem and the inscription “Sic Mundus Creatus Est.”
Furthermore, they all connect three unique moments in time (33 years apart): 1953, 1986, and 2019.
Members of the Sic Mundus secret society built the cave in 1921.
However, after an incident at the Winden Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, the tunnel or wormhole were activating.
The incident at the power station released radioactive materials and radiation into the cave passageways.
Later, nuclear chemicals and emissions merged to construct a time-travel wormhole in the tunnels accessible via separate entrances.
Travelers such as Jonas Kahnwald, Ulrich Nielsen, Hannah Kahnwald, Kathrina Nielsen, and Helge Doppler exploited the cave’s tunnel or wormhole to get at their destination on time.
Time Traveling Machine
In the Dark series, another option to travel through time is with the use of the time travel machine, commonly known as the apparatus or clockwork box.
The gadgets, like the tube in the cave, transport travelers to the past or future using the 33-year rule.
When the machine is turned on, however, it takes the passengers via a dark spherical hole.
To operate the machine, some of the ‘God Particle’ generated by the Nuclear Power Plant’s radioactive material is required.
In addition, the system creates a wormhole by using an electromagnetic field from Ulrich’s smartphone.
However, there are two times in the series where Claudia uses the machine without seeing Ulrich’s cellphone.
Fans are still debating whether Claudia went back in time to borrow a cellphone or devised a way to utilize the machine without it.
H.G. Tannhaus, a clockmaker and engineer, designed the gadget.
Tanenhaus, on the other hand, did not come up with the idea of building a time machine.
He builds it according to the designs provided by powerplant manager Claudia Tiedemann, who has already been across all three universes.
After all, if she hadn’t time-traveled back and forth, how would she have handed Tannhaus the 2019 Ulrich telephone and a reactive cesium isotope from 2019 Jonas?
Tannhaus used references from his own book, ‘A Journey Through Time,’ written by his future self, in addition to Claudia’s.
The Stranger had given him the book (older Jonas).
We first see the gadget in action when the Stranger uses it to time travel at the end of Season 1.
As the series develops, we witness other characters use the machine to travel to a different time.
The unintentional construction of Jonas’ and alternate Martha’s worlds was caused by the creation of this time machine.
The Bunker’s Chair
The chair in the Dark series’ bunker transports someone from one period to another.
Dark’s Helge Doppler is bound in the chair erected inside the bunker
Unlike other means of time travel, the chair in the bunker can kill when transported to another time.
The chair in the bunker was an experimental time machine built in 1986 behind the Doppler Shack by Noah and Helge Doppler.
The scary chair was made up of ankle restraints, straps, electric wires, and a large metal ring at eye level.
Meanwhile, the bunker had been transformed into a child’s bedroom.
Noah and Doppler abducted children in order to experiment with time travel using a chair-like machine.
Mads Nielsen, Erik Obendorf, and Yasin Friese were kidnapped.
The first phase of the research, however, failed, resulting in the deaths of the stolen youngsters.
The lifeless remains of those children were then moved to different years throughout a 33-year period.
Six months after the first attempt, Noah repeated the test with the addition of the complete body-sized metal ring around the chair.
He tried with the child version of Helge Doppler this time.
Surprisingly, he was able to move Helge from 1987 to 1954 alive.
In the series Dark, the God Particle takes shape.
The Netflix series Dark’s God Particle
The God Particle is another method/way that time travel is proven to be feasible in the series Dark.
In the series, there are two known god particles: one discovered in 2020 and the other created by Sic Mundus as a twin of the first.
The initial God Particle was created following the 1986 nuclear power plant catastrophe.
After its formation, the particle crossed time and space and united them.
In other words, it served as the foundation for time travel because all other methods of time travel require some quantity of God Particle to function.
That could be why the God Particle allows one to go to any time (past or future) without crossing the 33-year barrier, as opposed to other ways, which can only transfer someone within 33 years (either in past or future).
Time Machine in an Alternate World
The time machine from the Dark series’ alternate reality.
The round-shaped time machine from the Dark series’ alternate planet.
Nobody knew about the existence of an alternate (parallel) world until the closing scene of the second season.
With the alternate universe came a one-of-a-kind round-sized time machine created on the alternate planet.
The alternate world’s time machine was so advanced that it could not only move the characters to different times but also from one parallel planet to another.
On ‘Dark,’ what can be changed by time travel?
There are hundreds upon thousands of theories in the world about the potential and impossibilities of time travel.
However, no one has discovered the specific mechanism or investigated how the time travel phenomenon affects time and space.
So far, everything we know about time travel and the potential changes we can make by traveling to our past or future has come from popular theories, movies, and television shows.
Here are some popular theories that could adequately explain time travel.
Paradox of Grandfather
According to the Grandfather Paradox, if a person went back in time and killed his or her grandfather, the individual would never be born.
However, if the person was never born in the first place, he or she cannot go back in time and kill.
So, in order for the person to be born, the individual’s grandfather must have lived in the past.
As a result, no matter how hard one tries, the past cannot be changed.
Similar to the idea, the television series Dark, which centered around the story of time travel,
demonstrated what the characters could and could not do when traveling through time.
The series also makes it obvious to viewers that time-travelers cannot alter events in the past if the future of that event already exists.
In the series, for example, Ulrich failed to kill the kid version of Helge Doppler because a healthy and alive Helge already existed in the future.
So, even after traveling to the past and hitting Helge with a huge old rock with all his might, Ulrich couldn’t kill him.
He only managed to leave permanent scars on Helge’s face in the end.
Similarly, some influences or alterations can be made in the past.
And any alterations made by any character in the past via time travel are already accounted for in the future.
This concept makes changing the future impossible.
That is, whatever happened in the past has already occurred in the future.
This problem was correctly stated by a Reddit member named BaaaaaL44 in one of his explanation posts regarding time travel in the series Dark.
Consider going back in time and purchasing a toy automobile for your youthful self.
Then you return to your own timeline, and while cleaning the house, you come across the same toy car you had as a youngster.
That’s correct, the car was always yours, as you acquired it as a child from your future self.
When you returned to your own timeline, the toy vehicle did not emerge out of anywhere.
You are not seeing an “altered” chronology influenced by your past acts (as in Butterfly Effect), the car was always there,
and if you bothered to remember before going back in time,
you would have remembered a strange guy approaching you as a child and giving you a toy car.
Characters in the Dark series, such as Jonas, Claudia, and Ulrich, who frequently journeyed to their past and future, also desired to change their past so that everything in their original timeline was normalized.
However, no one was successful.
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The theory and explanation can go on for as long as we like.
But, before we go any further, we must recognize that,
even if time travel is conceivable, the events which have already occurre cannot be change – at least, no one has a proven formula to change the past so far.
This idea could help to explain the show’s sentimental finish.
After saving the Tanenhaus family from a possible accident,
Martha and Jonas are non-existent in the original reality.
However, if we consider the “Grandfather Paradox,” we might conclude that the exact action taken by Martha and Jonas to change the past of the Tanenhaus family may result in yet another time loop.
Is the show’s creator hinting at such a scenario by portraying a Jonas-like yellow raincoat in the show’s final scene?
