Dark Season 1 Netflix Series Review

Dark (2017-)
Season 1 - 10 episodes (2017)

Watch Dark Season 1 on Netflix
Created by: Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese.
Directed by: Jeremy Rush
Starring: Frank Grillo, Garret Dillahunt
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer 

Plot
In this German language series, a family mystery saga with a supernatural twist unfolds, taking the story back to 1986. Two missing children connect four families as they search for the kids in the present day.The question isn't who kidnapped the children, but when. The years 2019, 1986, and 1953 are somehow linked.

Verdict
This is interpersonal drama, time travel, and mystery all thrown together. It's got parts of Back to the Future, Lost, and Primer.  While it makes you work for it due to the sheer number of characters and a lot of quick scenes you need to remember, the experience is rewarding. The first episode throws a lot at you. It's bewildering and it should be. I went from skeptical it could answer all the questions and provide a satisfying conclusion to no longer caring. The ride is worth it. This is an experience that's bewildering and fascinating. Are we constrained to fate or is free will an illusion?
Watch it.

Review
While the audio dub isn't great, sounding like people just reading lines, the translation is better than the subtitles. At least text on the screen is translated too. That often doesn't happen.

This is a dark and deep show. There are a lot of people to track in the show, and it doesn't help that two, sometimes three actors play each character. It took me a few episodes to remember who was who and each relationship. I felt like I need a spreadsheet, similar to watching Game of Thrones. These are just a few of the characters.

Egon

Hannah

Helge

Katarina

H.G. Tannhaus

Ulrich

I liked the show after a couple episodes, but it was more wanting to know what was going on. As far as the pilot goes, I had to watch episode two. The mystery is pressing enough that you'll keep watching. In episode five this show fully hooked me, finally paying off some of the questions. In episode seven this goes full mind explosion. You won't be able to quit it. I binged this show, and it's so dense I still forgot about some of the things that happened towards the beginning of the season. After episode eight, I didn't care if this answered nothing else. It was worth the price of admission. Everything starts to interconnect, and it's just a wild ride.

This show presents so many questions early on, it's normal to wonder if they can provide suitable answers. The show doesn't answer everything and that would be one of my criticisms. Not that it doesn't answer everything, but there is one critical omission. There is one character of which we get very little information. There's a strong implication, but that only makes it more strange. If you're wondering where season two could go, we get a nice teaser in the final episode. There's that, and a couple of characters that need more explanation.

The opening credits montage takes on a deeper meaning as you get farther into the series. One image mirrored three times is a direct reference to what's happening in the show. The first episode starts with a strange rant about how the past, present, and future are just a construct.

The cave might be the central character of the show. Everything centers around this cave. There's missing children, a dead child with strange burns around his head, and an ominous nuclear power plant. The first episode is bonkers, and I loved it. I wondered if it was time travel. That becomes more apparent in the second episode.

In the next episode one of the hints is that it's not where the missing child is, but when. We don't know how time travel happens at this point. Is a black hole in the cave, is it related to the power plant? Who is this kid that seems to be from the '80s?

We begin to realize there is a link between 1986 and 2019. How does the portal work? Dead birds are found nearby so does it consume life to operate? We've got that dead kid that could support the theory. We also have a stranger in the hotel with a time travel box. That's part of the fun of this show, it gives you enough to keep you wanting more, but also lets you make wild speculations.

The questions are flying, with episode four generating a lot, but in episode five we start to get answers. Then Jonas enters the cave that contains this strange portal. Who put it there? There's an engraved door that I would guess is man made. When Jonas goes back, that's when we get into the Back to the Future portion of the show. He's told he shouldn't meddle with the past. That's when he has a realization of what I already knew. The undertone of this show questions free will. Is there anything that can be done to change events? I would argue there isn't.

Episode seven goes off the rails in the best way. The year 1953 becomes important and all the pieces start to fall into place. All these interpersonal connections are shaped by time. Episode seven is wild, but to get into specifics would spoil it.

Episode eight has some religious implications that threw me for a loop. We get a reference to the antichrist and a jump cut to a character. This isn't the first mention of antichrist and this character being associated. It's the lack of clarification about these implications that I wish the show had given us just a little bit more information. Is this combining religion and time travel or is it merely a character purporting it to be religious? This give me a Carnivale (2003-05) vibe with this hint that the show could become a battle between good and evil.
When an event happens, a link between two time periods, it connects not two points but three. That's why 1953, 1986, and 2019 are linked. The origin is 1986, with links created to '53 and '19. The fact that thirty three years is between them is significant. The number three shows up throughout history.

This gets into Lost territory with time travel and whether you can meddle in time. It's not clear from the show whether you can, but I personally believe time is a closed loop. Whatever happens has always happened. The show provides plenty of supporting arguments.
You could argue the show is stepping into a few paradoxes, but from what I've seen that's not true. While the watchmaker creates the time travel device by referencing the broken future state of it, that's not a paradox as the box has an origin and presumable an end. If he took the future box and repaired it and that's what he gave to the stranger, then the object has no origin.

Just to note how crazy this gets, at one point a character exclaims, "her husband, who's screwing my mom, is looking for his son, who's my father!" Work that one out.
The final couple of episodes seem to implicate there's a battle between good and evil. It's unclear who falls on which side. The also makes a big deal about the thirty three year time span, which raises even more questions about the ending.