Where The End Of Dark Season 2 Leaves Us

Season 2 of Netflix’s German original series Dark was full of exciting and frustrating twists, from the revelation that Adam is Jonas to the reveal that Elisabeth is her mother’s mother. The finale gave us the apocalypse that was promised all season, and with it plenty of mysteries to ponder until the show returns in 2020.

Who is Aleksander Tiedeman, really? How did Jonas become Adam? Why do Franziska and Magnus follow Adam? Why did Adam and Noah think killing those boys was a good thing? What is their goal? And how did Noah, Elisabeth, and Charlotte become separated? We may not have answers to all those questions yet, but there is a lot to unpack from the last few minutes of “Endings and Beginnings,” which showed the narrow survival of some characters and the probable deaths of others. But in Winden, death doesn’t usually mean the end of a character’s story. That’s what the time travel is for! So let’s break down exactly what happened at the end of Dark season 2.

Teen Jonas and Martha reunite for the first time since Jonas’s disappearance several months earlier. It’s was the first time they’ve seen each other since Martha learned the truth about Mikkel/Michael, and she repeats his own words back to him: “We’re a perfect match. Don’t ever believe anything else.” They make out very emotionally, until Adam appears suddenly. He says the dark matter needs to be created so that he can lead it to its new purpose: the end of this world. Then, he shoots Martha, and teen Jonas helplessly watches her bleed out.

As Jonas continues to sit with Martha’s body, he is startled by the appearance of another Martha, though she has chic bangs and eyeliner and a general Katniss Everdeen vibe. “I’m not who you think I am,” she says, without providing any helpful information. “What time are you from?” Jonas asks her as she sets off a spherical golden devices that begins to whir and give off light.

“The question isn’t from what time, but from what world,” Martha answers, which sounds related to Adam’s proclamation that this world is doomed. We don’t know what world she’s from, but we have to assume she’s taking Jonas there. As the golden device goes off, the Kahnwald house blows up.

In the bunker, Peter and Elisabeth are waiting out the apocalypse with adult Claudia and Regina. Just before the blast happens, young Noah, who we’ve previously only seen in 1921, enters the bunker and makes eye contact with Elisabeth. This is the first time we’ve seen Noah and Elisabeth on screen together, although we know they once met in the forest during season 1. The implication seems to be that after surviving the 2020 apocalypse, Noah and Elisabeth eventually get together and have Charlotte... once Elisabeth stops being an actual child.

We know that Elisabeth and Noah survive the apocalypse, and we know Claudia does, too, because we’ve seen older versions of them. But we’ll have to wait until next season to find out what happens to Peter and Regina — they seem poised to survive, but we haven’t seen their future.

Adult Charlotte and adult Elisabeth from post-apocalyptic 2053 see each other through the portal that opens up from the dark matter in the power plant in 2020. Let’s take a second to note that Clausen, who ordered the bins of nuclear waste to be opened, is the worst.

This scene with Charlotte and Elisabeth mirrors the portal scene from the season 1 finale, in which teen Jonas, stuck in 1986, reaches out to child Helge, in 1952. When they touch, Jonas suddenly ends up in 2052, while Helge ends up in 1986.

If they same thing were to happen this time when Elisabeth and Charlotte touched, Elisabeth would end up in 2119 and Charlotte in 2053. However, given that 2020 Winden is having an apocalypse at that very moment, it’s possible that one or both of them died.

Adult Jonas goes over to the Nielson house in an attempt to save teen Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz. They’ve never seen adult Jonas before, but Bartosz recognizes him, probably from Noah’s description, and says that all of this is Jonas’s fault. Jonas agrees. He gets out the time machine, and it seems they make it out of 2020 just in time to survive the apocalypse. They likely go back to the past, maybe 1921. Given the age difference between Jonas and the rest of the group, it seems possible that they will now age into the older versions of themselves that we saw at the Sic Mundus church: elderly Adam, and middle aged Magnus and Franziska. We don’t know what happens to Bartosz, although it seems likely that he is the man we saw at the beginning of the season who was hacked to death by young Noah.

Katharina was on her way through the cave-portal, hoping to find her way to Mikkel when the apocalypse started. For no reason other than the fact that it would be anticlimactic and boring to have her die in the caves due to the apocalypse, we'd guess she’s headed to either 1987, where she may or may not be able to see her son, or to 1954, where she can once again spar with Hannah.