Dark (Season 2)

It’s 4:17 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been sandblasted and then rolled in glitter. I think my heart has been beating at 120 BPM for the last six hours straight. There are three empty coffee mugs on my desk, and I’m pretty sure the last thing I ate was a handful of stale pretzels I found in the back of the cupboard. I don’t know what day it is anymore. All I know is that I just finished Dark Season 2 on Netflix and I am fundamentally broken.

My brain is just… soup. A soupy, paradox-filled, German-spoken mess. I started this yesterday, thinking, "Oh, I'll just watch a few episodes, get back into the swing of things." A few episodes. Ha. That’s like saying you’re just going to "dip your toes" in a black hole.

The first few episodes were a slow burn, you know? Picking up the pieces. Jonas is stuck in the future, which is just a delightful, rainy, hellscape. Martha is moping. Mikkel is still a kid in the past. It was all very "okay, I see what you're doing here, show." I was in control. I was taking notes. (I wasn't taking notes, I was just letting it wash over me like a wave of existential dread.)

And then it happened.

The exact moment I knew I was doomed, that my weekend was cancelled and my sleep was a sacrifice to the Old Gods of Streaming, was Episode 7. "The Beginning and the End." That’s a cute title, you guys. Real cute. Up until this point, I thought I had a handle on the family tree. It was complicated, sure, but manageable. And then they show up. Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz. But not the whiny teenage versions we know and love/hate. No. These are the weathered, post-apocalyptic, gun-toting versions. The "Originals." They’ve been in the future for years, waiting for Jonas. I literally stood up. I pointed at the screen. I said, out loud, to my empty living room, "NO. WAY." That was it. Hook, line, and sinker. Abandoned all hope of productivity. My fate was sealed.

But can we talk about Hannah for a second? Because I need to talk about Hannah. I went from feeling a little sorry for her in Season 1 to actively, viscerally hating her this season. She is a black hole of neediness and spite. Her decision to go back to 1986 wasn't to save anyone. It wasn't to fix the timeline. It was to get her man. A man who is, by the way, dead. She decided to have an affair with Egon Tiedemann just to stick it to Katharina, and then she gets pregnant and decides to STAY and have the baby, who we know is Silja, who then grows up to have… well, let’s not even go there. I literally screamed at my screen when she made that choice. "YOU ARE RUINING EVERYTHING, HANNAH!" She’s not a character; she’s a walking, talking catastrophe in a terrible haircut.

And the pacing. For a minute there, around episodes 4 and 5, I was like, "Okay, this is a little slow, guys. A lot of walking in the woods." But now? Now that my brain is pulverized jelly? I get it. That’s the point. They lull you into this false sense of understanding, this rhythm of "okay, person A is in this time, person B is in that time." They make you think you can solve it. They make you feel smart. And then they spend the last three episodes taking that feeling, lighting it on fire, and dancing on its ashes.

Which brings me to the finale. Oh, God, the finale. Adam’s origin. The realization that Jonas is destined to become this… this… shell of a person who wants to destroy the origin of everything, even if it means erasing himself. The way Claudia is playing both sides, the future Claudia and the past Claudia, a chess master against time itself. It’s too much. It’s brilliant and it’s cruel.

But the final image. The one that’s seared onto the back of my eyelids right now. It’s the apocalypse. The wind is howling. Everything is on fire. Jonas, our sad little Jonas, finally finds Martha. He thinks he can stop it. He thinks they can be together. It’s a moment of pure, beautiful hope in a show that has absolutely none. And for a second, you believe it. You really do. And then… she appears. Another Martha. From a different time. Her eyes are cold. Dead. She has that damn necklace. And she shoots him. She just… shoots Jonas. And she says, "Are you ready?" or something equally terrifying. The final line, though. The final line that made me want to throw my laptop out the window was her looking at the dead Jonas and saying, "It's time to begin."

BEGIN?! WHAT IS THERE TO BEGIN?! YOU JUST ENDED HIM! It’s a loop. It’s always been a loop. The knot wasn’t untied; it was just tightened. I feel so cheated and so incredibly impressed at the same time. I’m not satisfied. I’m not relieved. I am screaming for Season 3. I need it now. Give it to me.

Okay, I have to go. I think I’m starting to hallucinate little yellow raincoats in the corners of my vision. I’m going to go back and re-watch the scene in Episode 7 where the Originals show up. I need to feel my brain break all over again.

9/10. Minus one point for the sheer, unadulterated cruelty of it all. My soul is now property of Netflix.

-Sleepless in Suburbia

TRAILER English - https://youtu.be/810CHvSdXOo?si=l7LJAKEl3UOqMMaO

REVIEW English - https://youtu.be/VnczoVbNsH4?si=89DYYBeOjdmQLBHk

REVIEW Hindi - https://youtu.be/N68ClCTSArM?si=I0p9U0G646vw3JGB

EXPLANATION Hindi - https://youtu.be/QW9JsUy7PIk?si=Ss82-0HJgTxBqbXd

EXPLANATION English - https://youtu.be/2KjouTxoDNQ?si=OeZhODVLAXRB2mYM