Clear Explanations of the Family Tree and the Timelines in the ‘Dark’ Series
- Use these notes after watching all three seasons because as you know, everything is connected (literally)!
- This article is focused on giving explanations about the main characters and the core events.
- This article is really long so you can use your browser’s search box.
The Family Tree
- The adoptive mother of Michael is Ines.
- Michael and Hannah are the parents of Jonas.
- Ulrich (police) and Katharina (school principal) are parents of Mikkel, Martha and Magnus.
- Ulrich has a secret affair with Hannah.
- Jana and Tronte are the parents of Ulrich.
- Peter’s (therapist) father is Helge.
- Peter and Charlotte (cop) are the parents of Franziska (Magnus’s crush) and Elizabeth (hearing impairment).
- Egon and Hannah are parents of Aleksander/Boris Niewald (Nielson+Kahnwald=Niewald).
- Regina (who runs a hotel) and Aleksander (leader of the power plant) are the parents of Bartosz.
- Bernd (founder of the plant) and Greta are a couple but Bernd is not the father of Helge.
- Hannah and Ulrich are the parents of Silja.
- Silja and Bartsoz are the parents of Noah and Agnes.
- Agnes and The Unknown (Son of Martha) are the parents of Tronte.
- Claudia and Bernd are the parents of Regina.
- Egon (cop) and Doris (Agnes’s secret lover) are the parents of Claudia.
- H.G. (Heinrich Gustav) Tannhaus is the author of A Journey Through Time.
- In the Origin World, Marek and Sonja are the parents of Charlotte.
The Worlds
Main World — Jonas’s World
Mirror World — Martha’s World
Origin World — Tannhaus’ World
The Unknown, being the father of Tronte, is the reason for the glue that binds everything in the two worlds together within the knot that perpetuates the endless cycles.
Adam’s will is to destroy the knot and end all of the suffering (by preventing the birth of his son), while Eve’s will is to preserve the knot (by protecting her son). We see her son creeping around as a child, an adult, and an aged man killing and threatening people in order to preserve the knot.
The Versions
Eva needs both versions of her younger self to accomplish her mission of preserving the knot. When the apocalypse occurs in both the worlds, time stands still for a fraction of a second, when one can create alternate, parallel timelines within one world.
Adam is not aware of the loophole, but Martha is, and she has been using it to create different timelines within her world. 3 versions of Jonas exist in the Main World, and 3 versions exist in the Mirror World.
Jonas-1: Saved by Martha-1 in the final moments of Season Two. He is taken to the Mirror World, later he impregnates her. When Martha-2 and Jonas go to Eva in order to “change the course of events”, Jonas is shot by Martha-2.
Martha-1: This Martha along with the unborn child is killed by Adam in an attempt to break the loop.
Jonas-2: Doesn’t get saved by anyone and instead takes cover in the basement when the apocalypse happens. He never travels to the Mirror World but instead stays in the Main World and eventually becomes Adult Jonas and later Adam.
This is why Adult Jonas is so surprised when he meets Martha-1 in 1886.
Martha-2: Gets stopped by Bartosz before she can save Jonas. She eventually becomes Adult Martha and then Eva. This version of Martha has longer hair and a small scar under her left eye which was inflicted by her future self. She is asked to kill Jonas.
Heartbroken, M2 returns home and cuts her hair in a fit of rage and goes to the plant with Bartosz where they encounter Adult Magnus and Franziska on the way. They ask Martha-2 to join their side and save Teen Jonas from the apocalypse.
Jonas-3: Saved by Adam in the series finale. Along with Martha-3, he travels with her to the Main World to break the loop.
Mirror Martha-3: She has bigger scar across her right eye and shorter hair. She is stopped by Jonas-3 before she can save Jonas-1.
The Timelines
1888
27 June
Adult Jonas, Young Bartsoz, Franziska and Magnus arrive from 2020 (right before the apocalypse). They now have the potential to form the Sic Mundus group.
21 September
Martha-1 arrives and drops off Teen Jonas-1 after saving him from the apocalypse.
23 September
Martha-1 gives the god particle to Adult Jonas so he can make a time-travel portal.
1890
Unknown
Young Bartoz loses his faith in Jonas.
Unknown
Silja Tiedemann arrives from 2053 and meets Bartosz.
1904
Unknown
Silja Tiedemann gives birth to Noah.
1910
Unknown
Silja Tiedemann dies giving birth to Agnes.
1911
Unknown
Hannah and Teen Silja arrive from 1954 with Eva’s help and reunite with Adam, who later kills Hannah and transports Silja to 2053 where Elizabeth raises her.
1920
Unknown
After dropping Jonas in 2041, Adult Noah travels to 1920 and meets Adam who tells him that Claudia betrayed them, and instructs him to search for the missing pages of the Sic Mundus book with the help of Helge.
1921
21 June
Young Noah and his dad Adult Bartsoz create the cave’s passageway. One day Noah kills Bartsoz on Adam’s order for losing faith in Sic Mundus.
23 June
Teen Jonas arrives after stepping into the portal in 1953. Young Noah leads him to Adult Noah, who then brings him to Adam. Adam tells Jonas that he wants to create a new world, without god, without time (for him, time is god).
He builds a duplicate of god’s particle as that of one in 2053 and sends younger Jonas to 2019 when his father committed suicide. But Adam’s plan was not to break the cycle but to start the last cycle.
Old Claudia approaches them and tells about Adam’s plan and necessity of Jonas’s existence to stand against Adam. She informs about the world without Jonas, which she says she saw, is terrible.
27 June
Noah understands from the last pages that Adam has been lying so he tries to kill Adam but the gun doesn’t work as fate doesn’t allow Adam to die at this time. Agnes then kills Noah.
Unknown
Adam travels to 2020 on the day of the apocalypse to kill Martha.
Unknown
Young Noah goes to 27 June 2020 (when the apocalypse occurs).
1953
11 November
Old Claudia arrives and gives Tannhaus the blueprints for the time machine and asks him to build one.
Unknown
Adult Jonas only succeeds in closing the tunnel, not destroying it.
1954
23 June
Old Claudia comes from 1986 to hide the time machine in the ground.
Unknown
Child Helge arrives in the bunker from 1987, the result of Noah’s first successful time travel experiment.
Unknown
Old Claudia gives Agnes a newspaper article revealing Claudia’s death and instructs Agnes to betray her. She then visits Tannhaus, giving him the copy of A Journey Through Time, the book that he will write.
Unknown
Agnes tells Noah that Old Claudia has the missing pages of the triquetra notebook. Noah kills Claudia, steals the pages, and travels back to 1921.
24 September
The Origin forces Winden’s mayor to sign the building permit for the power plant.
1971
11 August
In the Origin World, Tannhaus loses his Son, Daughter-in-law, and Grand-Daughter to an accident on the bridge.
Unknown
Jonas-3 and Mirror Martha-3 arrive from 2019 and save Tannhaus’ family from dying. Tannhaus is never inspired to build a time machine, and the two other worlds are never created, wiping both the Main World and the Mirror World from existence.
Unknown
Adult Charlotte and Adult Elisabeth arrive from 2041 with baby Charlotte and deliver her to Tannhaus.
1986
21 June
In the Origin World, Tannhaus activates his newly built time machine, which destroys the Origin World in an apocalypse it is split into two realities — the Main World and the Mirror World as a result.
In both worlds, The Origin causes the explosion at the power plant due to hydrogen build-up. But the power plant team fixed it and hid it from the rest of the world by bribing their employees.
The explosion however resulted in a 3 dimensional wormhole within the cave. The wormhole connects 3 periods — 1953, 1986, and 2019 with a time gap of 33 years. One who finds the tunnel can travel to any of the other two periods and can come back.
Unknown
Adult Jonas asks Tannhaus to fix the time machine that Claudia asked him to build. He builds a device with something from all three timelines: a device built by Tannhaus in 1953, nuclear waste from the plant explosion, and Ulrich’s smartphone from 2019.
Unknown
Mikkel comes out of the cave (becoming Michael), having traveled from 2019 to 1986.
26 June
From now, Teen Jonas spends 12 months with Old Claudia.
08 November
Jonas arrives from 2019 after traveling through time for the first time.
10 November
Adult Jonas takes his broken time machine to Old Tannhaus to be fixed.
12 November
Adult Jonas picks up the repaired time machine from Old Tannhaus.
Unknown
Jonas arrives from 2019 and heads to the hospital. Noah takes him to the bunker where Adult Jonas reveals himself to Teen Jonas. He activates the time machine but it closes the passage. A portal also opens through which Teen Jonas is taken to 2052.
1987
22 June
Adult Claudia digs up the time machine in her backyard.
Unknown
As his first time travel experiment, Noah successfully transports Young Helge to 1954.
24 June
Old Claudia meets her adult self and informs her about the time travel and then goes back to 1954. Adult Claudia digs out the machine with the map given by the older one. She uses it, travels to 2019, and learns about Regina’s cancer and her father’s death, and comes back.
26 June
Egon accidentally gets killed by Adult Claudia. Teen Jonas meets her and they both go to the caves to retrieve radioactive waste from the barrels. Using the device, they re-open the passage that was closed by Adult Jonas 7 months ago. They then travel to 2020 together.
2019
20 June
Teen Jonas causes Michael to commit suicide leaving a letter which shows dont open before 04 November 2019, 10.13 PM (The time at which Mikkel gets disappeared). If Michael stays alive, what happens?
02 September
Regina dies from cancer.
04 November
Mikkel disappears (travels to 1986). The same night, Peter saw Mads’ body dropping out of a beam in the bunker. Aged Claudia gives a diary to Peter and Tronte with the last pages missing.
Unknown
Jonas-1 and Martha-1 arrive from 2020, moments before the apocalypse. Martha-1 then travels to 1888. Jonas meets Martha-1’s older self, Eva.
04 November
Eva instructs Jonas-1 to teach Martha about time travel. Jonas takes Martha-1 to 2052.
06 November
Jonas-1 and Martha-1 return from 2052, have sex and she ends up pregnant. As a child from both universes, their son grows up to become the root of Winden’s extremely knotty family tree. They visit Eva, where Martha-2 shoots and kills Jonas.
07 November
Adult Magnus and Adult Franziska arrive and take Martha-1 to 2020 in the Main World to save Teen Jonas from the apocalypse.
Unknown
Adam arrives with Jonas-3 from the Main World in 2020 and sends his younger self to Stop Martha-1 before Adult Magnus and Adult Franziska can take her to the Main World.
Unknown
Jonas-3 takes Martha-3 to 1971 in the Origin World. The only way to get there is by sitting in the passage itself until the moment Tannhaus opens it.
08 November
Teen Jonas travels through time for the first time, departing for 1986 via the caves.
11 November
Adult Jonas extracts radioactive waste from the barrels on the truck.
12 November
Noah gives Bartosz the triquetra notebook and warns him not to trust Old Claudia.
2020
21 June
Aleksander informs his workers that the power plant will be decommissioned in six days. He orders Wöller to move the barrels of radioactive waste from the truck into the plant’s cooling pool, where he covers them with concrete.
24 June
Martha ambushes Bartosz in the caves and steals the time machine given to him by Noah.
25 June
Martha, Magnus, Franziska, and Elisabeth travel to 1987, and Bartsoz proves the machine is real, and they return to 2020. Magnus keeps the time machine.
26 June
Hannah steals Adult Jonas’s time machine and travels to 1954.
27 June
Peter and Elizabeth go to the bunker. Teen Noah also reaches the bunker after visiting adult Jonas and manipulating him to become Adam.
Only those in the bunker survived the apocalypse, which are Peter, Elizabeth, Teen Noah, Adult Claudia, and Regina. Other than them, Adult Jonas, Francizca, Magnus, and Bartoz travel to 1888.
Unknown
Adult Jonas wants to destroy the time loop and plans to do this with the help of a machine built by Tannhaus. Noah claims that it’s Jonas’s attempt to close the loop that actually created it in the first place.
Unknown
Jonas and Claudia arrive from 1987. Claudia retrieves her daughter Regina and takes her to the bunker.
Unknown
Katharina gives Adult Jonas the time machine that Magnus stole from Bartosz. He uses it to send Magnus, Franziska, and Bartosz to 1888.
Unknown
Charlotte sees her daughter/mother Adult Elisabeth through a portal and is transported to 2053.
Unknown
Teen Jonas goes to save Martha, but Adam arrives and shoots her. Moments before the apocalypse, Teen Jonas is saved by New Martha from Mirror World and they travel to 2019. In wanting to save his father, Jonas wants a world without himself, and he gets one in Season 3.
Simultaneously, Mirror Bartosz comes and stops Martha-2 before she saves Jonas and they travel to 2052 in the Mirror World.
Simultaneously, Adam arrives and saves Jonas-3 and takes him to 2019 in the Mirror World.
22 September
Old Tronte kills Regina on Old Claudia’s orders so that Adult Claudia will devote herself to studying time travel in order to save her daughter.
24 September
Mirror Claudia arrives to recruit Adult Claudia to work for Eva, giving her the triquetra notebook.
2023
Unknown
Claudia and Jonas work together in order to fix the particle. After failing many times, Jonas-2 attempts suicide, but Teen Noah stops him. Fate doesn’t allow him to die, because his future self already exists.
2040
Unknown
Noah, Adult Jonas, and Claudia make progress on the particle. But the portal is still unstable for time travel.
Unknown
Adult Claudia kills Mirror Claudia and begins her plan to destroy the Knot. She travels to the Mirror World impersonating her to spy on Eva.
2041
Unknown
Adult Elisabeth and Adult Charlotte arrive from 2053 and kidnap baby Charlotte, taking her to 1971.
2052
06 November
Jonas-1 and Martha-1 arrive from 2019. They meet Adult Martha, who insists they stop the apocalypse in the Mirror World. Then they both travel back to 2019.
07 November
Martha-2 and Mirror Bartosz arrive from 2020 in the Main World, after he prevented her from saving Teen Jonas. Eva gives Martha-2 her distinctive facial scar, introduces her to The Origin, has her write her letter to Jonas, and instructs her to kill Jonas.
Adult Martha goes to 1888 to give the letter and pocket watch to Adult Jonas.
12 November
Teen Jonas arrives from 1986 and gets knocked out by Silja.
2053
Unknown
Teen Jonas learns about the apocalypse occured at Winden on June 27, 2020. He wants to go back and stop it somehow. Using Claudia’s audio recordings (she survives the apocalypse), Jonas gets to know that the particle can be used for time travel.
22 June
He takes some of the radioactive isotopes from the back of the truck to activate the god particle but he gets caught. Silja releases Jonas and he travels to 1921 via the dark matter.
27 June
Adult Elisabeth activates the dark matter in the power plant. Charlotte is sent through the portal.
22 September
Martha-1 arrives from 1888. Adam reveals to her that she’s pregnant.
Unknown
Adam gives Agnes the newspaper mentioning Old Claudia’s death and tells her to give it to Adult Claudia.
Unknown
Adult Elisabeth and Adult Charlotte travel to 2041 to bring baby Charlotte to Tannhaus.
25 September
Silja travels to 1890 to meet Bartsoz.
Unknown
Adam harnesses the energy from the apocalypses in both the Main and Mirror worlds and uses it to destroy Martha-1 and the child inside her, but the loop remains intact. Old Claudia arrives and reveals the existence of the Origin world. Adam departs for 2020 to save Jonas-3.
The Whole Point of It all
Basically, the “Dark” series exists because of Claudia (there’s this Noah who shoots her thinking he knows it all😂). Claudia gets the golden star for time traveling and all the knowledge!
Adam, Eve, Jonas, and Noah are all just chess pieces used by Claudia to save Regina.
As an adult, she doesn’t show love to her daughter Regina. But when she learns that her daughter has cancer, she goes to the point of time travelling in order to save her, and she wins.
- In 1986, Origin World gets destroyed (and healthy Regina along with it) and it gets split into two realities.
- In 2019, Michael commits suicide — Because Claudia brainwashed Jonas to allow it to happen.
- In 2053, Adam travels to 2019 to bring Jonas and destroy the origin and end sufferings (which he had been trying to figure out himself for 66 years) — Because Claudia reveals about the Origin World to Adam.
The Loopholes
- Jonas doesn’t question Adam or Claudia.
- Why didn’t old Ines or Hannah recognize Mikkel as a child? Michael had already lived in the same town as Mikkel for years, apparently without anybody’s notice?
