Can 'Dark' season 3 break away from the Bootstrap Paradox and put a finger on where it all began?

One major question we are trying to figure out since we started watching Netflix's thrilling German series 'Dark' is when exactly is the beginning. It has been mentioned several times on 'Dark' that the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. Stuck in a loop like this one, we are hard-pressed to put our finger on the exact incident which kickstarted the events in 'Dark'.

While one doesn't need to necessarily understand how and why things happen on the time-travelling show, it definitely helps to keep track and stay on top of these things.

'Dark' is set in the fictional German town of Winden and follows four families across generations and time periods. The series follows a multidimensional, nonlinear narrative with several paradoxes [we did an explainer on the Bootstrap Paradox that drives the story forward] and loops. 

Upon the introduction of time travel in season 1, one of the biggest revelations is when 2019 Jonas (Louis Hofmann) realizes that the young boy Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz) who disappeared from Winden a few months ago (in that time period), actually goes back in time to Winden in the year 1986, where he then meets and eventually marries Jonas’ mother. As Jonas’ father, he coexists in the same time period with the young Mikkel. 

In season 2, the most mind-blowing reveal was that police chief Charlotte Doppler’s (Karoline Eichhorn) mother is actually her daughter Elisabeth (Carlotta von Falkenhayn). 

This paradox – where Mikkel goes missing and ends up in the past – has us wondering if this was the starting point. The time-travelling paradox where one can't tell if the egg came first or the chicken is a major driving force. 

“When you work with time travel, you basically have to decide on one concept. You can follow the ‘Back to the Future’ kind of way where you can actually change stuff in the past that will affect the future – which with my very personal more deterministic view of the world is nonsense,” co-creator Jantje Friese had said.

“That’s where we basically put the groundwork, going for deterministic time travel rules. We’re hinting at that in the first season all the time that it’s a circle. Everything happens constantly in loops. I just felt that was such a multilayered story. I put a lot of thought into it: What kind of information and when do you explain certain rules? How much room do you give for people trying to figure it out and when do you push them into the right direction? What kind of trigger words do you use? What kind of symbols do you use? There are a lot of symbols throughout, a lot of referencing systems in terms of religion, mythology.”

So what about when Mikkel goes missing? Is that the beginning of the cycle? 

Well, technically, there is no beginning or origin. Everything that has happened so far is because someone from the future has already done it. Basically, the bootstrap paradox. While this doesn't answer any questions you might have, it is the way the makers of 'Dark' have shown us as of now. And if keep up with this going forward, it simply means that there is no origin.

Either way, fans hope 'Dark' does show an originating event, but will we get one? "They may be too focused on telling the story locked inside the paradoxes in all it's solemn and self-reinforcing predeterminism," (sic) said a fan.

Season three is currently being filmed and will be seeing a 2020 release. A release date is not officially declared, but fans believe it will release on June 27, 2020 – the day of the apocalypse or the beginning of the last cycle. 

The first and the second season of 'Dark' is currently streaming on Netflix.