Dark – Season 3 Episode 5 “Life and Death” Recap & Review

Life and Death

2020 – Our World (Claudia)

Episode 5 of Dark Season 3 begins with Claudia burying Regina and weeping as the two worlds start to merge regarding the moments we pass away. As snow falls lazily to the ground, Adam approaches Charlotte and asks her for her decision regarding untangling the knot. “Eve will never achieve her task,” He reminds her, referring to the older-Martha in the other world.

Meanwhile, Claudia arrives at an abandoned building but ends up finding herself there, clearly waiting for her. Only, this Claudia is actually from the other world and requests her help in joining the light – Eve’s side. The darkness belongs to Jonas and his group.

Other-Claudia explains what’s transpired and the passage is the result of the caesium passing through. The apocalypse occurs just as it will do and goes on to mention Jonas as the one responsible for this occurring when he uses the passage.

He hands over the book to our-world’s Claudia and tasks her with maintaining as much of the cycle as possible. With the book in hand, she promises they’ll meet again and disappears from view.

2020 – Our World (Elisabeth)

Elisabeth turns away from Peter and rejects looking any further for Charlotte and Fran, believing them to be dead. She marches back to the caravan they’re staying in alone but unfortunately that turns out to be a really bad move.

Standing within is a strange bearded man who knocks her out. When she comes to, Elisabeth finds herself tied up and at the mercy of this thug who starts questioning her. The questions quickly turn into something far worse and as he looks set to force himself on her, Peter arrives just in time.

As the two wrestle, Peter is killed courtesy of a knife to the throat. Seeing her Father dead, Elisabeth snaps and smacks him repeatedly in the face with a fire extinguisher until he’s a bloody pulp. This happens to be the catalyst for what sends her down this dark path we see her in for the future. As she slumps against the side of the caravan, Noah arrives to help her later in the day.

2053 – Our World

Charlotte and Elisabeth stand with Adam and embrace Fran, as they don their suits and ready themselves to travel into the dark matter.

November 2019- Other World

There’s only 1 day until the apocalypse begins and after their busy night together, Jonas wakes up next to Martha and proceeds to silently get dressed. He hands over her yellow jacket and asks her to join him at the nuclear plant. Downstairs though, Katharina berates her daughter over where she’s been but instead, she throws her arms around her Mother and promises everything will be okay.

As Jonas and Martha head toward the nuclear plant, Martha snags her cheek on the fence and the cut is identical to that of the time-traveling Martha who brought him to this time period originally. It’s here Jonas realizes he’s been led astray again and Eve has lied.

Charlotte returns home and questions Peter over whether Helge was really involved with the killings. As Elisabeth sits and listens to the whole conversation, when she mentions Ulrich Peter shoots a knowing glance his way.

1986 – Our World

Katharina visits Ulrich in the clinic and promises him she’ll help. She confronts Helene out in the woods and tries to get her keycard. As they talk, she calls Helene “Momma” by mistake and after a brief chase, knocks out Katharina with a rock and fills her bag up with stones.

Helene drags the dead body of Katharina out to the water but in doing so, the pendant we see Jonas and Martha find on the shore-side 33 years later is left behind.

Traumatised by what she’s done, a bloody Helene returns home and beats Katharina after swigging alcohol when she notices a love bite on her neck.

While this is going on, Ines and Mikkel return home but Mikkel senses something up when he notices a crack on the window.

1986 – The Other World

Charlotte visits Tannhaus at his workshop and questions him over the possibility of going back and rewriting history. He chuckles at the idea though and advises that his place is in the present, going on to admit exactly how he came to be with her. Tannhaus mentions two people arriving and proceeds to hand over the familiar watch we’ve seen before.

She rejects him though, heading out the door and to the bus-stop where she sees Peter and meets him for the first time as he arrives at Winden.

2019 – The Other World

Jonas and Martha arrive before Eve and he demands to be brought home. She’s unphased by his demands though and goes on to repeat the same mantra Adam told him many years ago. As she finishes, the future-Eve and another version of Martha – this one with a large gash across her face – arrives with a gun.

Apologizing, she turns the gun on Jonas and shoots him in the stomach. As Jonas starts bleeding out, symbolically resting atop the family tree that starts everything, the episode ends.

The Review Write-Up

Well, how about that for an ending! Dark has so far managed to do well to keep us guessing right the way through the series but whether all the questions will be answered by the end remains to be seen. What is particularly interesting here though is the way these two worlds are inexplicably linked and how the various events that take place in our world are influenced by forces operating from different time periods.

Everything from the pendant on the beach through to Hannah from the future being the reason Egon starts drinking heavily, are all linked in this intricate knot and it’s a really smart plot device, given the time to actually flesh itself out and deliver some satisfying answers.

Whether the ending will pull off a satisfying conclusion that wraps up all of its big time travel threads is still up for debate but so far this third season has really done well to deliver something really impressive.