DARK Episode 6: “The World is Created” – Recap & Review

Just over half-way through this series and I think we are finally starting to get somewhere! Let’s see if episode 6, The World is Created answers anymore of our questions.

We kick off this episode in 1986 with a younger, bushier-haired Regina tied to a tree just outside of the tunnels. The sounds of the dark woods startling her as she yells for Kat or Ulrich to untie her. Regina wakes up, in 2019 as her older self and we realise she is still haunted by this event; by the past and this just another way in which these two timelines are connected; how these character’s past has influenced the present.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is cracking down on the search for the missing boys, ordering people to look for evidence as far as 50 years in the past.

            “Whoever is doing this has left a trace somewhere. We just have to find that clue” 

Possibly following Charlotte’s orders and possibly following his own morbid curiosity, Ulrich looks through a case-study box from 1986, the year his brother, Mad’s, mysteriously went missing. He listens to his mother’s statement interview tapes and realises that his mother lied to the police about the whereabouts of Ulrich’s father, Tronte, on the night of Mad’s disappearance. It seems more and more with each episode that history really is repeating itself; lies that have spread through two generations, a wife covering for her husband and more questions than answers. Why would Jana, Ulrich’s mother lie about her husbands whereabouts? Was he somehow involved with Mads’s disappearance? We know very little about Ulrich’s father at this point but we have have seen short snippets of him and Peter, Charlotte’s husband hanging out at the cabin and bunker ~ it isn’t looking good for you so far Tronte.  

Enraged, Ulrich rushes to see his parents. He confronts his father about his whereabouts on the night Mads disappeared all those years ago telling him that he remembers him not being there and then, out of nowhere, in true angry Ulrich fashion, he grabs his father by the face, yelling at him for the truth. Ulrich’s mother walks in shortly after and might I say quite calmly given the situation! My guess is that this is a regular occurrence in the Neilson family, Her presence defuses the situation and Ulrich let’s go of Tronte’s wrinkled face. His father storms out, leaving Ulrich with his mother to answer questions decades old. She tells him Tronte was having an affair and he was with his mistress the night Mad’s disappeared ~ like father like son eh? 

We learn that Tronte’s mistress was Claudia, Regina’s mother and so Regina was the last person to see Mads.

We learn a lot more about the motivations of Regina as a character in this episode. Earlier in the episode Regina shakily opened a letter with “mammography screening centre” written boldly at the top. We do not yet have an idea of her full diagnosis but her reaction to the letter was definitely not positive. It seems as though no one in Winden remains untouched by the darkness. Now, after the scene with Ulrich and his parents we cut to her looking troubled as Ulrich broodingly into storms the hotel to speak with her. His presence is very obviously and understandingly unwanted. Regina admits that she knew about the affair between her mother and Ulrich’s father and Ulrich asks her about his brother, Mads. Regina explains that Mads never had a bad word to say about anyone, he was kind unlike his brother.

“It should have been you, I always felt.”
Following this with a grimace on her face and speculating that Mads might not have disappeared if Ulrich hadn’t been there with Kat that night. It becomes increasingly clear that the two of them terrorised Regina as a child and never apologised for what happened in the woods.
Ulrich accuses Regina of being the one who told Egon, her granddad, that he raped Kat in 1986. It is all starting to come together.

“Hannah saw you do it back then”
He tells her.

“You mean the same Hannah that at 14 was so in love with you that she would have            done anything to be with you […] but I guess that hasn’t changed.”
Regina follows. Classic geek-girl redemption! You go girl! Ulrich storms out of the hotel (probably to the burn ward!)

Meanwhile, already suspicious and at her wits end Kat looks through her telephone bills. She finds a number ending in 855 reoccurring and, without hesitation she calls it. Of course, Hannah answers.

         “Ulrich?”
She asks and Kat hangs up. Her suspicions have been confirmed, she knows about the affair. This discovery prompts Kat to call into a local radio station.

        “We think we know those around us, but do we really?”
She says on air as we cut to an image of Ulrich looking at his own case file to reveal the main witness of the “rape” to be none-other than Hannah.

In this episode we really see the way in which this family is falling apart as a result of Mikkel’s disappearance, or maybe they were all only ever pretending to be happy and this event shook their real selves to the surface. Either way it seems that the Neilson family are cursed.

Now, it wouldn’t be a DARK episode without Jonas meddling with the tunnels and we see him in this episode following his fathers map once more through them. He see’s some red sting, the same red string we have repeatedly seen throughout the series. Perhaps this is a way that whoever is taking this children (which we are rightfully assuming is Noah) finds his way through the tunnels? Jonas follows the string to find a door with similar symbols on it to the ones we have seen before. I don’t know about you but if I saw a big, scary door down a pitch black tunnel I would leave it well-alone and head home in time for dinner but not Jonas. He opens the door and a catalyst of turbulent wind comes through. (I wish they gave a headphone user warning, I jumped feet!)

While this is all happening it appears what Peter and Tronte have been waiting for while sat in the bunker has happened. Tronte is sat looking at a book with the same symbol on it as the door Jonas is entering at that very moment as the lights in the bunker flicker. Tronte opens the book and it appears to be filled with dates and times, what these dates and times correlate to, however, we can only speculate. Perhaps they are the moments people have gone through the tunnels? Meaning that each of them was written to happen? They were predicted? Or, to whoever wrote the book they had already happened? This bodes the question, whose book is this? Did Tronte write it? If not who did and how did Tronte come to possess it? My bets are on Noah because he has been suspiciously quiet this episode.

On the other side of the tunnel Jonas walks through the rain towards a bus stop and sees Mads plastered all over missing posters and we soon realise that he has travelled back in time to 1986 just as his father had. And to top the weird factor off his own mother and grandfather in a younger state roll up and offer him a lift. He realises when her father calls her Hannah. That’s gotta be trippy. Rightfully creeped out, he declines and walks away really awkwardly.

In the present Ulrich takes out a body from the morgue. He pulls out a photo of him and Mads and compares the body and the photo.  He drops the photo in horror as his mother’s voice narrates reminding us that Mad’s had a scar on his chin, a scar we can visibly see on the body of this child. The body in front of us is Mads … Mad’s travelled through time, or maybe just his body? That has got to be a really confusing lead but I think Ulrich now knows where he can find his son; in the past.

This episode was a little slower than last week’s but I think some really interesting puzzle pieces have been laid down for next week and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Rating: 7.6/10

 

What did you think of this week’s episode of DARK? Let us know @thegameofnerds