DARK Episode 7: “Crossroads” – Recap & Review

We begin by revisiting the image of a boy waking up in what we assume is the bunker beside the cabin, blood covering the side of his face. Blue, cartoon-ish wallpaper covers the walls and his clothes suggests that he is from the 50’s. Beside him is a chair hooked up to some form of electric wires and a headset (this could possibly explain the burn marks on the faces of the dead boy’s we have encountered?) The boy gets up, is he possibly the next victim of Noah’s?

Helge (Hermann Beyer) awakens in the present and from his wrinkled lips whispers:

  “I remember…”
Leading us to assume that the boy we just saw in the bunker was Helge, maybe even 66 years to the day, in the little wallpapered room. The injury on the side of his face would explain the nature of Helge’s scarred ear and cheek although we still don’t know how he got the wound.

Meanwhile, in the 80’s Egon is following orders against his better judgement and visits the power-plant to question its employees about the disappearance of Mads Nielsen. In true, ironic symmetry, in 2019, Charlotte receives the search warrant she wanted for that same power-plant 33 years in the future.

Egon is greeted by a younger Helge and asks him all the textbook interrogation questions like if he was working on the night Mads disappeared. Helge appears nervous. Why? We have suspected him before of possibly being somehow involved in all of this. Could this really be true? Helge arranges to come to the station the following Tuesday to give Egon the full details he asked for. Before he leaves, Egon asks if Helge saw Ulrich that day ~ he really has it out for him doesn’t he?! This shows us almost that it is a good thing Egon was told to follow evidence and not a simple hunch as Egon would have been barking up the wrong tree entirely. Although Ulrich may not be a radiant beam of sunshine as far as I am concerned there isn’t much of a chance of him being involved in his brothers disappearance but this show has a way of pulling the wool over your eyes so only time will tell.

In the present Ulrich continues to expand his search through old files. He looks through Egon’s police planner and see’s the appointment scheduled for Tuesday morning with Helge. The seed is planted and, as we should know by now, nothing is going to stop Ulrich from breaking some serious boundaries. Ulrich rings Charlotte to tell her his findings furthering to her that Helge didn’t go to the police station as planned. Why? What was he hiding? But Charlotte asks Ulrich if he really thinks that Helge could have abducted Mads and then 33 years later Mikkel and the other children, telling him that he is 75 years old and in a nursing home with dementia and the eve Mikkel disappeared Helge was with her. Maybe the Helge in this time period wouldn’t be able to… but if Noah and Jonas can travel through time freely, why can’t he?

Ulrich goes to visit Helge in his nursing home. Upon seeing Ulrich standing over him, Helge’s heart elevates and his breath shortens. He appears terrified of Ulrich.

    “It was him!” He yells. “I know you!”

What was him? What did Ulrich do? Or shall I say, what is he going to do? He yells back asking where his son is as nurses drag him away.

While this has all been kicking off Jonas wanders deeper into the past to find his father. He finally finds him along with the creepy stranger that seems to follow him like a lost dog. Jonas confesses that he is going to take Mikkel home and make it right but, as anybody who has watched Back to the Future will tell you, he can’t do that. If Jonas takes Mikkel home then he will never meet Hannah and Jonas will never be born. Jonas must now decide what he thinks is the right thing to do. Can he even decide? Or is it already decided for him?

While Jonas is existentially contemplating the outcome of something that could potentially change the entire fate of time and space Helge is eating a chocolate bar… We get a look at the packaging and realise that it is none other than a “Raider” bar. Jogging any memories? The packaging of the bar is the same as the empty wrapper Elizabeth saw on the road the night we thought she may have been taken? Remember it now? This concludes that Helge is somehow able to move through time and is therefore involved in one way or another. To top things off Jana tells Ulrich that, just one week before Mads disappeared she saw a priest arguing with a man and just this morning she saw the same man. She remembered him because there was something distinct about his ear.

    “It was scarred”
She spoke and we instantly think of Helge. She mentions that he didn’t look a single day older and then we really can’t argue against that. Helge must be working with Noah. But why?

Jonas makes his way to the tunnels to return BACK TO THE FUTURE! (wow that is the second time I’ve referenced that movie in this recap…are we sure we are recapping DARK and not the adventures of Marty and the Doc?) It is clear that he has made his decision, he trusted fate and the idea that his father was meant to go back in time and meet his mother. From the other side of time Charlotte hears the tunnels open as the lights flicker in the bunker. A startled Charlotte looks round the cabin and sees a strip of old, dirty wallpaper with foxes on it. The same wallpaper that we have seen hung in the same bunker in the past, confirming that this very bunker is where the children were/are being taken.

Ulrich visits Helge’s room once more because, we should know by now nothing is going to stop Ulrich Nielsen, who follows the slightest lead like a hungry dog following the scent of a wounded animal ~ and neither will stop until either is dead ~ Helge wonders into the woods as Ulrich notices a book sat on his bedside table. “A journey through time” it is entitled. Inside of it red string is used as a bookmark, the same red string we keep seeing. It is all beginning to add up! It must be Helge’s and that is how he navigates the tunnels. As Ulrich picks it up we see it is a necklace with a coin on it.  Ulrich begins following Helge into the tunnels.

Meanwhile in the past, 1986 Helge comes out from the bunker, he stares down at the body of a boy with burnt out eyes, the same necklace we saw in Helge’s book placed around his the boys neck. There is a good chance that this is Mad’s body. Helge looks at the boy with deep sorrow and guilt and it seems as though he isn’t the evil character we have assumed. It is strongly possible that Helge doesn’t want to hurt the children and perhaps that is what him and the priest (Noah) were arguing about when Jana had seen them. So, why is Helge helping Noah? What is the greater picture?

Down the hatch we see a topless Noah as Helge drags the boys body away. Noah is scrubbing the floors of the cabin clean. It is clear that Noah needed Helge for his bunker but, what does he want with these children? He stops his scrubbing to broodily flex his muscles and write the date Nov 9th 1953 on the wall in chalk under another: Nov 5th 1953. What is the importance of these dates? What are they doing down there? What time is Noah from? And why is something telling me that we are going to be heading to the 50’s in the next episode? I have more and more questions every episode

Rating: 8.1/10

What did you think of this weeks episode? Let us know @thegameofnerds