Reflections on Free Will, Sin, and Nihilism

Over the past few weeks I watched Dark, the first ever German Netflix original show. It was easily the most confusing, and yet mentally stimulating television show I have ever seen. The show explores ideas pertaining to time, suffering, free will, and nihilism. At its core, it asks whether or not our existence has or lacks ultimate meaning. Even though I’m not sure exactly what message the writers intended to convey through this series, it leads the viewers to ask really difficult and important questions.

When Mikkel Nielson goes missing one night near the local cave, a chain of time travelling events is unleashed on the town and the families, but in reality all of these events had already happened. We learn that all the families are completely interconnected and their sins and failures have an eternal nature to them. Actions they committed in the past have led to failures in the present. Time is flowing and relative. Past affects present and future, future affects the past and present. The characters of Dark are trapped in a never ending loop, a dense knot of violence and pain, seemingly devoid of free will. 

This destructive knot is embodied by the small German town of Winden, and four of its local families: the Kahnwalds, Dopplers, Nielsens, and Tiedemanns. Winden is portrayed as a pit that nothing good comes out of. Describing the town, a character says, “The town is like a festering wound, and we’re all part of it.” No one born there ever leaves, and it is full of liars, adulterers, and murderers. It is seemingly unredeemable, inhabited by people who are also unredeemable. 

The characters seem to lack any semblance of free will and their actions are constantly negatively affecting themselves and all the other families in the town. Eventually we learn that these families are also interconnected all throughout time (a lot of time travelling sexual relations). The family trees that you have to keep up with while watching this show are complex and messy. This sets up an interesting theme for the rest of the show because every individual’s actions affect everyone else in the town- for better or worse.

All the while, Winden is a symbolic microcosm of the world. It’s harder to wrap our minds around this concept in real life, but every action, positive or negative, affects everyone else in the world. When one person in the show sins against another, we see how the darkness tears through space and time, ultimately affecting every other family and its members in the town.The writers of Dark are intentional in their depiction. Evil has consequences, and when it is released in the world, it permeates everything it comes into contact with. 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was obsessed with this idea in The Brothers Karamazov. He writes,

“Every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man… Only through this knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love.” 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Dostoyevsky’s expansive novel adopts this theme as a central concept to the story. The Karamazov’s actions affect each other, and people all throughout their town- many times without their direct knowledge. Unlike the writers of Dark, Dostoyevsky emphasizes that this idea isn’t exclusive to evil. Acts of love do the same: they affect all individuals in the world around us. Where our evil disorders creations, love inherently reorders that fallen creation.

Dark uses a lot of Biblical names and imagery throughout the series, but the most striking to me was the use of Jonas and Adam. Jonas is the protagonist of the story, who is seeking the good. His ultimate desire is to put everything back in place, but unlucky for him, his older self is trying to sabotage him. While this whole show is one giant paradox, the imagery is striking. 

Jonas is a decent young man full of hope, while his older self (who he finds out now goes by the name of Adam) is a mutilated monster who wants to destroy the world. Once Jonas finds out this truth, he decides he must “declare war” on himself. 

Anyone who has read Genesis or Paul will understand this language. Christ is constantly referred to in the Scriptures as the New Adam. Where Adam brought disorder into the world, Christ reorders. Jonas is like the Christic New Adam, while his older self is (both literally and figuratively) the “Old Adam”. Adam in the show is declaring war on God, who is primarily represented through the power and omnipotence of time. His solution to the problem of Time is to destroy creation, and the cycle of life and death that time inherently rules over. 

The Adam of the Dark fits the description of the fallen Adam of Genesis. Adam rebels. He chooses himself over the other. He attempts to deconstruct reality. He chooses disorder in the false name of order. But, we see Jonas’ choice. He chooses to fight his “old” self- the fallen Adam that is a part of him. This is the battle that every Christian must wage, a battle with our lower self. The self who always wants the earthly, the expedient, and an existence free of any suffering. 

Young Jonas fights for what he knows to be true, even though he knows that in the future he falls. It seems he can make no change to his future, since all time is mysteriously present. This is what creates the great dilemma of the show. Because time travelling is a reality in the world of Dark, everyone is in constant contact with the future. They know what becomes of them, but even if they try to change their path, it only leads to that person they become. Free will is non-existent and the world is deterministic.

Though the first season was absolutely gripping, this discovery of the lack of free will almost ruined the next few seasons for me. When there is no free will and all time is present, where does a story have to go? All roads lead to destruction in the world of Dark. I found this interesting that stories seem to lose their compelling nature when the aspect of free will disappears. 

With no free will in sight, by the time the finale of the show rolled around, the viewer is left feeling like no action is redeemable and everything is meaningless. With that said, the writers created an out (kind of a cop out if I’m being honest). There is a glitch in time that allows for a moment of free will. For a moment, Jonas and Adam have the opportunity to go back to the origin of their world and stop it from happening. They choose to do this, and ultimately it stops the suffering and apocalypse from happening in their world. Jonas and Martha stand hand in hand as they dissolve from existence.

 I feel very conflicted about this ending. One one hand, it feels overwhelmingly nihilistic. The protagonists of Winden complete their goal, but it ends with them dissolving from life. The two alternate worlds cease to exist, and we are left with one final scene in the “real world.” A pregnant Hannah monologues about her dream the night before:

“This is going to sound utterly absurd, but… What happened now, last night… that’s what I dreamed about. The light was flickering, loud thunder outside, and then the place was totally dark. And somehow… the world had ended. It was just dark and it was never light again. And the weird thing is… that it felt really good. For everything to be over. Like suddenly being free of everything. No wants. No needs. Unending darkness. No yesterday. No today. No tomorrow. Nothing.”

Dark

After this monologue they ask what each of them would wish for if they could have one wish before the apocalypse, and everyone wishes for a world without Winden (suffering). All the while, Hannah is pregnant with a boy she plans to name Jonas- bringing new life into the world again. It leaves the viewer begging the question, is this renewal or just another endless knot of suffering?

The writers only leave us a few options to interpret this ending. One view of the ending is that the world is devoid of free will, and the solution is to end suffering by walking hand in hand into non-existence. 

The second view would be that the self sacrifice of Jonas and Martha is a redeemable act. They weren’t walking into non-existence as much as they were dying to save other people. Though they cease to exist, there is something more than the world of Winden. In a sense they transcend the darkness. They even dissolve back into the particles that made up the realm of “the light,” as they call it, the realm that allowed them to make their free choice from the previous scene. Marta and Jonas’ final conversation ends with an air of uncertainty:

Is there any hope for all of us here living in one big Winden? In the end, I think the writers are leaving the answer up to us. Either there is no meaning to be found in the knot of suffering, or as Dostoyevsky thought, the knowledge of our darkness and the effects it has on the world can lead to love — the ultimate meaning of life. As he said, “Only through this knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love.”