Claudia’s Timeline Explained | What is the Loophole? | Dark Netflix Season 3 Explained

In the weeks since Dark wrapped up, one of the most requested videos I’ve seen is one explaining Claudia’s timeline. This gets especially complicated when you ask the question - how did Claudia discover the loophole and the origin world? Why did she discover it now in this cycle?
In this video, I recap Claudia’s entire timeline and try my best to answer these questions! If you’re mainly interested in those questions and don’t need to revisit Claudia’s full timeline, use the chapter markers below to skip ahead:
TIMELINE
0:00 Intro
1:42 1953 - 1954: Claudia’s childhood
3:15 1986: Claudia begins work at the nuclear plant
4:52 1987: Claudia is visited by her older self and begins time traveling
9:12 2020: Claudia survives the apocalypse
10:54 2040 - 2052: Claudia kills Other Claudia and becomes Older Claudia
15:25 2019, 1986, 1953: Older Claudia’s first round of time travel
17:28 2053: Older Claudia tells Adam the truth and talks to her younger self
18:55 2020, 1987, 1954: Older Claudia’s second and final round of time travel
21:01 WHAT IS THE LOOPHOLE?
27:34 HOW CLAUDIA “USED THE LOOPHOLE”
30:02 HOW CLAUDIA DISCOVERED THE LOOPHOLE AND THE ORIGIN WORLD
Take a look and let me know if you have any other questions / topics you'd like to see me cover in more Dark videos!
Just because Dark is over, doesn't mean we're done talking about it! Make sure to subscribe for more Dark talk and coverage of other great shows!
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[@pratikraut6354]

GoT : we are the greatest TV show of all time. Claudia : hold my Gretchen.

[@OneTakeVids]

Lol Dark definitely stuck the landing better!

[@SupportGamin2024]

Game of thrones became trash

[@gamayngtawu]

😂😂😂

[@madhukawickramapala9328]

GOT is the rich kid who bankrupts his parents' businesses despite all the wealth, love, and parental influence. Then his wife divorces him and he can only see his child on the weekends, ends up alcoholic, overdoses from meth, and dies.

[@whiteheart9218]

Gretchen 😂😂😂

[@hjsimmer1742]

How in the world did the creators do all this? It's absolutely incredible. Intricate, original, mind-bending, genius.

[@morphman86]

They did it mainly by watching Fringe, Primer and Travellers, then keeping very good notes of their own interconnected timeliness. The show was written from start to finish before filming the first season. The writers started by figuring out the end twist, then started twisting the twist over and over, until they got to the beginning.

[@rjofusetsudzin8011]

@@morphman86 So end is beginning LITERALLY? xD

[@morphman86]

@@rjofusetsudzin8011 That's usually how you write mystery.

[@rjofusetsudzin8011]

@@morphman86 Tell that to JJ Abrams xD But I agree this is how everyone should write mystery.

[@morphman86]

@@rjofusetsudzin8011 He did fine with Fringe. Lots of mysteries with great payoffs.

[@guyjperson]

Why does nobody mention that Claudia is apparently an avid rappeller. She's able to enter AND exit a sheer drop cave in business heels and a pantsuit, using rappelling gear she must have had in the car. The woman is multi talented

[@chrischiu-tabet9462]

Plus a good digger, and she paid for Regina to have fencing lessons - they're a wealthy family that can afford to go on all these physical activities.

[@OneTakeVids]

Hahaha such a good point. I remember thinking something similar back in Season 1... they just cut from her looking at the gorge to... next moment repelling down into the cave.

[@TupDigital]

YES THANK YOU I had that thought a second time during s3 flashback scenes when they show it again!! Lol

[@asmimazumder5550]

@@chrischiu-tabet9462 she's quite intelligent, doesn't need a sugar daddy

[@frutrace]

I find it funny that of all the crazy, unbelievable stuff that happens in this series, Claudia rappelling down into that cave in heels and business attire is the ONE thing my brain rejected. Time travel? Sure! Parallel universes? I should've seen that coming! Human bootstrap paradoxes? Why not? Woman rappels down into a cave while wearing heels? Nope!

[@Rafael-du2yr]

This video is what every dark fan didn’t know they needed. “We can change a grain of sand. And with that, the whole world.”

[@janechoy2073]

This channel is very good at giving fans what we don't know we need. I think Claudia makes this channel.

[@DAR3_TO_WIN]

Or better, can be summed up as the butterfly effect.

[@OneTakeVids]

@Rafael Cerda and @Jane Choy wow thanks for the kinds!! I may or may not bring Claudia on as a creative consultant from time to time :)

[@innerpartymember187]

no, i think someone can change the future when time is stopped for a while in apocalypse. with time stopped, you didnt have a bound with time, so you can change the future

[@frankmartines1034]

@@janechoy2073 ,

[@ezraabottmcklein8379]

In my opinion, Claudia Tiedemann’s story was the most interesting and tragic of all time. She saw the death of her father, daughter, and her mother perhaps. I loved Claudia throughtout all 3 seasons, and wanted more of her!

[@ShaneMichealCupp]

Brevity is elegance. I think they knew in order to give Claudia (especially Older Claudia) a mystical feel, that of an ascended master who is showing everyone else the ropes, they needed to keep make her appearances rare!

[@dumpeeplarfunny]

She friendzoned Helge and probably ruined his confidence for life. No idea how he got laid and had a son. She ruined Tronte's relationship and probably caused him to raise Ulrich into a cheater. She killed her dad. He always suspected the old woman was his daughter, and when he died he figures it out - she's a time traveler. She abandoned her daughter, to untie the knot and save her. She talked Mikkel into suicide. She helped turn Jonas into a villain. Supposedly, she made Helge's dad cheat on his wife. She was busy. lol

[@justadummy8076]

She didn’t just watch her father & daughter die, she killed her father (I think 2nd degree) and ordered the execution of her daughter so she could save her in another timeline

[@justadummy8076]

@@dumpeeplarfunny firstly she doesn’t owe Helge anything, secondly her & Tronte had always been in a relationship, why Tronte decided to marry Jana idk, but the decision to cheat on Jana was entirely Tronte’s, he alone shoulders blame for that since he’s the only one who made wedding vows, plus it’s unlikely Claudia had anything to do with Ulrich’s cheating, that was all on Ulrich & Hannah being unhappy in their present situations, plus Mikkel was always going to commit suicide, she didn’t talk him into it, she just talked Jonas out of the meaningless discussion, because Mikkel’s suicide leads to Jonas’ birth, & any good parent would make that sacrifice

[@sarahscribbles2160]

@@dumpeeplarfunnythe first two are wild statements to make 😭

[@ShaneMichealCupp]

Adam presents as a stoic and unemotional character that seems to know everything and nothing surprises him… Older Claudia is the only character that showed Adam something he didn’t previously know! The only time Adam was ever showed to be surprised was when Claudia met him. She’s like the Gandalf of Dark.

[@JackGames212]

That makes a lot of sense and is the clearest explanation of how Claudia discovers the loop yet, great video

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Bread Power! It took a couple of rewrites to try and make the way I'm thinking about it clear, so I really appreciate hearing that it came through that way!

[@raphael31153]

Claudia said that there has been an infinity of cycles before. By definition, all possibilities had already been made. So the theory of loops which changes a little each time cannot work. the end of the cycle seems to be explained only to please us. For a satisfying ending.

[@raphael31153]

The only thing that really changes in this cycle. Is that this is the first time that we look at them...

[@mohibulislam7897]

Tannhaus (from origin world) knew everything that will happen by the time machine he created. He knew time doesn't work that way in his world & he can't bring death to life. So he intentionally creates these realities which will bring his son to him in another reality . He knew in these realities one will overcome with the loophole and can save his son in another new reality where he can live in peace. Summarizing my theory : 1. Tannhaus's son is dead. Tannhaus wants to bring his son back. 2. Time doesn't work that way. So he can't change the past. 3. Realizes that he can make another reality where he can live with his son. 4. So he makes a machine which will destroy his world and will create a new reality. 5. Instead of making another reality his machine creates two new realities and puts these two world in a loop. And from the loophole, his machine will save his son. 6. He knew how this will come to a solution. For the time machine it took nearly infinity times. But for the origin world it was just nothing. That's how Tannhaus's plan worked perfectly. His machine was not corrupted. His time machine was perfect. Jonas , Claudia & Martha was just a process of his time machine.

[@mitchellp7739]

@@raphael31153 I don’t think the cycle has literally repeated an infinite number of times, just too many to be able to know for sure. The show is pretty clear that the worlds splitting has a definite origin so the times loops wouldn’t have been infinite and one could slowly change them

[@jamesrobson4894]

This was extremely thorough and very helpful! I have one tiny detail to add however. I noticed, quite by chance, that we see ONE scene twice, as in the same moment in two cycles. 1986 Claudia walking into her office where older Claudia is already sat down. Now, this could just be a slight continuity error, but if so it’s the only one in the series I noticed. When we see the scene first, young Claudia walks in and gretchen runs to old Claudia, and the rest follows. In the compilation scene in season 3 episode 7, in what is meant to be THE SAME MOMENT, Old Claudia stands up as young Claudia walks in and says ‘hello Claudia’. This NEVER happened in the ‘first’ cycle but did in this one, thus I conclude THIS was the moment she told her younger self about the origin world which fits your ‘slinky’ theory, OR she just gave her a little more information, and thus the conversation is different each time and not identical. Several cycles later, Claudia knew enough thanks to this spoon feeding from her older self to use the loophole, tell Adam and break the cycle. Edit: Just checked the two scenes side by side again, and Gretchen is no where to be seen in the 3x7 scene while she is clearly visible running into the room in the 2x2 scene! So now we know there are clear differences, there are only 2 possibilities; either it’s a continuity error as they reshot the scene and forgot to match the dialogue or have Gretchen there, OR it’s intentional because this meeting was different to all the infinite ones before it, meaning Claudia broke cause and effect and told her younger self in this new scene (3x7) about the third world and the loophole and what to do to break the cycle.

[@airotkiv]

Great observation. I personally think this was intentional. It's very unlike Dark to have a continuity error like this.

[@MsThebeMoon]

Are you certain they (Claudia / Gretchen) from the one scene is in the same world as the the Claudia from the other scene. I will re-watch this series (probably a few times - loved it so much and know I missed on some details). Anyway, there's Adam's world and Eva's world. They are very similar but not exact. Things don't unfold exactly the same and at the exact same time in the two worlds.

[@jamesrobson4894]

@@MsThebeMoon Ah I see your point, however I am certain because if this were the Eva’s world version the office would be flipped, Claudia would be wearing different clothes and most importantly, Eva’s world Claudia never met her older self as Adam’s world Claudia kills her before she can. So both versions of this scene I reference do happen in Adam’s world, although I wish we saw more of the events in Eva’s world.

[@blackmagickdancer2282]

I think it was intentional. To show that you can change small things without causing absolute annihilation.

[@kanton4108]

@@blackmagickdancer2282 I agree. Older Claudia did say that something about being able to make little changes across loops.

[@zren16]

I genuinely loved the visualization of time travel through a slinky! It really made it easier to understand the actions done by Claudia.

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks! Glad it helped!

[@Kira1Lawliet]

The ending of Dark proved that no matter how convoluted or complex your story is, you CAN make a satisfying ending provided you put in the work to figure it all out beforehand and have clarity of purpose. Lookin' at you GoT and Lost.

[@lswilcoxon]

Lol when I read the 1st sentence I hollered! 🤣🤣🤣 I knew it was a GOT slap🤣🤣

[@koi8136]

Lost, dark and GoT that you mentioned happens to be my top 3 tv shows i ever watched in order of merit. Dark took Lost's cause and effect and put it on steroids but I don't think any show can make the audience as emotionally attached to the characters as Lost did.

[@adamcummings20]

I felt Lost was satisfying, and I loved it throughout. But it was definitely not perfect. Dark, on the other hand... I can't think of a single bad thing to say about the show. It's extraordinary.

[@parthkhare9960]

This is definitely the maximum effort ever taken by anyone for a series or a film, heck it even instructors do not take as much time in explaining course content, many thanks my friend!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Parth!

[@Snoogen11]

Only watched Dark recently, binged the whole thing, such great writing, I will say that Claudia is probably my favourite character. She's playing 5D chess, whilst everyone else is only worried about going forwards or backwards.

[@shankysays]

Awesome. Do this for every major character of dark. This will help understanding dark much better

[@akashvig5007]

Not everyone is needed... Jonas, Martha, Noah and Claudia are the only ones to time travel intensely.

[@martineliecermitrethomas9833]

These 4 would be awesome

[@AMMU-dg9wq]

Basically Claudia was hooking up with her own great great grand son(Tronte)... (Claudia & Bernd->Regina Regina & Boris-> Bartosz Bartosz & Silja->Agnes Agnes & Unknown->Tronte)

[@Samuel-kd8rh]

Yeah and johnas is his own great great great grandfather and michael is his father and his grant grant grandson

[@jansojele289]

Why tf aren't you guys talking about Noah? The guy literally made a child with his grandma and not only that, his parents are both tiedemanns so he is the result of a kind of incest

[@omarroncal6970]

And Charlotte is her own granddaughter and grandmother at the same time!

[@LouLikestowatch]

It seems Claudia and Regina were part of the origin world because they had real ascendents. Perhaps because of this Claudia was able to make decisions outside of 'destiny' She realised she and Regina would ultimately have life outside of the circle and that might have made the decision to end everything easier

[@mitchgunzler3737]

I like to think that the “usual cycle” is a strange attractor. (Feel free to look that up as an important aspect of chaos theory.) In brief: there are always tiny variations in a chaotic system, but they tend to lead back to almost the same pattern. For instance planets in our solar system dance in orbit that are getting tugged in slightly different directions every year from the differing positions of the other planets and wandering asteroids and comets, and the slow changes in their own precession and axial tilts and lunar orbits etc. yet the overall pattern of the solar system has been stable for a billions years or more. Which doesn’t mean it *always* leads to the same cycle. Sometimes the slight variation happens to pull something just far enough to alter how things proceed from there in a significant way that can cascade into changes that form a completely different result, like planets colliding or slingshotting out of the solar system. In Dark, we get to see the final loop, where an older Claudia convinces younger Claudia there is a way to save Regina. This “deflects” younger Claudia, like a planet that drifts close enough to one of its neighbors to start a chain of altering orbits. We watch younger Claudia breaking free of the usual pattern, figuring out how to change things and finally explaining not just to Marta and Jonas but ultimately to Adam that the cycle can and will end now, forever.

[@connectingthedots100]

Awesome explanation. I love it!!

[@chrischiu-tabet9462]

I'd add to this by suggesting to think about things that wouldn't affect history, like scratching an itch, or having a different meal on a certain day, and yet...

[@SharonVeeLee]

Isn't this the Butterfly Effect?

[@vikashkthakur]

I remember one dialogue from Claudia pretty much saying what you said in first paragraph. Things have happened the similar way, but not exactly same.

[@charlesgbertrand]

@vikaskthakur, when does Claudia say that?

[@charlesgbertrand]

One correction: Eva is not making a choice outside of the apocalypse. She is simply doing what she has always been doing in the cycles - arranging for the dual existences. Nothing Eva does changes the cycle. So it could be that major changes can only occur during the apocalypse. To embellish on your slinky analogy - time fights against changes. Only minor changes extend from one cycle to the next, but the weight of these minor changes accumulates until the slinky can no longer hold its shape and it breaks.

[@user-ct7km3pb3i]

This is actually REALLY impressive, I still find it hard to understand dark theories and yours especially the bootsrap paradox Claudia was the hardest for me to understand, what she was doing and what did let to a different moment that never happened before in the loophole Claudia was the smartest amongst all, she played the game well and outsmarted everyone, she owned the time❤

[@GilieVerIsle]

Claudia is the MVP of Dark!!!

[@JuanHernandez-ze3si]

Claudia is easily my favorite character in the show. Her arc is excellent.

[@AlexJones-ue1ll]

That's an amazing piece of work you put into this, and it adds up. I think, just to point it out, as people seem to have a problem with Bernd being the father of Regina, look at her interactions with older Bernd Doppler in 1986/87. He not only makes his firmer affair the chief of the powerplant, but he also is rather open about anything to her. He even admits to covering up the accident of 1986 but basically asks her to keep it secret until his passing as a favor, which she agrees to. Thats more than a hint of some deeper level of relationship they had than just being acquaintances to each other. The Inception idea is a pretty good because I can totally see the creators using that movie as an influence. But looking at the timelimes of characters and how they fit together leaves only amazemend at the level of attention they payed to the details!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Alex! Also, really good point on Bernd and Claudia's interaction. As with many Dark "twists", when you look back - you can certainly see some breadcrumbs, which I love about this show.

[@PritenVora]

Not saying that the start of the video until the last part was not great but that last part about imagining the time cycles not as a circle but as a coils had me jump out of my seat. This video comes very close to the sheer brilliance of Dark series itself. Great explanation!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thank you!! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mdmantejsingh]

I support this comment

[@ezequielgerstelbodoha9492]

That was a pretty good exposition of a version of the multicycle theory. I would really like to see someone to give more exposition to Kristofer Montenegro's summary of the one loop theory, it's a pretty different way to look at it, but at least for me once you read his essay, everything just falls at it's right place pretty solidly

[@reginac7159]

Now I'm curious as to how many cycles did it take for Claudia to finally know the true origin

[@ThisJasch]

33 ?

[@boyan3001]

There are no cycles, it's a time loop. It's not like they are repeating their actions until they learn to do something at some point differently and Claudia is the winner in that race.

[@Ibtaxam]

♾

[@hoochill]

in the series it says "eternal loop"

[@RadicaL3RuN]

it took infinite cycles and none at the same time, since after the origin world is revealed to her, and she sent Jonas and Martha to prevent Tanhaus' family to die in an accident, they ultimately ceased to exist, thus both worlds are erased, leaving only origin world and Jonas and Martha never existed, hence they never were able to prevent the crash and all begins over again from scratch... so I think characters in the very last scene in the origin world continue to live their lives unaware of everything and both not exist as well as their world were destroyed and split in two decades ago... quantum physics :) to make it as simple to you as possible, try to think of our real world as the origin, we live, we see years going by and it's 2021 already, and nothing time travel related never happend to us, BUT imagine there are also two versions of our world overlapping themselves again and again with the knot somewhere let's say - 1935, just because someone who managed to time travel went back in time to prevent world war II for example, thus making tons of bootstrap paradoxes and causality paradoxes in their resepctive worlds, but we here and now in origin world are completely unaware of that ;)

[@rd2970]

Alternate ending : Claudia tricks Adam one last time to ensure Jonas and Martha go to the origin world not to prevent the accident but to actually cause it so that Tannhaus can create the machine and create the origin of the worlds so that everything can happen over and over again in future cycles.

[@rilke_roca]

yeah, i thought so too

[@francishernandez8928]

Just what I thought

[@owenmiller2717]

Yeah I'm pretty sure they intended for us to think that was happening. Throughout the entire show Adam and Claudia deceive everyone when it comes to their purpose. So by the last episode we automatically assume that it is the ultimate decption; that Jonas and Martha are actually sent there to cause the accident. I fell for that too, I was convinced that would be what happened.

[@maddy4690]

I was traumatized when Jonas and Martha suddenly appeared in front of the car causing the accident. I am glad whatever you said didn't happen

[@rizz1088]

That's depressing

[@kunk8789]

Claudia to Claudia: We will watch your career with great interest

[@chimpman244]

Something to add to your expansion (which I love) is that Adam actually talks about things passing on from loop to loop! When Jonas first meets Adam, Adam shows him the previous time machines. He shows how they have "evolved" over time. I believe this fully supports your "slinky". I don't just believe that this is the evolution of the time machines over time, but the evolution of time machines around each loop of the slinky. First taunhaus's machine, then the tunnel, then the bunker "time machine" (killing children and sending them forward and back through time), then the "apparatus" then the orb, etc. I actually really like the infinity symbol opposed to the slinky to explain the loops, because the infinity symbol suggests the two worlds, one half of the infinity symbol and the other, so it makes sense that the next evolution of the time machine, would be in the next world (Eva's world) Maybe in that scene with Adam, we only saw half of all the possible time machine evolutions. Maybe the time machine evolved back and fourth, in Adams world and in Eva's, and I think that's the reason for Eva's world having a different time machine. Hell, it might also be the reason why things are slightly different in Eva's world, (people looking different, the bunker looking different etc) We are assuming that in Adams world the bunker is blue, and in Eva's world the bunker is yellow... But maybe it has been all the colours in the rainbow. If the knot wasn't untied this time, then maybe the next go round, in Adam's world again, the bunker could be green? Maybe this time Helge could have a broken nose or something. Just an idea.

[@StrawberriesPlays]

You deserve so much more traffic on ur channel.... you actually put in so much time and obvious effort into this. you gained a sub.

[@OneTakeVids]

Wow, thanks for the kind words AcidCat!

[@marketingopswill2738]

the morale of the tv show Dark: nothing is changeable the future is written.... oh, actually it is changeable for a happy ending.

[@rkrw576]

One thing I simply can't make sense of is how Charlotte and Elizabeth can be each other's mother.

[@corrado8955]

Many characters tied to the loop are their own ancestor actually just further removed. Jonas>Trio>Tronte>Ulrich>Mikkel>Jonas is also a self creating loop. Time travel is just mind bendy stuff. Sometimes you gotta give in to the madness :-)

[@cheapskateotaku7123]

I'm about to answer something that is about to get hate for sure. The answer is simple, this show is plot driven and none character driven. There for the theory of paradox in time was use as a guage for this show plot and the design and sampling of this show was made from the theory of "Did the Hen came before the egg or the egg came before the Hen". The cast was already too large to cast anymore new cast, there for they use the paradox theory and state you can't change event, things will always happen as how it is made to be logic for this show. This is why it is consider terrible written for season 3 for some fan, because real time travel really does, is divergence of timeline. Meaning if you travel back in time, to kill yourself it does not mean you get erase from existence. You can not be erase once the reality of your existence has been created. You will only diverge yourself into another timeline which you die and a future you do not exist. However, the you who actually travel back in time to kill yourself can never be erase, because each event happen to lead you to that reality has happen, and you will continue to exist as in your reality which was from a different world timeline. This is why you can not make sense of it, because it is not made to use common sense, but rather is just a plot point of the show. It is made confusing to follow, so that you will just give up on your logic and ignore the flaws and take the show for what it's plot was plan to do so. Please don't miss understand, I love this series religiously as well. But just wanting to point out the facts.

[@MsThebeMoon]

@@cheapskateotaku7123 Being a time-travel / alternate universe sci-fi fan, I too thought of the theory that any change in the past will not actually change that timeline but will create another parallel time line. Love this stuff.

[@rookie5240]

my preferred understanding was that there is no repeating cycle, everything only happens once, but the travellers perceive it as a cycle because of the way they go back on themselves. e.g. stranger jonas meeting young jonas in the bunker is not meeting the 'next' cycle's jonas, but is meeting the same cycle's jonas but younger. (i hope that makes sense). so instead of an infinite number of iterations before finding the 'solution' to break the cycle, from the pov of the origin world, the knot comes into existence and nearly immediately extinguishes itself again. this doesn't resolve the information bootstraps re: the book & notebook, but as you point out, tannhaus' book, at least, was written non-paradoxically in the origin world. claudia passing information to herself is the only evidence i think the show even hints at for an iterative model, and you make a very good case! i'm almost persuaded! :) sidenote, i read robert a heinlein's 'by his bootstraps' for the first time the other day, the origin of the term bootstrap paradox; it really is a very good short story, 10/10 would recommend to any dark fan who hasn't read it yet. (it's easily available online, at least one link on its wikipedia page)

[@skepticalbadger]

Agreed.

[@prameetchawla]

I was also of the exact same opinion and I stick to it. I still don't agree with the helix pattern of time travel. There is only one cycle ( like a circle)that only the travellers perceive to be repeating. Also I don't believe Claudia passing the information to her younger selves in a cumulative manner. It goes against the basic premise set by the show. Nothing changes. Claudia cannot pass on more information to her younger self, if she didn't receive it when she was younger.

[@hypnosifl]

Agreed, I tried to come up with a detailed scenario for how it could all be a fixed 4D structure with no repetitions in a couple of comments starting with kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIDQc6mpmbyag6c&lc=UgyM4mPRZlnutSWlyP94AaABAg ...I also agree with the idea that certain things that seem to be informational bootstrap paradoxes in the knot, like the text of Tannhaus' book, could be echoes of things that were created the normal way in the origin timeline. By His Bootstraps is a great classic example of a fixed timeline story, if you haven't read it already I also recommend Heinlein's story "All You Zombies" which has some plot elements similar to Dark.

[@akshaysangwan2002]

This was brilliant ! I was thinking about the same thing ever since the season came out and your explanation really clicked with me. All the science aside, I am glad that Claudia stepped up and saved Regina. As someone who always rooted for Claudia since season 1 , I felt so vindicated in the final episode. Jonas, Martha and Claudia are brilliant protagonists with such beautiful yet tragic arcs.

[@alexaltego]

claudia, the real mvp of the story and the one who finally corrected tannhaus’ mess. both are parents driven by love for their children. both done the extreme to ensure their kids happy endings, one by creating the loop, the other by destroying it.

[@sanjusabu5488]

Awesome content, I can't imagine what amount of hardwork you put into these videos, first tracing her timelines then coming with these theories..Keep grinding you will become big one day..

[@Subconsi]

The best Dark explanation video I've seen, great job!

[@vicjames3256]

I like the idea that the existence of the book as a bootstrap paradox would get Claudia thinking about how it came to be, and that she possibly got the idea that the writing of said book may have come from a third timeline that birthed the two she's been in. Just a thought.

[@KarolYuuki]

That was my theory! The original book has to have come from somewhere. Since the original world's tanhaus was actually making a time machine, and the picture on the back shows a picture of the old tanhaus, not the 70's one.

[@pboytrif1]

By the way... you were a suggestion on my home feed. It’s great to see KZbin suggesting great content from smaller channels. Awesome video!

[@carolp4778]

I like the explination and your theories! Over the last few weeks, I developed my own theories about claudia, the loop etc. and your video helped me a lot to start overthinking again. I guess the entire thing is interpretation and everyone can have different thoughts, but I think that this is one of the best things in dark: creating your own theories

[@saltywriteralex]

This is one of the best explanations for time travel theories in general that I've ever seen! Definitely taking notes. Thank you so much for making this and explaining this amazing show!

[@audiomemento]

You went into some great detail here and the Claudia chronological timeline puts so much into perspective!

[@ZatoichiBattousai]

There is also a scenes with Claudia standing in the forest with a rifle, this happens at the very end of Season One, this could also be the point where she splits herself (Since it's occurring during the apocalypse) and one version of her goes off and talks to her younger self and eventually dies, while the other goes and meets with Adam and doesn't die, yet.

[@SwIzZ1St]

yes, this is also my thought too and makes more sense. if she met adam for the first time, she cant visit the other places and get killed by noah because its allrdy in the loop. she had to do it before. but she died. the only explanation is that she realized how to split herself. so the loop is still intact and she can go met adam and end this cycle.

[@hidof9598]

@@SwIzZ1St , I understand the loop. But not how it can be formed. Did you get it?

[@SwIzZ1St]

@@hidof9598 In the Apocalypse, there is a fraction of seconds, where Time stood still. Thats how Eve did the Split with herself. One Version she safes Jonas and another, she send Bartoz to stop her. Claudia found this (because she killed her Altself and learned more, in Eves World.) Also she is the only Person, that helps herself with the Diary. Adam and Eve are selfish and never helps theyr Younger Self with Information. So every Loop, she has more Information and gives the Diary to her younger self. Until she found out about the Origin World and the Possibility with the littly Change she can do, while Time stood still.

[@joey070893]

@@SwIzZ1St I agree with your explanation, but I think it's not right to label Adam and Eve as selfish. They both, as the beginnings, have the biggest responsibility to maintain the loop to achieve their ambition to destroy/preserve the knot. They have to ensure their selves in every timeline have only their supposed amount of knowledge so everything repeats itself. But Claudia isn't restricted by this so it's easy for us to say.

[@ZatoichiBattousai]

@@siyargoren We cannot know this for sure and also it would explain a lot of things that happened off screen. Claudia also explains to Adam that she did this and we can safely assume that one Claudia went off and got killed by Noah. There is much left unknown at the end, such at what is with those hives/pods/growths in the future?

[@stevedahlberg8680]

This is fantastic. I finally got around to watching Dark just recently and then I immediately watched it all the way through a second time. These ideas are quite similar to my thinking on it. The only problem is that now I can't seem to find anything else on Netflix or elsewhere that is as good as this!

[@SomeCanine]

Bootstrap paradoxes can be overcome by thinking about them in a different way. Yes in the current iteration of time it appears as a paradox, but if the loop has happened thousands of times, that allows for a lot of information to pass over time. Perhaps the first time it manifests as a simple desire to save your daughter, but the thousandth it manifests as a way to use time travel to communicate your desire to save your daughter with yourself. Keep going and they might conclude that simply lying accomplishes more because it motivates. What matters is that she believed it and has passed on other tools to help accomplish the task.

[@ZatoichiBattousai]

10:54 It feels like this event only happened in this cycle and in every other cycle Claudia convinced Martha's Claudia, at gun point, to take her to Eva. It just confuses me why Eva, soon after, asks where other Claudia is...

[@KarolYuuki]

Ooooh, that's a great theory. Iva was waiting for the 2 claudias to come, maybe because that's what happened on previous iterations.

[@thegilmourfan]

Your video is so underrated! You can see the amount of time and effort that went into it! Momentous job! Thank you very much!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thank you for the kind words!!

[@danstewy3965]

Love it! Super digestible and really articulated the ideas I had on how the origin point worked. Claudias timeline helps explain the whole story with the rest of the characters too.

[@ytchris123]

Best explanatory video if a TV show/movie I have yet seen. Great job,thanks a lot,it gave me a LOT of insight to the show. I can only imagine how much time this must have taken you to conclude such complex theories .

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks!! Really appreciate the kind words!

[@mrsevve1017]

This video should have millions of views!

[@game.designer]

I love watching time travel rules in fiction. At first I thought Dark has the same rule as Predestination. But your explanation makes the show more understandable for me

[@Webtalkshow]

really awesome video, man! produced with a lot of work and love, appreciations from germany

[@cooldude123441]

Awesome work man! Really nice explanation, and I think it took a lot of effort to tie together Claudia's timeline, because I feel other KZbinrs didn't do it proper justice :)

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Avineil!

[@loaijawish3824]

The amount of work and time taken to make this video is amazing!!! Great content 👌

[@Wavestuff6]

Yes, thank you for putting the theory of loops affecting each other into words, or better yet, a model: the slinky. I just binge-watched Dark at my brother's insistence and have read some theories about the seemingly ironclad bootstrap paradoxes surrounding information in the series, and had the same sort of idea in my head to explain. Only instead of the slinky analogy, I thought of the first cycle being a 'transient' state like in a circuit, where the information would occur organically, and the constant loops afterwards like the steady-state of the circuit, where we see info becoming bootstrapped. The slinky model helps get that point across better and explains how the loop can eventually be broken too, I like the analogy a lot!

[@OneTakeVids]

Glad you like it!

[@emiliefox23013]

Most helpful video on Dark that I’ve seen!

[@TopBeatsEDM]

All your theories make so much sense and clear up all the questions I still had at the end of the show. Rewatching it with all this knowledge is gonna be so weird, but give so much meaning to the things that initially confused me

[@sam.mankar]

Probably the best explaination of Claudia's Timeline... I watched this for almost 1 hour

[@chocolateflowers5712]

Thanks so much for this breakdown of Claudia's timeline. I needed this review because like most viewers, I had the same questions, all of which you answered in full. I couldn't be more satisfied. I've been referring people to your reviews whenever I tell them to watch Dark. Just to add, you've got one of the best reviews out there on this very complicated series. The added clips and year stems in this review was a brilliant idea. Someone seeing this weeks or months after watching Dark will be reminded of what time and period you're referring to. PS. Any suggestions on what to watch next now that Dark is over? LOL

[@jim22512251]

So it's actually Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray/ Claudia learns more on each repeat

[@OneTakeVids]

Thank you for the support! 🙏

[@dominiquedoeslife]

Well done! I love that you’ve pulled from concentric cyclical cosmology on this one.

[@danielgranda896]

Great work. She is the lynch pin character of this trilogy and when you are watching the her appearances are so deliberate and brief that it hard to understand her motivation and duplicity. Thanks for showing the pinpoint continuity of her arc. I love the “loophole” deus ex machina to provide a satisfying ending. I am watching it again now with the English subtitles. I hate many of the voiceovers but I love no having to mis visual details because I am reading.

[@AslamYusof]

I think this is the most important video explanation everyone needs to conclude our understanding for good. Great work!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Aslan!!

[@timkirsten6184]

Awesome analysis Gil. The cycles and the slinky theory reminds me a lot of The Dark Tower. Thanks for explaining things so clearly.

[@diguliu]

Wow! This is definitely one of the best explanations for these loophole. Still, the decision to go this way by the show was a bit too far fetched for me mainly because allowing small changes to happen from one cycle to the next would basically give you butterfly effect which would most likely cause the cycles to get further and further away infinitely (until the loop breaks) from each other. This would jeopardize how the self-fuffiling profecies and artefacts (such as the diary) perpetuates themselves. If Claudia can introduce small changes to the cycles, why can't others? And if others can, why they never notice any differences between their own story and that of their older selves? It feels that the show tried to find a somewhat compromising middle-ground where there are very small changes allowed to the level where it doesn't get out of control and the history pretty much repeats itself "almost exactly" while creating the illusion that it was "always exactly the same" just to reveal in the end that was not exactly the case. \_O_/ If that was so, I feel a bit more shade of small changes throughout the series so that the viewer can notice would be helpful to not create such big expectation break for the sake of the happy ending.

[@pboytrif1]

FYI: Spreadsheets were harmed in the making of this video

[@nashitfattah7840]

I wanna thank u tonnes for making this video💕💕I had been searching for Claudia's entire timeline for so long and couldn't find anything so I had finally given up! And now I found this😃unexpectedly

[@royalsalami]

So cool!! You helped me put all the pieces together finally, I love the slinky theory!

[@ravishankar6707]

your idea of time really makes sense.... good job man!!

[@kirathekillernote2173]

Dude, that slinky analogy is so good it changes my whole perspective on deterministic time travel. I know you didn’t came up with it, but thanks for introducing to it anyways. Different decisions don’t need to necessarily create separate timeLines, instead they could be just progression of time in a slinky. However, superpositions can be created if two choices are made in same instant. And the reason dark’s timeline is such a perfect closed loop is because characters constantly kept changing past for almost infinite number of times till everyone was stuck in a bootstrap paradox unable to figure out origin of their own reality. Some erased themselves out of existence, and some birthed their own mothers. We never see the first world or first traveller, we see end of an infinitely long slinky where each and every aspect has no true origin

[@billross7245]

Wow, Excellent job untangling that knot and getting a viable Timeline. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the different paths that the 3 Claudias took. I hope there's a visual Timeline available at some point, but in the meantime, I'll watch this vid a few more times and hopefully graph it out based on this. Dark is an amazing show and the attention to detail is off the charts.

[@anastasiaboulard3365]

My thoughts exactly about Claudia's journey, I agree with you a 100% on everything you theorized, it's so clear and I couldn't explained it better ! Thank you !

[@bharatrajput9160]

Great work there ..of all the time travels.. Claudia's time travel was most ambiguous n u have explained it well

[@marshall4439]

This is such a great video, thanks for this. The spiraling eternal recurrence is a brilliant understanding and I really dig it. I think you're right.

[@SpudIllusionPictures]

THANK YOU. This is the video I needed. Might need to watch it again actually. But that was my biggest question coming off the back of S3: what went differently somehow to allow Claudia to figure out the existence of the third world? This goes far towards answering it. Thank you thank you. Really great work! Also, can I just say - your Claudia timeline was really well done. Really cool to watch. Could you do one for some other characters? Really helps get perspective on the show by focusing on one character at a time. Would love the exact same for Jonas. Pretty please?

[@LeeOades]

Great video! I realise that in your timeline, you made this video years ago, but in mine we've only just finished the series. Loved this explanation. Great work!

[@Marvette_h]

😂😂😂Will be back here for 1899 theories too

[@skepticalbadger]

It's not an endless cycle in the sense of there being multiple loops. Each time travelling character only completes ONE loop of their own life. Nothing repeats, despite what the characters claim. At the end of the series, without Claudia changing the established facts of the unaltered timeline (e.g. Eva remembering seeing her older self killed by Adam), Adam would kill Eva and live out his life in 2053. He doesn't somehow reset and become Jonas again.

[@vladimir3905]

No, he doesn't "reset" himself to become Jonas. There's already a young Jonas repeating the same journey.

[@hypnosifl]

I agree, it's all just a fixed 4-dimensional structure of events in space and time, nothing changes or repeats within the knot. I wrote up a pair of comments going into detail on how you can make sense of everything this way, starting with the one at kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIDQc6mpmbyag6c&lc=UgyM4mPRZlnutSWlyP94AaABAg

[@collyfong]

i agree your point that everything only happened once, we are only seeing the characters from different time to gather around and finish the loop. I watch another video and their theory was that Adam & Eva world is a loophole of the origin world when h.g tanhaus active his giant time machine at the first place. Everything happen in season 1&2 and 3 (mostly) is just the loophole and it end up with the fact that h.g tannhaus's son&family survived from the car accident. **welcome to correct me if there is something (word using) wrong** P.S DARK is the best show i ever watched.

[@123JimmyTheCookie]

Great video, I appreciate the efforts put in in tracking Claudia's timeline. Personally I don't agree with your conclusion, though the slinky idea is pretty cool. For me, I think the whole ending can be summarized by Schrodinger's Cat. The moments where the timelines split, creates timelines that both exist in parallel, as seen in the show. And so, the loop is both perpetuated and stopped, in parallel. This is the same as saying the loop both does and doesn't exist at the same time. With this idea, there is no notion of the events happening "this time", but do instead happen every time (every cycle). You can add on top of that; by us the viewers watching the show, it's the same as opening the box to look at the cat - the realities collapse. In this case, the reality is that the loop/knot is destroyed. Here, the "this time" is explained as being our observation. I get that this may not be satisfying for some people, but IMO the writers had something like this in mind, since they took the time to outright explain Schrodinger's Cat.

[@gabriellorenzo6589]

Excellent analysis! This is the clearest explanation for how she figured everything out

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Gabriel!

[@jay-el-bee]

As a compulsory list making, note taking, "sense- of- sense" craving/ seeking human myself- I appreciate your spreadsheets, drawings, charts, and diagrams! I started S1E1 again last night and I'm still impressed. Having at least a general idea of how things end allowed me to see events, motives, and characters in ways I hadn't yet. AND there's still so much symbolism to be discovered, even on the third watch! The enthusiasm, effort, and well articulated points are exactly why I keep coming back to your videos. This was great! I love reading all the theories/ perspectives that other viewers share here too. All good stuff!

[@OneTakeVids]

Great minds think alike! Watching Dark, I took more notes and made more diagrams than I've done in years haha It's pretty incredible how well they planned this show out. Even just scrubbing through the first couple of seasons in prep for this video, I was really impressed with them all over again. Thanks Jessica! Really glad you're enjoying the videos!!

[@jay-el-bee]

@@OneTakeVids P.S. redbubble.com has brown, leather wrapped notebooks(NON spiral bound) with the Triquetra symbol. Sharing just in case you find yourself feeling incomplete without one!🖤

[@sakshisinha8329]

Best explanation ever. I like your theory its actually logical. This question was eating my head from days but your theory answers it all its the most logical and apt one I have heard!!

[@OneTakeVids]

Wow, thank you Sakshi!

[@JustSeiyin]

You make a lot of interesting points and give a thought-provoking method of getting rid of the bootstrap paradox of the book. But I think there are some things that you missed. Firstly, most of the main characters in this show are born of their own bootstrap paradoxes, so how can you explain how these characters are their own ancestors if they are required to make the loop in the first place. You state that there must be a true origin of something but the loop wouldn't exist at all if the older characters didn't lead their younger selves through the journey. Second, I think you assume that Claudia is right, even if she believes that she is telling the truth. She is not an omniscient being so just because she says it's the first time she's ever told Adam about the origin world, doesn't mean that that is reality. I believe that the cycle where Jonas and Martha go to the origin world is simply just another reality that happens over and over. Thus, like Schrödinger's cat, Tannhaus's family both dies and is saved by Jonas and Martha in two parallel possibilites. That means Jonas and Martha can both be created along with time travel by Tannhaus and also exist to end the loop in another reality where Tannhaus's family is saved. I hope this makes sense. It's how I interpret this ending. Great video though

[@dariushzend9866]

I really like your explanation. I had exactly the same thoughts about the show.

[@mollyryan5829]

This is how I interpreted the ending too :) It’s still happy, because they create a reality where everyone’s as happy as they can be, but they don’t destroy all the other realities and worlds

[@xsn00k]

Thats my explanation too. I think it is proven by the fact that Jonas remembers how he saw Martha in the tunnel between worlds when he was a child. This means that all this has happend before.

[@maomaeramnon3870]

Thats a good theory but not the ending intended by the creators. It's actually the "obvious" ending, in which Martha and Jonas stop tannhaus jr from dying and erasing their own existence and suffering

[@JustSeiyin]

@@maomaeramnon3870 the creators said that they didn't intend on a specific ending and left it up to interpretation. And the obvious ending would indeed be where they only save the family. My take is not that, but that there are two overlapping realities in which the family is both saved and killed. That's a bit more than the obvious ending

[@robertsyrett1992]

Thanks for making this video.

[@akasha924]

Great content. Thank you!

[@OneTakeVids]

Thanks Lauren!

[@AlexJones-ue1ll]

Thinking about it, I had a epiphany, or so I would like to think. The core loophole is Free Will. Claudia discovers that Jonas has to make a choice based on options, not on what the she wants. A lot of times we are confronted with the challenge to free will and throughout the show the questionn has been raised. Its not just the Schopenhauer quote, its the conversation between Tannhaus and Jonas about the nature of determinism, Eva wonders whether people can make a choice if they knew the end of the journey to either avoid or embrace that outcome, Claudia tells it to Noah before he shotguns her about him not really being free. Noah is driven by his wants at that moment, his desire to do whatever he can to return to his daughter - If he knew what everything was about he might have been able to reconsider his actions and make a choice. But he did not have enough information and only wanted what his wants where, so he shot her. The Claudia he shots there is the one that just talked to Adam - there aren't 2 old Claudias running around, she didnt use a quantum loophole in splitting her timeline. We can see that after talking to it with Adam she packs her stuff and goes back to meet Noah. Claudia tells Adam the loophole, but in reality she his showing him he has a choice. Young Jonas is driven by his desire, mostly though. Jonas always wanted to end everything, thinking himself to be wrong. But old Jonas makes the choice to send his younger self down another path and then makes another free will decision by not shooting old Eva. The point being - we can have free will, if we know what our options are and not only listen to our desires. All great Science Fiction deals with questions about the human condition, and Dark, in my mind, is primarily about Free Will and how difficult, yet possible, it is to truly make a choice based on free will and not just desires and wants.

[@hypnosifl]

Great recap of Claudia's history, and interesting theories. But I have a different take on the loophole, and on the whole notion of "cycles". I don't think the loophole involves any characters making different choices in different cycles, I think Eva always decides to send alt-Bartosz to the apocalypse. (If you think she changed her decision and the change rippled forward to create two different realities at the apocalypse, does that imply that in previous cycles there weren’t two different versions of alt-Martha running around, and would that imply that only the alt-Martha who grew up to become Eva existed in previous cycles, so there wasn’t an alt-Martha present in 1888 to give Stranger Jonas the dark matter he needed to build a time machine?) In my interpretation, Eva always sends alt-Bartosz, but the key is that she knew to tell him to set his time machine for the exact moment where time stood still-I speculate that it's just sort of a law of nature in the Dark universe that when a time traveler sets their machine for the moment of time standing still and de-materializes, this always results in the creation of two overlapping realities, one where they do re-materialize at that moment, and one where they don't. So, there was one branch of the Adam timeline where alt-Bartosz appeared to stop alt-Martha from saving Jonas, and one where he didn't. Both versions of alt-Martha from these overlapping realities jumped away from the apocalypse in Adam's timeline over to Eva's timeline (one version of alt-Martha met with Eva, the other version dropped Jonas off in the cave so he could meet her younger self later that day), and both versions were merged into the same timeline after they jumped away from the overlapping realities at the apocalypse. In order to understand how Claudia was able to use the loophole, I speculate that since Adam said he was channeling the energies of both apocalypses to 2053 in order to kill alt-Martha and her unborn child, this could plausibly have created another time standing still moment in 2053 even though there was no new world-shaking apocalypse on that date. So at some other date Claudia could have set her time machine for that time standing still moment, and by the same “law of nature”, this resulted in two overlapping realities, one where she appeared to talk to Adam, and one where she didn’t-I’d speculate that the other version of Adam who didn’t talk to Claudia just jumped sideways to the Eva universe and shot her (he could have used the golden orb machine he had confiscated from alt-Martha, which we saw him holding when he was talking to her in the cage). Finally I’d speculate that the time standing still effect crosses universes (just as the beam shooting out of the bottom of Tannhaus’ machine in the origin world crossed universes and could be seen by Jonas and alt-Martha in the Sic Mundus cave tunnel), so there was also a time standing still moment in 2053 of Eva’s world. And after Adam sent Jonas on his way to the origin world, we saw him fire up the Erit Lux time machine-he could have set it for the time standing still moment in 2053 and created two overlapping realities in 2053 of Eva’s world, so that there was still an (unseen) version of reality where the other Adam (the one who didn’t talk to Claudia) shot Eva, but in the version we saw he was just pointing an unloaded gun at her. This is getting long so I’ll talk about my take on cycles in a followup comment…

[@hypnosifl]

(continued) As for how Claudia figured things out this cycle but not others, my view is that whenever the characters talk about “cycles” we have to treat them as unreliable narrators-there aren’t actually an cycles at all, at least not in the sense of the same events repeating over and over again. The characters only think this way because they want to believe they can change things, and also because of the way they initially experience time travel in terms of the cave passage opening and closing every 33 years, synching different eras to one another, allowing characters to re-experience the same events but now 33 years older, like Stranger Jonas re-experiencing a conversation he had with his younger self, but now from the other side of the bunker door (see my comments at www.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/htfyuz/spoilers_s3_how_many_loops/fygsnc4/ and the links in the last paragraph there for more on this point). Instead I think it makes more sense to interpret everything in the knot in terms of the idea from relativity of time as a dimension, and the idea that all events past and future are just part of a fixed 4-dimensional structure (see www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386 ), except that in this case the 4D structure of the knot consists of three timelines which interact with each other via world-crossing characters (and energies, like the beam from Tannhaus’ machine), and which at certain points branch into two overlapping realities. But everything, including the branches created by the loophole, was “always” part of the fixed 4D structure. So it is always part of this 4D structure that Claudia figures things out, and that there is a branching in 2053 where in one overlapping reality she tells Adam about the loophole. (I had some detailed speculations on how Claudia figured it all out at www.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/hl7qw4/spoilers_s3_how_claudia_might_have_made_her/ , my ideas on this are basically similar to yours, except without multiple cycles.) Likewise there is always a branching around the time that older Magnus and Franziska meet alt-Martha in the road, where in one branch Jonas appears to grab Martha, and in the other he doesn’t. And it is always part of this 4D structure that the Jonas and alt-Martha who met when he grabbed her like that go to the Sic Mundus cave tunnel and enter the passage with the sparkly lights, and likewise it’s always part of the structure that each is seen by the other’s younger self (which explains why they remember it). Obviously the tricky part for this theory is explaining the final scenes where we see characters in the knot turning to dust. My take is that although everything we saw in the knot (and the sparkly light tunnel) was part of a self-consistent and fixed 4D structure, the whole knot was a kind of half-reality that only existed for the purpose of creating a version of Jonas and alt-Martha who could prevent the accident, after that it all dissolved back into non-existence. I’ll link to one last reddit comment of mine at www.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/hocqa0/spoilers_s3_diagram_of_quantum_entanglement_splits/fxihj2s/ for anyone interested in some elaboration on this-basically I think you can take interpret this in a more “mystical” way similar to a lot of Philip K. Dick stories (which often featured a moment where the world we had been reading about for most of the story was revealed as unreal or half-real in some sense), or in a more “science-y” way with an analogy to virtual particle interaction diagrams in quantum physics, which can feature unobserved “virtual particles” that pop into existence from the vacuum, interact with other particles in some way, and then disappear back into the vacuum.

[@mollyryan5829]

hypnosifl Thank you so much for this! This is the best, most detailed theory description that I’ve come across yet! All of it makes sense, I never really bought into the idea of “this time it’s finally all different” because the whole story of Dark is that it’s never all different. I don’t see how Claudia could possibly change things if she hadn’t before, it’s not that her actions are predetermined, it’s just that they are what she chooses. When Claudia goes back and speaks to her younger self, she’s not speaking to the next younger self of a new older Claudia, she’s speaking to her own younger self. A cycle is a good way of describing it as that’s what it feels like to us watching the characters do it again and again, and to the characters doing it, but they’re all still each only one character, and everything is always happening. I like your idea that Martha and Jonas succeed in destroying their worlds, that Taunhauss’s time machine technically succeeds in saving his son’s family by creating two worlds that then work together to save his son to prevent their own existence. I don’t have a physicsy background, but everything you’re saying sounds very smart. I watched another video that described Martha and Jonas as the observers in the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment, where their observation of the origin world forced it to only exist in the state of the son surviving and the time machine never being built. Not sure if that fits in with your explanation, but I’ve grouped the two descriptions in my head as the ‘very possible happily ever after ending’. I must admit though, a part of me still believes that the ending isn’t that tidy, that it wasn’t just a rope tied up into a tangle of knots, and finally being pulled tightly and the knots untangling to leave a straight piece of rope (or timeline, in that cause leads to effect and there’s no funny business of different realities or bootstrap paradoxes). Because even in that tidy reality, there’s the paradox of ‘where did Martha and Jonas come from to save the son if their worlds were never created’. That’s why I still believe that though this reality of Martha and Jonas saved Taunhauss’s son, the other realities and ‘loops’ still continue. They didn’t destroy their worlds, they simply created a single happy reality where the worlds were never created and the characters lived as happily as they could hope to. This doesn’t destroy the other reality where Taunhauss’s son dies and the other worlds are created. This ties in with your description of Adam creating a new reality when he goes to see Eva, resulting in him both shooting and not shooting her, in them both saving Taunhauss’s son and not. And this isn’t a ‘new cycle’, this is the only one, the same thing that always happened because I’d it is what is happening. I’m not sure if any of this made sense :) but thank you for sharing your thoughts, as they’ve helped me somewhat get mine in order!

[@bomes12]

hypnosifl I really like your interpretation

[@invan99999]

@@hypnosifl I agree with your theory. It makes perfect sense. But I have a few questions: How did the two alt-Marthas that resulted from the split (before saving Jonas) got to live inside the same reality when they both got back to Martha's world? How do these both versions merge into the same reality?

[@invan99999]

@@hypnosifl you're definitely right. The fact that the very young versions of both Jonas and Martha have seen themselves in the closet just proved that moment when they go to the origin world to untie the knot existed (everything in the "loop" exists at the same time and only happens once) and it is not a consequence of something different they this "this time"

[@cbadm00n]

Great video, thanks for this!. Would love to see one for Noah's full timeline, especially the somewhat confusing jumping around of times during season1

[@mznaeture]

Excellent analysis thank you 👏🏾 love this series and how the double nuclear smokestacks paused during time exchanging.

[@tedsheridan8725]

Great video. I've been speculating for a while that the apparent bootstraps started with an original non-bootstrap iteration that have evolved in later cycles to become bootstraps. Another hint that this might be the case is the conversation between Claudia and alt-Claudia in 2020. Alt-Claudia tells her that the build-up of Cesium in the tunnels leads in part to the apocalypse. This can only be true if the cycles have a cumulative effect. Of course this also means that there had to be on 'original' version of the timeline, which gets more complicated each time and finally results into the one we see play out.

[@vedanshbudhia8148]

This is the greatest explanation I have seen and the perspective of time being a slinky actually explains the bootstrap paradox which nobody ever knew the answer to I wonder if Claudia herself assists 1Take on his videos 😆😆

[@mahadahmedbaloch]

Vedansh Budhia dark shows a bootstrap paradox but you change a letter every time

[@ants1059]

I always thought to start a bootstrap paradox, you would need that item to have an origin point. It was hard to think of it being outside the loop to being with..she is a genius only taking countless loops to figure it out. I loved the idea of changing little things at each loop, then only to have a snowball effect to end the loop is great. This video is well thought out, well done.

[@jonathanvogt1536]

I really would like to see a video like this about the Saint Christopherus chain because I had the feeling it popped up everywhere at some point and I lost track how it gets from one year/person/place to another. Kinda late, but I just rewatched and now came to yt to fully get the ending. This video really helped me and I agree on the spiral theory and accept it as the answer to the question especially when you look at the comment which tells about the same scenes being different (old and young claudia meet). Good job

[@OneTakeVids]

Glad this video helped out! Also, FYI - a KZbin friend of mine actually did a video on that exact topic! kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaGwmKeZhst-fJI

[@harrisont2004]

I suppose you could say that while all other characters kept the flow of events the same to endure they’d maintain their existence, Claudia knew she had leeway in just that one moment of telling her younger self about Regina

[@timothyjade]

This was the MOST well put together time travel cinema ever

[@linusfr.9054]

This is a great video. Your explanation of how it all happened is very good and it has a good philosophy behind it but I think that Dark is a little more complex: Firstly, we always assume that time in Dark is portrayed like a cycle which in my opinion is just not true. Just imagine if there was an event in the past which you enjoyed so much that you decide to go back in time and relive the moment. This does not mean this event is happening again. This only implies that you as a person with a subjective perspective on things are experiencing the same event twice while the event only happened once. E.g. Jonas waking up in the bunker in the last episode of the first season. Jonas experiences this moment twice although it is only happening once. He experiences it as the Jonas from the present and stranger Jonas. Or the moment Katharina meets herself in school. What she remembers in this moment is this exact moment. This only happened once but is experienced twice. The thought of cycles in my opinion is only for visualization but leads to some complications. If we were to talk about cycles - and you tried in your video - we will end up wondering how? Because we will always need a first cycle for this theory. Even for your spiral visual there needs to be a start for that. And if there was a first cycle Charlotte and Elizabeth for example would have never existed. In my theory everyone goes through time linearly and everything is leading to the moment of complete annihilation as Adam said. So Claudia would have always found the loophole. Jonas and Martha would have always been going to the original world. Which ultimately means that their worlds have and will have never existed. This whole show for me builds on the philosophy of nihilism and determinism. The show wants to tell you whatever is gonna happen will happen and you do not influence any of it. And whatever you do in the grand scheme it does not matter. While that sounds like a pretty ‘Dark’ philosophy I think it is a pretty strong one. With this in mind you can basically do whatever you want there is no one to judge and your actions are so minor that you should not worry about anything.

[@Magikgardenbaby]

Bravo your linear explanation sounds right to me.

[@jon-laurencedecespedes2811]

i agree entirely with your corkscrew-timeline hypothesis..the cycles are not identical and a myriad of small changes over the course of infinite cycles could eventually accumulate to cause a break in the causality of the timelines. Finally finished the series and i truly could not have done it without you - in that i had nobody to really watch this with and thus your videos were like engaging in conversation with someone who was interpreting what they were seeing in the same way that i was.

[@vikashkthakur]

I remember one scene where Claudia is studying the reports of incident at nuclear plant, just on the the day of her father's death. The nature of incident had something to do with particles splitting into two. She was deeply engrossed in that study. That could be a hint of figuring out the nature of her worlds.

[@fabre97150]

Excellent explanation

[@Folkfurball]

You Work hard on this one anyone can tell 👍🙏

[@KainReave]

Nah, there are two Claudias (from world A). She says she "sent herself in two directions" like Eva. AND SHE HAD TO because there needs to be a reality where Eva is killed by Adam (who didn't get a talk from a Claudia) because otherwise younger-Eva/Martha doesn't grow into Eva and doesn't maintain the knot. There are 3 realities and 3 worlds. Eva split reality once. Claudia split it again. (At end Jonas does it one more time to end the loop). When can she do it? The easiest thing ever, old Claudia knows about the loophole and wants/needs to use it. She uses the sphere she has, goes to the time of the apocalypse in some basement and waits. A different, post split, Claudia will come and take her from there to the other world. If no Claudia comes it means she's the one that doesn't get "saved" the original one that will not talk to Adam. This is why old Claudia tells very-old Claudia to tell Egon she's sorry, because she knows she doesn't grow old into that version. It's not that she's running around for decades, it's a few days probably. And either way, the two versions of Claudia don't run around in the same reality, each of them does mostly the same things in their respective ones (except the talking or not talking to Adam).

[@Gem-st4fi]

official dark website is what the youtube video says. she tells adam what he needs to know and then dies. darknetflix.io/en/family-tree

[@KainReave]

@@Gem-st4fi That's nice and all, but in that case what exactly does Claudia mean when she tells Adam she sent herself in two directions like Eva did? Because when Eva did it we got two realities creating each other. Is that website (that I have seen before) made by anyone who had any clue about the show or just some Netflix pleb that watched it and wrote things that happened? Because there's a Netflix India YT video somewhere (DARK: The Ending Explained | Netflix India) that annoyed me even more with comments like "look, don't worry about it, Schrodinger's cat" but at least it explains the two realities that Eva creates using the loophole. Now go ahead and apply the same loophole but done by Claudia (somehow, presumably with only herself because she can't tell anyone else). You get (almost) what I typed above. And it explains why one Adam kills Eva (or one Eva ends up dead somehow for her younger self Martha to find) and one doesn't. That Netflix India video even says Adam (the one that talked to Claudia) does his own split where he both saves and doesn't save Jonas. After that the saved Jonas also does his own split by saving or not saving Martha from right in front of old Magus and old Franziska during the "moment" apocalypse of Eva's world (from that reality). The problem with these last 2 splits is that there's no one to stop them from happening so how exactly do they both happen and not happen. Eva sent herself to save Jonas and Bartosz to stop that Martha which is why the saving both happens and doesn't happen. If that were the only Adam, when he saves Jonas, how exactly does the Adam on other side of the split fail to save Jonas? I think it's because that Adam never talked to Claudia so he doesn't try to save Jonas and he just goes (using the sphere from the Martha he killed) to world B and kills Eva. The same goes for the Martha saved from in front of Magnus, Jonas comes because Adam talked to Claudia and saved Jonas or he doesn't because no talk, no saved Jonas, no one to come, Martha continues to become Eva (or get split, I forgot the exact order). None of that works unless Claudia splits herself (meaning there are two Claudia and each of them end up in the reality of the other). It's not "quantum entanglement" of two realities, it's "quantum entanglement" of three. They keep saying not to think in dualities but that's what Eva does. The reason Claudia knew "how to play the game" was that she figured this out. Adam thinks for most of his life it's one world and one reality, Eva thinks it's two worlds and two realities and delayed Adam learning this for a long time, Claudia knows it's three worlds and 3 realities and she delayed both of them until they were dead (well except one Adam very near his own end). The "Schrodinger's cat" thing is used to explain why someone from inside the knot (inside the box) can both exist and not exist at the same time from the POV of people outside the "box" UNTIL the "box" is open when one of two is observed and becomes the only real one. Inside the knot ("box") you can't have the same thing happen on each split because you need both sides of the split to keep existing or the knot doesn't look like what we see.Just imagine one Jonas getting saved and that becoming the observed reality=>RIP the Martha plan to save a Jonas that's no longer there because Adam took him.

[@a.saibal]

Thanks man . This was my first Question

[@hsatin20]

Great analysis.