What we know is a drop – what we don’t know is an ocean. The famous quote from Isaac Newton became the guiding principle of the complex time warp series Dark, which melted the brain with its infinite number of puzzles and intricate narrative levels. Now is with 1899 the new series of Dark Creators on Netflix started. And that literally brings us to the ocean of uncertainty.
As a big fan of Baran bo Odars and Jantje Friese’s series puzzle Dark, I had my doubts in advance. Can the creative team once again ignite the mystery fire in methat makes me enthusiastically plunge into the abyss of theories, scribble in notebooks and interpret even the smallest detail? Having seen 1899, I can answer that question: Yes, they can.
1899 feels like Dark but is something completely new
Dark fans can expect a homey feel right at the start of 1899. While this time it’s not about time travel and escalating family trees, both series have something similar melancholic atmosphere. In Winden it was always gray and rainy. And 1899 too is defined by an all enveloping gloom throughout imagery, set design and music the dark DNA bear in themselves.
The plot of 1899 begins quite similarly simple as it did in Dark. It all started there with young Mikkel’s crime scene-esque missing person case before the series later revealed itself as the Winden time knot epic we know and love. This time it’s not in a small German town, but on a passenger ship that sails towards America in the late 19th century.
Watch the trailer for Netflix’ 1899 here:
1899 – S01 Trailer (German) HD
The ship Kerberos accommodates over 1500 people from different nations who are brought together by the hope for a better life. Even if they are united by the common goal, the 20 main characters of 1899 are initially characterized by their origins, However, language barriers and class differences isolated from each other. Meanwhile gnaw dark secrets and painful experiences from the past on their souls.
But it doesn’t matter whether it’s a fine tea party in first class or a claustrophobic bustle in impoverished third class: the passengers have a bigger problem shortly after departure. On the high seas, the Kerberos, under the command of Captain Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann), meets the sister ship Prometheus, which has been missing for months and seems completely abandoned. The dark Mystery full of nightmarish and often spooky happenings can start.
1899 is a complex and melting puzzle game
1899 isn’t just a mystery series about dark ship secrets: it’s an experience. The action will more puzzling from episode to episode. Each answer is followed by 10 new questions and only after a few episodes and brain-melting twists and turns it’s becoming clear what kind of series we’re really dealing with here. For some viewers, that might be off-putting, as 1899 is almost more cryptic than Dark.
The state of confusion evoked here can best be compared to the later episodes of Dark. But that’s the great strength of this one Jigsaw puzzles designed down to the smallest detailwhich will delight fans of mystery box series like Lost, The Leftovers and Westworld.
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This boy is keeping all spoilers to himself
“There is a whole world hidden within all of us that just needs to be deciphered“, tells the main character Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham) in the first episode. And it was precisely this decoding that kept me in front of the television for eight episodes, highly concentrated. On the one hand, there are the numerous and slowly uncovering background stories of the characters. To explore how their tragic ones Destinies are intertwined, but that’s only a small part of the mystery.
Mysterious passenger entrances, strange bugs, triangle symbols hidden everywhere and ominous secret passages are a small selection of the other puzzle pieces that 1899 throws at us every minute. It is up to us viewers to recognize and put them together. Anyone who doesn’t pay full attention to the series and think along with it will quickly be lost. But we are rewarded with clues to potential answers hidden in almost every scene.
1899 is another puzzle stroke of genius after Dark
For me, the concept of 1899 worked perfectly. The oppressive atmosphere literally sucked me in while I constantly puzzling along and coming up with absurd theories could. Could it be that the sin-stricken characters aren’t on a ship, but in purgatory? Or are we dealing with a mass psychosis of patients in a psychiatric institution? And is it a coincidence that Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams also appeared in 1899?
This theory game closes in 1899 an insane experience. Because while a possible interpretation is just taking shape in my head, the series is already firing off the next WTF twist, the makes the brain burst. With each new twist, my guesses and theories are taken in new and wilder directions. It’s a puzzle experience that Dark was adept at conjuring up.
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Even the main characters are as clueless as we are
The new Netflix series is of course much more than just the story of a group of migrants and their escalating conflict on board a ship. To name their thematic influences and clearly recognizable genre role models at this point would, however, be going too far into spoiler territory. That’s why I keep it as spoiler-free as possible at this point: Dark made me doubt my free will. And 1899 now lets me mine Questioning existence and reality.
1899 is not a series that wants to be fully understood on first viewing. Rather, it invites you to start all over again with the knowledge of all disclosures and to discover all the clues that were already scattered from the beginning. The rewatch not only brings more appreciation for the characters and their stories, but also reveals how ingeniously the Dark Team’s latest series Enigma really is.
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Do you already have 1899 on your watch list or have you already checked it out?