Disappointed With ‘Stranger Things’ Ending? Move on With This 95% RT Sci-Fi Masterpiece on Netflix

5 days ago 12

Rotten Tomatoes | Letterboxd | Metacritic

Carolyn Jenkins is a voracious consumer of film and television. She graduated from Long Island University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Producing where she learned the art of character, plot, and structure. The best teacher is absorbing media and she spends her time reading about different worlds from teen angst to the universe of Stephen King.

It would be nearly impossible for a series, so much a part of the pop culture footprint as Stranger Things, to please everyone when it finally came to an end. Just as with the finale of Game of Thrones, expectations were so high that it would never be satisfying. This isn’t the case with other, more thoughtful series that haven’t had a spotlight shone on them for the past decade. Netflix has another sci-fi series that not only concluded on its own terms, but was three seasons' worth of perfection.

In 2017, the German-language series Dark premiered with little fanfare. The series was strange, intricate, and, like Stranger Things, took place in a baffling town. The series focuses on the town of Winden, which, unbeknownst to many of its inhabitants, has been plagued by a time loop. Dark follows Jonas (Louis Hofmann), who discovers this loop following the suicide of his father. One night, when he and his friends go poking around the Winden Caves, a young boy, Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz), disappears mysteriously. What first appears to be a kidnapping quickly turns into a multi-generational mystery when Mikkel discovers he is not where he is supposed to be.

The first few episodes reveal that Mikkel was not taken, but had been transported back to the ‘80s. This caused a butterfly effect of events that would continue to pull in the Winden citizens from three different decades. More sci-fi than the supernatural phenomena that occur in Hawkins, Indiana, Dark played with the idea of a missing child in a strange town and made it even more ominous.

‘Dark’ Was a Concise and Flawless Series

At first glance, Stranger Things and Dark are pretty similar. One night, an eccentric young boy goes missing without a trace. While Stranger Things deals with dimensional portals, Dark toys with the idea of time travel. Even in its darker moments, Stranger Things was ultimately a family series that promised some sort of happy ending. Though not all fans were satisfied with that ending, the series left many of its characters in the embrace of safety.

Dark, true to its name, was much darker, dealing with mature concepts such as adultery, suicide, and murder. This was a series for adults and did not drag out the events of the series. Dark lasted for three seasons, somehow getting more brilliant with each iteration. The first season concludes with Jonas’ revelation about the secrets of the time loop, but the following seasons unfold with higher stakes and heightened storylines.

One of the best things about Dark was the comfort that the series seemed to know where it was going. It did not take 10 years to tell a story that could have been told in half the time. Dark had a beginning, middle, and ending, concluding when it was meant to. The series had arcs that were planned from the beginning, so there was no room for disappointment. Though fans could have seen Dark go twice that amount of time, it was better that it didn’t. Haunting and melancholy at times, the show was a fully realized series with enough twists and turns to last a lifetime.