It’s been a while since I watched this show, but for some reason, I can’t get it out of my head. There are three “phases” to the show in my mind that all warrant different thoughts.

The first phase includes all the setup near the beginning of the show. For the most part, you really don’t understand what’s happening. Each character is living their lives, and there is an air of tension and mystery surrounding events happening in the town. But for the most part, you think you have some understanding of what’s going on.

Then, the second phase of the show begins. This phase sinks its claws into you and makes you wonder, “What is actually happening in this town?” Continually, the show makes you ask this question throughout its multiple seasons, each step towards new information gripping you deeper into new questions and the expansive web of connections weaved through each character.

And the final phase, in the last couple of episodes, when the message, purpose, “the why” of the show is revealed to the viewer.

The beginning of the show is confusing as it drops you in the middle of events and does not care to explain what is happening at all. There are many shows that do this, such as Attack on Titan or Frieren, but if you stick with it enough, the characters and their lives start to interest you. It’s simple, and, at times, the pace of plot development slows to an almost unbearable crawl where most of the new things being introduced don’t make sense. However, this is a small price to pay, as the depth built into the characters plays a critical role in building the continual intrigue of the second phase.

After a child disappears in the town, the stakes have now risen considerably. We are given a wide cast of characters who are involved, but there is also a larger mystery about the town and its nuclear power plant that makes you unsure if the show plans on pursuing a supernatural angle or if some of the people of the town are using that as a cover to commit evil. It’s this gradual reveal of information, and the subsequent building of new mysteries, which is the true heart of the show. Shows like AoT and Lost or even games like The Outer Wilds are extremely good at this type of worldbuilding, where new information about events in the world is drip-fed while an atmosphere of normalcy is built.

But where these shows’ legacies are really decided are in the final episodes of their runs. Attack on Titan, arguably the best of these three shows, is mired in deep controversy over the final chapters/episode of its run. Lost’s last season has left a similar impact on it’s legacy. This is where, for me, Dark falls apart. When you write a story that weaves this awesome, intricate web, the heart of that web matters a lot. If you have a message that resonates with the audience, you create a depth for the show that will be almost duplicated through any other method of storytelling. However, if you mess it up, you will permanently tarnish people’s opinions of the show, regardless of whether or not the other seasons were worth watching.

For me, Lost is a show like this that has plenty of merits for the first couple of seasons. I think the mystery of the island and the breadth of characters create an interesting narrative as it’s revealed. However, what is revealed to be happening by the end of the show makes so little sense, it’s hard to recommend that others suffer the intrigue just to be disappointed by a terrible ending.

This is why this final phase of Dark defines the show to me. It’s one thing for a show’s ending to be bad or controversial, it’s another entirely for it to be boring. To me, the reveal that the entire message of the show essentially boiled down to being just some abstract metaphor for love really disappointed me. It’s not bad like Lost, but the investment and the web of information you keep in your head (or look up in family trees created by more invested audience members) is just tarnished by all of it being some abstract story about love.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of love in real life. However, the problem with Dark is that it doesn’t say anything new about the topic. In fact, I think it throws away the mystery of the rest of the show just to revel in a normal person’s enjoyment of love’s power on the self. I think most normal, well-adjusted people can agree that being in love is awesome, and that when you are truly in love, it feels like it can conquer anything. Yet, despite its cliché nature, Dark finds it suitable to spend its considerable time painting this through tens of characters undergoing a massive web of events spread throughout time, to convince us this is true.

Good stories challenge our beliefs about the world. Frankenstein questions what we view as monsters, The Sopranos questions men’s perception of themselves, The Wire holds a mirror up to America’s perception of drugs, inner-city culture, and the broken system that, in trying to stop it, ends up perpetuating it. Breaking Bad shows how a society that doesn’t take care of its own can drive good people towards evil means, and even more evil ends.

Dark’s final message does not attempt to challenge my beliefs or natural feelings about the world. And that’s what makes the show so hard to recommend to others, and so frustrating to think about all this time later. There’s nothing I can point to and say, “I hate this about Dark” except for the boring-ness of the content of the message of the final episodes. But somehow that disappointment in finding out what kind of image the weaving of the tapestry created overrides the beauty of the technique or details of the tapestry.