After hearing so many praises to this Netflix Original series, I decided to give this a try. It was a good thing too since the 3rd and final season was just released a month ago and thus I should be able to complete the whole series without the anxiety of waiting for the finale. Anyway, I will try to give a bit of very brief summary on the whole seasons.
Brief Story Line Season 1
In the small city of Winden, Germany a young boy had gone missing for days with the case being investigated by police chief Charlotte Doppler (Karolina Eichhorn) and her team including police officer Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver Masucci). Meanwhile a group of teenagers consisted of Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hoffman) with Bartosz Tiedemann (Paul Lux) & his girlfriend Martha Nielsen (Lisa Vicari), Magnus Nielsen (Moritz Jann) plus the unexpected arrival of Franziska Doppler (Gina Alice Stiebitz) & Mikkel Nielsen (Daan Lennard Liebrenz) were looking for some weed in an abandoned cave near the power plant. However, it resulted to the disappearance of one of them which terrified the city.
With these disappearances still haunting them, the parents of the children such as Ulrich & his wife Katharina (Jördis Triebel), Jonas' mother Hannah (Maja Schöne), Charlotte & her husband Peter Doppler (Stephan Kampwirth) and Bartosz parents Regina (Deborah Kauffman) & Aleksander (Peter Benedict) who also happened to be the power plant's director, were all trying their best to cope with the situation.
Things got further complicated when the body of a young boy wearing clothes and stuff from the 1980s had appeared in the forest near the cave. Plus a stranger in a hoodie (Andreas Pietschmann) who seemed to be lurking around and a priest named Noah (Mark Waschke). So what actually happened? You could find pieces of them in the first season.
Brief Story Line Season 2 (Spoiler alert from season 1)
Continuing what was left off by the end of season 1, the story followed things that occur in the year 2053 and 1921 in addition to the years 2019, 1986 and 1953. As Jonas found out what happen in the future, he tried his best to return to his time and prevent what would be an apocalypse in 2020. However, his efforts were always hindered by the nonstop intrusion of other people from the future, including the mysterious Adam (Dietrich Hollinderbäumer) who later on was revealed to be the one giving instruction to Noah.
Meanwhile the elder Claudia Tiedemann (Lisa Kreuzer) who was in the supposed "fight" against Adam also showed more of her true intentions. In the year 2020 itself, few months after the disappearance of 5 people, Inspector Clausen (Sylvester Groth) was called into Winden to assist in the investigation. So could Jonas stop the apocalypse from happening? All would be shown in the second season.
Brief Story Line Season 3 (Spoiler Alert from season 2)
With the appearance of Martha from another world/dimension, Jonas who got even more confused was caught up in a different fight with another leader from this world who was called Eva (Barbara Nüsse). As she claimed that her world and Jonas' world must be kept instead of destroying them like what Adam had wanted.
And how would everything conclude? Find them all in this final season.
End of Brief Story Line complete seasons
Well that was a tough thing to do, writing a brief story line on all seasons without revealing too much. Hopefully it's just enough to give hint of what to expect from each season. OK, the series itself to me was really appealing. To be honest, I have my doubts if I could enjoy this as it is a full German language series which sounded really foreign to me. And it did require some getting use to which luckily for me took just 1 episode to be accustomed to listening to an unfamiliar language. Plus the superbly done subtitle was a great help.
The first two third of the 1st season to me was interesting and intriguing with the mystery of missing kids and time travel sense so strong. Although after seeing so many time travel topic in various movies and series, not a lot could surprise me, including that twist in the middle of the season. However, once I reached the final third, I realized that this was waaay more complicated and not the conventional time travel story that I used to see. It gave me a totally new perspective and got me so excited. Plus the season finale had such a cliffhanger ending that I could understand the frustration of fans who had watched this back in 2017. Fortunately for me who saw this during the weekend, I could immediately jump to second season. Oh another thing about the first season, somehow the feel of that famous Back to the Future was quite strong especially in episode 5 and 7.
I like the first season especially in the final third which blew my mind plus the intricate and complexity of the entanglement among the four families of Nielsen, Kahnwald, Tiedemann and Doppler, plus its great finale.
Once I reached the second season, the early part of 1st episode also got some getting used to, especially with the additional story. But it did not take long for me to get the rhythm. With the appearance of new character Adam, the story somehow get more complicated but it did give me a better understanding of the reasons for things to happen.
The second season was shorter with only 8 episodes compared to 10 in first season, but the duration of the episodes were generally longer > 1 hour. The tone in this season was similar to the first one, but since I already knew about the cycle, it was not too surprising having seen the additional story in different year. Among all the episodes here, I truly loved episode 6. To me that was the best episode of the series (that is until I watched 3rd season). That was one deep and emotional episode plus a rather mind blowing occurrence. Oh, the second season also reminded me a bit on 1 of my beloved time travel series 12 Monkeys from SyFy.
As for the season finale, I had a mixed feeling about it. On 1 hand I loved how everything seem to fit into its place, but the last moment before the ending gave me a surprise which I did not really like as I thought it deviate a bit from the time travel story which had been "served" to us from first season.
Due to that ending of second season, I was a bit cautious with first episode of 3rd season. Even though it was interesting seeing the different situation some people were in, but somehow I still felt it was a wrong move to make. As I continued watching though, I realize that there was a reason why they made this alteration. It would all be clear in the latter episodes and I was able to enjoy it better.
Just like in second season, the final season also had 8 episodes with majority > 1 hour duration. For me, the most amazing episode was the 7th. That was THE best episode of the whole series and even better than Season 2 episode 6 I mentioned above. And then I finally reached the series finale. The conclusion to all 3 seasons which was satisfying. It was an ending that was beautiful (though a bit confusing for me). The final moments before the series completed was also nice to see, again with question mark over my head of the why. But after reading a bit on the series in the internet, I finally gained the complete understanding and it made me appreciate the ending more.
Overall, this was a truly amazing & wonderful series of time travel with some of the most complex story line and ambitious take on the time travel theory. The characters were genuinely interesting with some drastic development across the seasons. It has great cinematography combined with some perfectly timed background music and songs. Fair warning though, the series did have few disturbing violence and a bit of nudity. The first season's earlier episodes were pretty standard but it ended greatly, while the second season was more complex, darker and had 1 absolutely wonderful episode though the ending was not really to my liking. And the final season which served as the conclusion was greatly crafted with two amazing final episodes. So if you do not mind watching a truly complex and really heavy time travel story, then you would certainly enjoy this series. My advice is to really concentrate and allocate your time to watch the entire season at one go. Or alternatively, you could watch it one more time just to properly understand and appreciate everything.
Mike's movie moments rating for the whole season: 4.5 out of 5 stars
PS: The series was co-created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese and not based on any novel, comics or previous movie/TV series. Which makes me in awe of their thoughts & creativity.
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