Lists · TV

Ranking the Characters of Netflix’s ‘Dark’ from Most to Least Messy

What fools these mortals be.
Dark Netflix Characters
By  · Published on July 21st, 2020

13. Tronte Nielsen

Dark Tronte

Despite getting sexually involved with Claudia Tiedemann as a teen and continuing an affair with her for decades, Tronte romances and marries Jana. Because that makes sense. Ulrich comes by his messiness honestly. Old Tronte manages to survive the nuclear apocalypse because nothing kills cockroaches. He then crosses paths with time-traveling Claudia and learns Regina is not, in fact, the product of their long-running affair. Claudia instructs him to kill her daughter with the same sort of logic one uses to explain putting down a lame horse. So Tronte, a literal invertebrate, does what he’s told and smothers Regina with a pillow.


14. Helene Albers

Dark Helene

There is no denying that Helene had an absolutely traumatic childhood, from the brief glimpse of it we see. The fact that she was a victim before becoming a perpetrator of abuse in her own right is not a valid excuse. An act of kindness from “Katharina” (actually time-traveling Hannah) inspires Helene to eventually bestow her daughter with that name, in a sense naming her daughter after her future nemesis, a deliciously messy coincidence.

Since Helene works as a nurse at the hospital where old Ulrich is locked up in the 1980s, actual Katharina comes up with the brilliant idea of stealing her mother’s keys to break Ulrich out. Ambushing Helene on the way home proves to be a bad idea, though, because she clearly doesn’t skip arm day and has no qualms with bludgeoning a would-be thief to death with a rock. Could she have just escaped and run away? Yes, but that’s not Helene’s M.O. Kudos for having the common sense to hide her murder victim somewhere actually hidden, though.


15. Egon Tiedemann

Dark Egon Collage

Egon is the sort of crap policeman who thinks “hunches” are the backbone of his work as opposed to, y’know, collecting evidence, doing thorough groundwork, following leads, and all that stuff.

While hardly Ulrich’s biggest fan myself, being convinced a teenager is a satanist since he doesn’t like you because you never solved the case of his brother’s disappearance is not a good look. Tossing the very same teen in jail after an adolescent girl claims to have seen him rape someone without even checking in with the alleged victim first similarly represents a questionable approach unless your aim is to beat Atonement at its own game.

Further messiness points are also awarded to Egon for his affair with Hannah. Still, the rest of Winden makes for intense competition on the walking disaster front, leaving him an unremarkable mid-tier entry, which really suits his generally unremarkable and underwhelming nature.


16. Katharina Nielsen

Dark Katharina Collage

Teenage Katharina is a bit of a she-demon, but her mother is an abusive monster, so her behavior is somewhat understandable if still not excusable. Adult Katharina is a generally upstanding and commendably non-messy individual, in stark contrast to husband Ulrich. After son Mikkel and Ulrich both disappear, she understandably becomes obsessed with trying to find them. While rationally skeptical of time travel claims at first, finding Mikkel in a school picture from 1986 quickly convinces her. When “the Stranger” (aka shaggy Jonas) tells her about a time travel passage in the caves, Katharina doesn’t hesitate in tracking it down. A slightly rash decision, but considering it means she ends up escaping the nuclear apocalypse in the nick of time, a rather lucky one.

Unfortunately, when she arrives in 1987, the Kahnwalds have already left town, rattled by a kidnapping attempt (nice one, Ulrich). She inquires after the would-be kidnapper and discovers it to be none other than her missing husband, whom she recognizes in spite of him now being well over eighty and desperately in need of a good haircut. Katharina, loyal to a fault, plots to break him out of the psych ward by stealing her mother’s keys, as Helene works as a nurse at the same hospital. Katharina tragically underestimates Helene’s arm strength and gets murdered by her own mother, who disposes of her body in the lake.


17. Mikkel Nielsen / Michael Kahnwald

Dark Mikkel Collage

That adult Michael feels decidedly uncomfortable about being around his birth family and child self is understandable. That he at no point between 1986 and 2019 appears to take any steps to avoid this outcome is less so. Why not move, my dude? Inherited real estate is admittedly convenient, but there would be so many benefits to going through the hassle of selling and buying a house literally anywhere else. He wouldn’t have to make lame excuses for avoiding parties thrown by his (unknowing) parents who are now weirdly his age. His wife would no longer live a stone’s throw away from her life-long obsession who also happens to be his dad. The odds of his son accidentally dating his biological aunt would be significantly reduced.

Instead, Michael/Mikkel just follows a default path right into the disastrous mire fate has laid before him, not even trying to find any detours that might enable him to get around it. Admittedly, even if he tried, Adam or Eva would undoubtedly made sure things played out the same way anyway. Still, he could have at least made the effort.


18. Bartosz Tiedemann

Dark Bartosz Collage
Bartosz steals a phone that belonged to his presumably dead friend Erik Obendorf, who sold drugs. He then answers the phone when it rings, presuming it’s Erik’s dealer and wanting to make the man’s acquaintance. Instead, it’s Noah, who lures him in with the promise of time travel. Luckily for Bartosz, the machine has passed the development stage, meaning that for him, unlike Erik, this acquaintance will not prove fatal.

Along with Magnus and Franziska, Bartosz runs into shaggy-beard Jonas on the day of the apocalypse and they all end up in 1888, which admittedly is preferable to being dead. He soon meets another traveler from the even-more-distant future — Silja — and they have two children, Hanno and Agnes.

Bartosz ends up joining Sic Mundus and gets assigned to dig a tunnel in the Winden caves with help from son Hanno. Unfortunately, Bartosz makes the mistake of questioning Adam’s judgment in front of the far more zealous Hanno, who makes his stance very clear by embedding a pickax in his father’s back. All in all, Bartosz’s story has a messy start and end, but for the middle bit, he mostly has his shit together by Winden standards.

Next Page

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Related Topics: ,

Ciara Wardlow is a human being who writes about movies and other things. Sometimes she tries to be funny on Twitter.