You're right, not having a name fits the creepy vibe. It makes sense for me from the character perspective. But thinking that he's mother is doing everything to keep him alive, it just feel weird not naming him. And if he's Tronte's father, what did he tell Agnes what his name was?

I never thought anything special about the name Winden as it just sounds like a normal German town name (there's a real Winden in Baden-Württemberg for instance). Only when watching this video, it occurred to me that the name Winden could also have a meaning like you suggest: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhy0Le2KU1I&t=280s" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhy0Le2KU1I&t=280s</a>;. No that I think of it "Eine Welt ohne Winden" does indeed sound like a wish to be able to live one's live without struggling.

Where would you locate Winden? It has to be in West Germany because of the Helmut Kohl posters in 1986. It looks very North German for me, not only the architecture but also the names are Northern, for instance Tronte, Mikkel, Helge, Nielsen. Therefore I would place Winden in Lower Saxony. There are landscapes which fit (big forests, flat, similar architecture) . The address of the police station is "Am Südersiel" and I highly doubt that this address would be coherent with a town in another region as "Südersiel" lies in the North Sea: <a href="https://www.lust-auf-nordstrand.de/?p=3451" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.lust-auf-nordstrand.de/?p=3451</a>;.

On the other hand, there are several towns from Hesse mentioned. Aleksander Tiedemann seems to be from Gießen, his stolen identity from Marburg and Ulrich once mentions going to Frankfurt. Maybe it's a mashup of a town in Hesse and Lower Saxony. Here's a discussion on the location: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/7i8gpi/is_winden_from_netflixs_dark_a_real_town" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/7i8gpi/is_winden_from_netflixs_dark_a_real_town</a>;.

Thanks for creating this thread, Miriam. There sure is plenty to talk about.

As for the Unknown, I think his not having a name goes perfectly with the trio’s creepy vibe. They’re more like a force of nature, a function of the knot than a person to me. Still, maybe the series’ creators even came up with a name and are purposely not sharing it with us – I was similarly bugged by not knowing what happened to Wöller’s eye and read in an interview that they had already shot a scene that explained it but decided to cut it. Here are their explanations: according to Odar "we don't have an answer, because we do not know if there's a god or not" and according to Friese "There are some stories that live on when there are still questions left open. That's why we decided against showing it." (<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/dark-final-season-explained-baran-bo-odar-jantje-friese-interview-1302171" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/dark-final-season-explained-baran-bo-odar-jantje-friese-interview-1302171</a>;)

In that interview they also mention being strong believers in ambivalence and leaving things up to viewers, so feel free to invent names for the Unknown, I guess :)

I have a question too, which I posted separately yesterday, but let’s move it here:

Does the name Winden have a symbolic meaning for you? Especially when they mentioned "eine Welt ohne Winden" during the final dinner, these occurred to me:

1. winden = ‘to wind’, like vines that grow around each other and get tangled (like the worlds and timelines)

2. sich winden = ‘to squirm, to attempt to wriggle out of something’, maybe to escape one’s fate?

Is it just me or did this occur to you too? Did you come up with other interpretations? (I haven't had the chance to ask someone with a sufficiently high level of German, so I'm curious.)

@Simone

Oh, I didn't know about raffle. Nice idea! I agree about Winden being created as a generic German town but it's not a South German town for sure. I lived in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony and Winden just has this Northern vibe. It could be located in a region like the Kaufunger Forest which is partly in Hesse and partly in Lower Saxony. What is weird about Winden that there's not a visible river nearby. Most towns have a river close and especially a nuclear plant would be located close to a river to have enough cooling water.

I just read that the name Winden could also be play on the word "verschwinden" (to disappear).

@Andreas

And you're right about it. All people in the AdEv worlds who are descendants of the both don't exist in the origin world but all the others do exist in the origin world. Claudia and Regina are not connected to the knot, so they exist in the origin world and only original Regina can be saved as in the AdEv worlds it's determined that she dies of cancer. This fate can't be changed.

Ah, OK. I've always seen them as separate people, and that the AdEv worlds didn't have an impact on the origin world. Maybe I've misunderstood. But the way I interpreted it, was that there were three realities, where two of them were a result of the first one. That all the people of those AdEv worlds would disappear, but those not connected to the knot, would have their origin version of themselves still existing in the origin world. You can see even Adam world's Claudia disappearing at the end.

(I haven't watched the video yet, so maybe it would explain some of this)

@Miriam

I see what you mean about the Unkown's namelessness. I agree that he should technically have had a name, we're probably just being kept in the Dark about it.

Thanks for the video suggestion, I'm not surprised that there are even more possible meanings of Winden :)

The location of Winden is another good question. I agree that names, landscape, largely accent-free German etc. point towards Lower Saxony. However, considering that they actually filmed around Berlin (<a href="https://fotostrasse.com/locations-series-dark-berlin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://fotostrasse.com/locations-series-dark-berlin/</a>;), inserted clear indications towards Hesse and made the effort to create a coat of arms for the license plates (<a href="https://i.imgur.com/zCLEtJk.png" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://i.imgur.com/zCLEtJk.png</a> - with a coat of arms of the city rather than the federal state, as would normally be the case), I think they just wanted to give it a generic German feel. Hesse is not too far from the centre of Germany, so it would make sense from that perspective.

Still, I'm totally with your impression of it being in Lower Saxony. I've been there several times because my mum was born there and while watching Dark, I could easily imagine it in that area: flat, with plenty of forests and lakes, a nuclear reactor (there's one near my mum's hometown)...

Here's another good discussion on the matter that I got some of the information from: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTV/comments/7h9j8s/oh_winden_where_art_thou_a_collection_of_hints_to/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTV/comments/7h9j8s/oh_winden_where_art_thou_a_collection_of_hints_to/</a>;

Btw: Did you know you can win props from Dark? The yellow raincoat and the St. Cristopher pendant are part of a charity raffle called Los für Lesbos. You can enter until noon tomorrow (August 21, 12:00 CEST).

I hope this isn't considered advertising by italki, I just thought it was interesting.