DARK : What did we missed, What Ifs and How it should've ended
S3 gave us everything, an ending to a beginning of the greatest time travel show to ever exist. While most of us were overjoyed with the climax, I personally thought it could've been better and here's how.
Human Triquetra Origin
Agnes should've been the daughter of Magnus and Franziska, thereby explaining her surname being Nielsen and closing the family branch with her instead of the couple being childless. It really did not contributed to the plot by her being Noah's sister.
This way it would've manifested as a human triquetra origin, the strongest symbolism ever - with Unknown, Agnes and Noah being the core progenitors of the family tree in Winden.
There should've been more backstory on these 3, especially Agnes and Unknown, how they met, their childhood, how did they became what they're now as adults. The creators did not do justice on the Unknowns after hyping up their characters so much. IMO the Adult Unknown should've been introduced way before in S2 maybe while having a philosophical conversation with Jonas or Martha or any of his relatives, in between his travels all while keeping his identity secret, which would've probably been a better pay off in the S3 opening scene, where he's accompanied by his young and old versions.
How did he turned out so dark like a psychopath ever since his childhood, how did he learnt how to kill, the knowledge of time travel and his opinions on Adam and rest of his family members, how his time travelling experiences made their way to his infamous personal Triquetra Diary, all these aspects seemed crucial to the plot besides him acting as a henchman to merely manipulate events by time travelling and following his predestined path.
The HOWs
The creators avoided the 'How' by always implying the question was 'When'. How did the time travel worked actually? What were the mechanisms of each of the time travelling devices, how do they differ, how does a person actually operates the devices to time travel to a specific time? I cannot fathom how and why did they left out such interesting concepts to explore and instead gave us random characters repeatedly telling each other about some apocalypse or drop of an ocean.
The splits in timelines
Every time during the final cycle due to the quantum entanglement, the timelines split. However, we are not shown if they converge. If they don't, we are not shown what happened to the timelines when Jonas and alt Martha die. Cause in one timeline/reality, Adam gets to kill young alt Martha in his world, and Eva gets to kill Jonas in her world via alt Martha 2 but in the other timeline/reality, maybe none of these things occur.
Predetermined path, Causality and Effect
Stranger Jonas knew that Adam existed in 1921 alongwith a fully operational Giant God Particle with electric Tesla control yet he only choose to follow (alt) Martha's letter given by Noah. If only Stranger Jonas had noted down what his previous iteration went through, he could've taken things into his own hands for once. Things would surely had been different in Adam's world had all versions of Jonas worked together, like alt Martha and The Unknowns in Eva's world.
If Adam had not cheated or manipulated his younger self into false pretences, young Jonas could've been on a different journey and might have formed a new quantum entanglement cycle from 2052 itself by travelling to 1921 and changing things.
The entire show runs on a really dark premise that even if humans were given choices to their decisions, they will still choose the exact same option infinite number of times, no matter what and thereby, turning free will into a mere illusion.
What Ifs
What if Unknown, Agnes and Noah had more than one child in their lifetime. Yeah obviously it would complicate the story further, but hey why not?
What if someone, preferably from Adam's world, maybe Noah, tried to kill the Unknowns at some point? Noah wanted answers and who could have it better than the Unknown. Most probably Noah would've ended up dying in this scenario.
What if Jonas did not choose to go to 2019 to prevent Michael's suicide? Maybe Michael would've still been alive.
What if Jonas had a child with his Martha? The Unknown would definitely be uncompromising and uncomfortable with a sibling.
What if the Unknowns had followed Jonas and alt Martha into the Origin World? It would've been thrilling to know how this would've turned out.
What if young Ulrich goes missing instead of Mads in Eva's world? I wonder how the change in genes, story and plotline could've worked out.
What if instead of Jonas dying in Eva's world, it's alt Martha who dies in front of Jonas? This would've played out pretty dark IMO with this Jonas having witnessed the deaths of both the Marthas. And having knowledge of the family tree from Eva's room, he sets out on his own journey to slaughter everyone who he believes is the cause of death of both Marthas making it the darkest timeline and quantum entanglement.
What if most of the incest driven family branch were to be non-incestuous?
What if instead of killing, people were imprisoned or seemingly sent somewhere out of the loop?
What if there was more than 1 ending to the show?
How It Should've Ended?
Baran and Jantje did a phenomenal job pulling this off with such grace, but maybe just maybe we could've gotten more than one ending.
Ending 1 : the original, won't wanna change that. It gave off an ever reflecting moral that living and dying infinitely in eternal time loops is damnation and the only way out of that is ceasing to exist, in death.
Ending 2 : After knowing about the Origin World via Claudia, Adam actually takes the entire Sic Mundus and maybe even all members of Erit Lux there to finally settle down and calling it a truce while playing with time.
This way Adam and Eva would've finally got to settle down with their son, Unknown with his little family of Agnes and Tronte, and Noah and Elizabeth would have got to see their Paradise. Everyone finally got out of the time loops and could choose to live their lives freely at last.
Ending 3 : Introducing the God Particle in the Origin World, maybe giving it to H. G. Tannhaus. This would've been a rather chaotic ending as compared to the previous peaceful one.
Tannhaus probably would have used it for good purposes though and could've researched it so thoroughly that he was able to make the process and formula to create the God Particles in a not so destructive way that requires the coherence of 2 alternate world's power plant disasters.
Maybe it would've given rise to new time loops and quantum entanglements, with respect to the other 2 worlds and this would've been proved to be a complex quantum puzzle to solve.
Ending 4 : Tannhaus actually operated his Quantum machine more times than we know, and has in fact created more than 2 worlds by multiple splits. Totally mind boggling.
Ending 5 : So far we know that based on intelligence levels,
Noah<Adam<Eva~Unknown<Claudia
But what if the Unknowns finally strayed a little from their obedience to Eva and started working with Noah, Tannhaus or Claudia OR maybe even with Tannhaus and Claudia from the Origin World. This way the Unknowns would've diverted from their predetermined path and started to think by themselves.
This would've been fun to follow as it would've put them directly in a sort of Mexican standoff with his parents. At this point, a sensible fanfiction about the Unknown wouldn't hurt.
Ending 6 : Exploring far future, maybe the farthest ever possible. We know the world doesn't completely ends after the 2020 apocalypse, not atleast Jonas's world and like a Futurama scenario, Jonas time travels to far future to find out answers and he finds a new descendant. Bonkers right?
Feel free to jot down your thoughts and theories or any other details I might've missed here.