Critical response
Dark received critical acclaim and has been listed by many publications as one of the best TV shows of the years 2017, 2019, and 2020, as well as of the 2010s, 21st century, and of all time. Vulture included the series in its article A Guide to TV Shows in the 2010s as one of the most notable shows of the decade. The BBC ranked it the 58th best TV series of the 21st century. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed listed it as one of the 25 best TV shows of all time.
The first season of Dark received mostly positive reviews from critics, with many noting its similarities to the TV series Twin Peaks and another Netflix series Stranger Things. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the first season an approval rating of 90%, with an average rating of 7.4 out of 10, based on 48 critics. The website's critical consensus is "Dark's central mystery unfolds slowly, both tense and terrifying, culminating in a creepy, cinematic triumph of sci-fi noir." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from mainstream publications, gave it a score of 61, based on ten reviews.
Writing for The Guardian, Lanre Bakare gave Dark a rating of four out of five and praised the series for its tone, the complexity of its narrative, and its pacing. Grading the series with a "B", Steve Greene of IndieWire wrote, "Even when Dark is clinical in its set-up of these interweaving story threads, there's still an incredible amount of energy coursing through the show." From Vox, Emily St. James gave it a score of three and a half out of five and said, "Dark is fun to try to solve — it's a treat to tease out the many connections running among the three eras. It's just that at a certain point, it becomes difficult to care about what's happening, beyond simply wanting to figure out how everything is connected." Ariana Romero of Refinery29 noted that the series was darker and more in-depth than Stranger Things. However, there was some criticism by Reason's Glenn Garvin for a heavy-handed approach to its message, a lack of sympathetic characters, and unoriginality of certain aspects of the series.
Los Angeles Times listed Dark as one of the best TV series of 2017, while Thrillist named it the 18th best TV show of the year.
The second season received critical acclaim. On Metacritic, it received a score of 82 out of 100, based on four reviews. At Rotten Tomatoes, season two of the series holds an approval rating of 100% based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1 out of 10. The website's critical consensus states, "Dark's sumptuous second season descends deeper into the show's meticulously-crafted mythos and cements the series as one of streaming's strongest and strangest science fiction stories."
Critics referred to season two as ominous and much more bizarre than season one, and that the series managed to subvert several tropes regarding the concepts of time travel. The season received a rating of four out of five from Jack Seale of The Guardian and Boyd Hilton of Empire, a B+ grade from Hanh Nguyen of IndieWire, and an "amazing" score of 9 out of 10 from David Griffin of IGN. The latter wrote in his verdict: "Dark Season 2 can hurt your brain at times, trying to piece all the time-traveling narratives together, but in the end, creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese reward your patience with some stellar WTF moments. At eight episodes in length, [it] is a tightly-woven tapestry of compelling stories and memorable performances from the entire ensemble." TV Guide's Kaitlin Thomas was also favorably inclined towards the season, saying that "one of the reasons Dark is such a compelling drama isn't just because it presents time travel as something that is possible or because it grounds its story in the emotional narratives of its characters, but because it couches its sci-fi themes in conversations about free will and destiny. [...] [It] excels at building a compelling mystery, and the fact that it never loses the plot itself is a testament to the writing of the series."
The season was included in many critics' year-end lists of 2019. It was ranked as the ninth and tenth best TV show of the year by Maggie Fremont of ScreenCrush and John Sellers of Thrillist, respectively. Outside the top ten, TV Guide and Complex named it the 12th and 26th best TV show of the year in their respective list. In addition, CNET and Vogue also listed it on each unranked list.
The third and final season received critical acclaim, with the series finale receiving particular praise for being a satisfying conclusion to the story. It received a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 97% based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5 out of 10. The site's critical consensus says, "Dark's final chapter is as thrilling as it is bewildering, bringing viewers full circle without sacrificing any of the show's narrative complexities." At Metacritic, the season received an average score of 92, based on four reviews.
The season received a rating of five out of five from Radio Times's Patrick Cremona and four out of five from The Guardian's Jack Seale, an A− grade from IndieWire's Steve Greene, and an "amazing" nine out of ten from IGN's David Griffin. Cremona deemed it as "science fiction at its most mesmerising, its most confounding and its most exhilarating - and it all makes for a truly irresistible piece of television" and further praised the writing, cinematography, casting, and acting (particularly that of Louis Hoffman, Maja Schöne, and Lisa Vicari). Griffin wrote in his verdict, "Dark's third and final season on Netflix is a memorable journey through time and space, with thrilling character shifts and fascinating paradoxes to unpack." William Goodman of Complex praised the ending, saying, "Odar and Friese masterfully close by showing the symbiotic relationship between endings and beginnings. There's no victory without sacrifice, no light without darkness, and no love without loss. The tension between each of these conflicting ideas is so interwoven, making it hard to discern where one ends and the other begins. And so Dark concludes not with a hard endpoint on a line, but by elegantly and satisfyingly circling back into itself."
The season was listed by many publications as one of the best TV shows of 2020. Radio Times named it the eighth best TV show of the year, with one of the website's writers Patrick Cremona saying, "The final series was another irresistible piece of sci-fi television, equal parts mesmerising and confounding, with a sweeping scope that gave it the sense of a true epic. With its exhilarating finale, Dark has earned its place among the list of the very best original series made for the streamer." Exclaim! ranked it the tenth best TV series of the year. The website's Allie Gregory wrote, "With stunning performances from Louis Hoffman, Oliver Masucci and Karoline Eichhorn (and an incredible score to boot), the apocalyptic time travel sci-fi series deftly concludes its mind-bending journey in its darkest (and Dark-est) instalment yet. [...] [It] manages to neatly tie up all of its loose ends to finally find the one true "origin," so, at last, the town of Winden can free itself from the trappings of time and fate." GameSpot listed it as one of the year's ten best TV shows, with one of its writers Mike Rougeau stating, "what really impressed us about Season 3 is how it wrapped things up, even while continuing the tradition of adding yet another new dimension (so to speak) to the show's tangled timelines. It managed to weave one of the most complex, but somehow still cohesive, sci-fi stories we've ever seen." Outside the top ten, Den of Geek named it the 17th best TV show of 2020. Meanwhile, Thrillist ranked it at number 19 on its "40 Best TV Shows of 2020" list, with one of its writers Emma Stefansky calling the series finale "one of the most shocking and emotional conclusions to a TV show you'll see this year."
