#thank you all for allowing my autistic ass to get up on my soap box and scream about my silly little show once more

[magg0t-bible]

Why There's No Bartosz in the Origin World: A Calculated Infodump

So I know there were a few people who were upset about the fact that Aleksander and Regina's relationship didn't make it to the Origin World despite both of them still existing without time travel. I've also seen some people who said they felt bad for Bartosz because he didn't make it to the Origin World even though his birth wasn't the result of time travel. But after some careful consideration (read: hyperfixation go brrrr), I think I've come to a fairly logical conclusion about why this is the case. Originally, I thought that Aleksander and Regina only met because Aleksander pulled a gun on Ulrich to stop him from bullying Regina, and that event no longer happens with Ulrich out of existence. But there's more than that, and in this essay I will here is my explanation.

In season 2, when Clausen is interrogating Aleksander about the disappearance of his brother, the real Aleksander Kohler, he mentions that his brother disappeared "without a trace. Nothing." When someone in Dark disappears without a trace, nothing, we can pretty safely assume that time travel is to blame. Clausen assumes that his brother is dead and suspects "Aleksander" (Boris) of being the guilty party, but the disappearance happened in Marburg, not Winden, so we don't see it play out. It could be a Mikkel situation (taking on a new identity and a new life in a different time), or a Mads/Erik/Yasin situation (he just died and his body was dumped God knows when).

The letter that Clausen receives tipping him off about travelling to Winden to get answers about his brother's disappearance would at this point likely be presumed to have been written by Claudia. But after the events of season 3, it's much more likely to have been written by The Unknown, for 3 main reasons:

First, it includes the same quote ("he who has eyes to see and ears to hear...") that The Unknown says to Gustav Tannhaus before murdering him in 1888,

second, the handwriting on the letter matches the handwriting used by The Unknown when he writes the notebook,

and third, the motherfucker knows everything. Everything about what happens in both worlds, at every time, and is constantly catapulting between timelines murdering everyone in his way to make sure those events keep happening. (Though it remains unclear whether or not he knew there was a third world.)

So with this information under our belts, there's a pretty strong theory that The Unknown fabricated the Marburg incident to look like a murder and to make Boris Niewald look like the guilty party, which would lead to the following chain of events: Boris changes his name to Aleksander > he flees his past and comes to Winden > he meets Regina > the two of them get married and have Bartosz.

Keeping Bartosz in existence definitely would've been in The Unknown's best interest as Bartosz needed to produce Noah, the perpetrator of many of the Adam's World disappearances, and Agnes, who the Unknown would get with in both worlds to produce Tronte, and the Nielsen loop would continue.

So ultimately, in a world without time travel, Aleksander Kohler never disappeared, and the other events subsequently didn't occur. Boris Niewald never changed his name, he never fled to Winden, he never met Regina....and they never had Bartosz. (Yes, the writers could've come up with another reason for Boris to come to Winden and meet Regina which could've yielded Regina Niewald and Bartosz Niewald, but based on the way everything was set up, it would've required an explanation and I'm not sure such an explanation could fit into the dinner scene without being hamfisted).

I won't lie, I was pretty sad about losing Bartosz as he was my second favourite character behind Claudia (who thankfully made it), and he was the one member of the teen generation I really thought would survive. But if you can come up with a way for him to still exist, by all means, write a fix-it fic. That's what they're for. (Some good examples can be found in this post by @haljathefangirlcat)