Michael Kahnwald

Michael Kahnwald is Jonas's father, a quiet, private man in the small town of Winden whose death by suicide opens the story. He leaves behind a cryptic letter marked 'Do not open before November 4, 2019,' and a family struggling to understand why. We meet him already gone, known only through grief and unanswered questions.

He appears for mere minutes, yet his absence structures the entire series—every mystery in Dark radiates outward from that opening death. Sebastian Rudolph gives him a hushed, guarded sadness that makes the character feel like someone carrying an enormous secret, which is exactly right for a show built on the idea that nothing about him is as simple as it seems.