WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for the third and final season of Netflix's Dark, streaming now.
In Dark, as much as you feel for the families of Winden as they're drawn into this infinite loop, a closed circle of time known as the Knot, there are some downright despicable characters. The most selfish of which is Ulrich, a cheater and one of the biggest fakes in the series.
Over the three seasons, he's easily the most hated character but as Season 3 winds down and just as fans start to feel a sliver of sympathy towards him, Dark decides to give him the show's most heartbreaking deaths.
In Season 1, Ulrich was cheating on his wife, Katharina, with Hannah, Jonas' mom. As the patriarch of the Nielsen family and one of Winden's top cops, people expected more from him but he simply enjoyed the thrill of deception. Hannah had a crush on him as a young girl growing up and having gotten bored with Katharina and their three kids (Magnus, Martha and Mikkel), he embarked on the affair. However, he broke down mentally when Mikkel got lost in the time cave and the body of Mads (his brother who went missing in the '80s) resurfaced. Ulrich turned into an obsessive maniac, shunning Hannah because though she didn't exist and then lying to Katharina about cheating.
This led to him going through the cave but instead of finding Mikkel in the '80s, Ulrich got lost in the '50s, ending up in Winden's jail. Season 2 met him as an old man in Winden's criminal asylum and when he escaped and found Mikkel, just when they were about to go back through the cave, the cops stopped him. Mikkel returned to his foster mom, Ines, while old man Ulrich was sent back to the home.
Season 3 wraps this story when Katharina arrives in the late '80s, having gone through the cave in last season's finale. She can't find Mikkel, as he's in witness protection, but eventually, she tracks down Ulrich, forgiving him in an emotional moment. One can tell he's genuinely repentant, inspiring Katharina to devise a plan to break him out. But when she tries to steal a key card from her mom, Helene (who works the doors at the asylum), Katharine is killed. Helene didn't know this was her daughter from the future and what makes the scene even more painful is old man Ulrich is left waiting by the door in the dead of night, watching the clock. His wife never comes so he knows the journey's done. He also doesn't get closure because he never finds out what happened to Katharina.
Now, there's a chance for a do-over when Ulrich on Earth-2 surfaces. However, he's a cheater there as well, having left Katharina and the kids to start a family with a pregnant Hannah. To make him even more disgusting, he's cheating on Hannah with his fellow cop, Charlotte, so it's clear no matter which Earth, Ulrich just isn't a one-woman man. When Mads' body appears here, though, he follows clues through the cave, only to end up being killed. He's found tracking old man Helge in a similar arc to Earth-1 but finds younger Helge in the '80s in his child-killing days. But just as he's about to finish Helge off, old man Helge intervenes and bashes Ulrich's head in, killing him there in Earth-2's bunker.
It's symbolic because, on Earth-1, Ulrich did the same to try to kill kid Helge in the '50s because he didn't want him to grow up to murder children such as Mads and Mikkel. What makes this equally sad is Ulrich would have been justified as middle-aged Helge was murdering kids for his time-chair experiments, but on this Earth, it was part of Eva's design as opposed to what Adam laid out on Earth-1. In both cases, Ulrich was just a pawn who was always meant to die as a self-serving man trying too late to be a hero.
Created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, Dark stars Oliver Masucci, Karoline Eichhorn and Jördis Triebel. Season 3 is currently available on Netflix.