General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Equinox (2020 TV series)

Equinox is a Danish supernatural thriller television series that premiered on Netflix worldwide on December 30, 2020, as the streaming service's second Danish Netflix Original series. Created and written by Tea Lindeburg, it is based on her acclaimed Danish podcast Equinox 1985 and stars Danica Curcic as Astrid, a woman investigating the unexplained disappearance of her sister and an entire graduating school class in 1999.¹

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	December 30, 2020, exclusively on Netflix worldwide¹
Format	Six episodes of roughly 45 minutes each; one season, status ended¹^•²
Origin	Adaptation of the DR drama podcast Equinox 1985 (2017), created by Tea Lindeburg¹^•³
Production	Apple Tree Productions, backed by ITV Studios; producer Dorthe Riis Lauridsen, executive producer Piv Bernth¹
Lead cast	Danica Curcic (Astrid, 2020), Viola Martinsen (Astrid, age 9), Karoline Hamm (Ida), Lars Brygmann, Hanne Hedelund¹
Setting	Denmark, alternating between 1999 and 2020¹
Reception	IMDb 6.1/10 from about 9,000 ratings⁴

Spoilers

Premise

The story opens in 1999, when Astrid is nine years old and a class of graduating students inexplicably disappears without a trace during their graduation celebration. Astrid, the sister of one of the missing students, is traumatized and plagued by horrific visions afterward. Twenty-one years later, in 2020, she hosts a late-night radio show and lives a quiet life with her young daughter on the island of Bornholm. When one of the three survivors of the 1999 class contacts her through her radio show and shortly afterward mysteriously dies, Astrid begins investigating what happened to her sister Ida and the class, uncovering a dark truth that involves her own family more deeply than she imagined.¹^•⁵

The series alternates between the two time periods, with the 1999 thread following Ida and her classmates in the days before the disappearance. In the opening episode, Ida celebrates her graduation in the traditional Danish way, with her class riding an open-backed truck from house to house, and her mother Lene's anxious resistance to letting her go proves justified when Ida and all 21 of her classmates vanish that night. Only three students remain: Jakob, Amelia, and Falke, who become prime suspects in the disappearance.⁶

Folklore and themes

The title refers to the equinox, the two days each year when day and night are of equal length, and nature and celestial bodies play a decisive role in the mythology the series uncovers.⁵ At the center of the mystery is the folk tale of Ostara, a goddess of spring, and the series is threaded with symbols of the tale, including rabbits, hares, and the recurring number 21. Forbes described the show as placing a folk tale within contemporary times to explore existential questions such as determinism versus free will.⁶

Production

Netflix announced the adaptation on September 17, 2019, describing Equinox 1985 as a podcast hit that had long topped the Danish iTunes podcast charts. The German-language announcement at that stage named the protagonist Anna; by release she was Astrid.⁷ The series was produced at Apple Tree Productions, the company founded in 2017 by former DR Drama head Piv Bernth and Lars Hermann, whose credits include The Killing and The Bridge. Søren Balle served as lead director for episodes 1 through 4.¹

Lindeburg said the hardest part of the adaptation was moving from audio to image: listeners to the podcast formed their own pictures, so the series aimed instead to carry over the podcast's tone rather than recreate imagined visuals. She and Balle described experiencing a different kind of creative freedom at Netflix than under the Danish film institute's support system.⁸ Production drew criticism in the spring of 2020, when anonymous crew members complained that filming continued even though much of society had been shut down by the coronavirus crisis.⁸

Reception

Viewers and critics frequently compared the series to the German Netflix hit Dark, which also involves missing children, shifts between past and present, and generational conspiracies; the Danish review site Filmmagasinet Ekko noted that after its first three episodes Equinox moves closer in genre to the HBO thriller The Third Day.⁵ The Guardian called it "The Da Vinci Code meets Scandi-noir" and wrote that it has "no chill", placing itself wilder and murkier than conventional detective noir.⁹

Danish reviews praised Danica Curcic's performance as the grief-stricken Astrid. Ekko's reviewer called her portrayal commanding and judged it the best Danish Netflix series to date, while cautioning that the ending needed to close the story rather than dilute it.⁵ Flixfilm credited the series with a strong premise, turning the familiar Danish graduation truck ride into a horrifying event, and praised its visual side, but found the middle episodes slow and the finale short of a satisfying explanation.³ A German review likewise concluded that many questions remain unanswered at the end.¹⁰ On IMDb the series holds a 6.1/10 rating from about 9,000 users, with individual episodes scoring between 6.1 and 6.9.⁴

The series ran as a single season of six episodes and is listed as ended, with the final episode airing on December 30, 2020.¹¹ It remains available on Netflix, including in 4K with Dolby Vision in some regions.²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026