A physicist walks out of a bar in Chicago, gets grabbed by a man wearing his own face, and wakes up in a life that belongs to somebody else. That’s the engine of Dark Matter, and it starts running again on Apple TV in three weeks.
The multiverse has become the most overused device in science fiction and superhero storytelling. Loki and Rick and Morty use it. So do Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once. The appeal is obvious: infinite versions of a person expose their best and worst qualities and the traits that sit closest to the center of who they are.
It also cranks the stakes. Characters die more easily when doppelgangers are standing by to replace them, and whole worlds can be wiped out without ending the story. Avengers: Doomsday will give the genre its next big-screen entry. Before that lands, catch up on the most thoughtful show working in this space.
Where the story came from
Dark Matter adapts Blake Crouch’s 2016 novel about a Chicago physicist whose life is stolen by a version of himself from another world. Season one used up every page of the book. Crouch is the showrunner, and he’s writing past his own ending now.
Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) traded his ambitions of becoming a world-renowned physicist for a family. He lives a content if unremarkable life in Chicago with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley).
Another version of him kept chasing the science instead and built a box that allows travel between universes. Jason 2 convinced himself he’d be happier on the road he didn’t take, so he used the technology to swap places. He dropped Jason at his company, Velocity Labs, figuring the man might enjoy being rich and successful.
He didn’t. Jason spent the season trying to claw his way back to his family.
The road home is full of dead Chicagos
Jason got help from Amanda Lucas (Alice Braga), Jason 2’s girlfriend and coworker, a psychiatrist who taught him to use psychoactive drugs to steer through the multiverse. Velocity Labs CEO Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi) figured out Jason was an imposter and came after them.
What they found on the way was a parade of ruined versions of the city. One was overrun by killer wasps, brought back by Blair Caplan (Amanda Brugel), the first Velocity employee to step into the box.
Eventually Amanda and Jason landed in a genuinely beautiful Chicago. She stayed. He kept going alone.
Meanwhile, the other Jason was blowing it
Jason 2 couldn’t hold the performance together. Jason’s friends and family noticed he was acting out of character. He tracked down his world’s Leighton and offered him the travel drugs in exchange for enough money to quit a teaching job he hated.
Then Daniela found the drugs and brought them to Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson), Jason’s friend and former colleague and a highly accomplished chemist. Ryan recognized the chemistry immediately. It was his own work, synthesized by another version of him for Velocity.
Jason 2’s solution was to strand Ryan in another reality. He picked, without knowing it, the same one where Amanda had settled. Then he went and found a replacement Ryan.
Too many husbands
Jason made it home. So did a crowd of other Jasons, all arriving at once, each one bent slightly differently by the choices he’d made using the box. Several of them killed each other trying to reach Daniela and Charlie.
Daniela heard the truth from Jason, knocked Jason 2 out and ran. When he came to, Jason 2 apologized and handed Jason and his family a box of drugs so they could leave that world and go find something like a normal life.
Two threads were left hanging. In the alternate Chicago, Ryan found Amanda and told her he’s working to recreate the chemicals that would get them home. And Leighton started walking the multiverse with the supply he’d bought from Jason 2.
What season two is chasing
The Dessens try to keep their heads down. It doesn’t hold. Another version of Jason turns up wanting Daniela back.
Jason becomes fixated on understanding the box, hoping he can shut multiversal travel down for good. Daniela gets more paranoid. Amanda and Ryan keep working the problem of getting home. And the version of Leighton who helped build the box wants to use it to construct a better world.
Dark Matter season two premieres on Apple TV on Aug. 28, with new episodes on Fridays through Oct. 30. Ten weeks of a man trying to prove he’s the real one.
