Blake Crouch’s sci-fi series on Apple TV, “Dark Matter,” won over critics and viewers in equal measure with its first season in 2024, currently scoring 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. The creator adapted the show from his own 2016 bestseller novel of the same name, which is as close to staying loyal to the source material as it gets. Crouch clearly has a knack for television as a storytelling medium — he was a writer for “Wayward Pines” and co-created another show called “Good Behavior” before “Dark Matter” — and can smartly utilize every tool TV offers to avoid genre trappings.
“Dark Matter” follows family man and scientist Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), his lovely wife Daniela Dessen (Jennifer Connelly), and their teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Jason is kidnapped by an alternate version of himself from a parallel universe, whom he calls Jason2. Tossed into a world where everything is different, from his career to his loved ones, Jason slowly learns about a giant metal cube and a chemical compound invented by his counterpart that, when combined, make it possible to travel between dimensions.
After realizing what happened and how, Jason finds a partner in Jason2’s girlfriend, Amanda (Alice Braga), as he reveals to her that he’s not the man she’s in love with — at least not on the inside. Together, they begin to travel from one parallel universe to another, gradually learning how the dimension machine works, with the goal of finding the original one from which Jason was abducted. Meanwhile, his counterpart attempts to settle into the life he always desired but never had the chance to live because of his selfish decisions and obsession with science.
The harrowing dilemma of the multiverse in ‘Dark Matter’
Many of us have played around with the fantastical thought exercise of parallel universes — especially due to movies like Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” or “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” that went hard on the multiverse — and how the alternate versions of ourselves could look like if we made different choices in life. With its character-driven approach, “Dark Matter” explores that fantasy in depth, and the answers it provides aren’t nearly as comforting as you’d think. Good and bad dimensional variations abound as we travel with Jason and Amanda, primarily due to the emotions and subconscious thoughts that the device uses for transporting the characters into different alternate realities. It’s far from an exact science, and every trip ends up being emotionally (and physically) taxing, not to mention that each reality can be in vastly different states: ruinous and apocalyptic, technologically advanced, or almost identical to the first one where Jason is from.
Blake Crouch and his painstakingly written story tackle every aspect of this scenario in a manner that’s not only thought-provoking but deeply satisfying. And given the cliffhanger he left us with at the end of Season 1, it’s more than comforting to know that the sophomore season was ordered back in August 2024 (via Deadline), and it’s expected to make its way to viewers most likely in early 2026, according to Sci-Fi Spiral. If the quality remains as high as in Season 1, “Dark Matter” will continue on its way to becoming a future sci-fi classic and one of the best Apple TV shows.
