A physicist steps out of a Chicago bar, is seized by a man wearing his own face, and comes to inside a life that belongs to someone else. That premise is what drives Dark Matter, and the machine fires up again on Apple TV three weeks from now.
Few devices in science fiction and superhero storytelling have been worked as hard lately as the multiverse. Loki and Rick and Morty lean on it. So do Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once. It isn’t hard to see why: line up endless versions of one person and you expose their finest qualities, their ugliest ones, and whatever sits closest to the core of them.
The stakes climb, too. Killing a character costs less when a doppelganger is waiting in the wings, and entire worlds can be erased without the story ending. The genre’s next big-screen outing will be Avengers: Doomsday. Until that arrives, there’s time to get current on the most thoughtful show working this territory.
Where the story came from
Dark Matter is drawn from Blake Crouch’s 2016 novel, in which a Chicago physicist has his life taken by a version of himself from another world. The first season burned through every page of that book. Crouch runs the show, which means he is now writing past his own ending.
Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) gave up his hopes of becoming a world-renowned physicist in exchange for a family. What he has instead is a contented, ordinary life in Chicago alongside his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and their teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley).
Elsewhere, a different Jason stuck with the science and built a box capable of carrying a person between universes. Jason 2 talked himself into believing the road he skipped would have made him happier, so he used the machine to trade places. He deposited Jason at his company, Velocity Labs, on the assumption that being rich and successful might suit the man.
It didn’t. Jason spent the season fighting to get back to his family.
The road home is full of dead Chicagos
His guide was Amanda Lucas (Alice Braga), a psychiatrist who worked with Jason 2 and was dating him; she showed Jason how psychoactive drugs could be used to steer through the multiverse. Velocity Labs CEO Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi) worked out that the Jason in front of him was an imposter and went hunting for the pair.
The route turned into a procession of wrecked versions of the city. In one, killer wasps had taken over, carried back by Blair Caplan (Amanda Brugel), the first Velocity employee ever to climb into the box.
The two of them eventually stepped into a Chicago that was genuinely beautiful. Amanda stopped there. Jason pressed on by himself.
Meanwhile, the other Jason was blowing it
Back home, Jason 2 couldn’t sustain the act. The people closest to Jason picked up that he wasn’t behaving like himself. He sought out the Leighton of his own world and dangled the travel drugs in front of him, wanting enough cash to walk away from a teaching job he couldn’t stand.
Then Daniela came across the drugs and took them to Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson), a former colleague and friend of Jason’s and a chemist of considerable standing. Ryan knew the chemistry on sight. The work was his own, synthesized for Velocity by another version of himself.
Jason 2 dealt with that by abandoning Ryan in another reality. Without realizing it, he chose the very world Amanda had settled in. Afterward he went looking for a substitute Ryan.
Too many husbands
Jason got home. So did a whole crowd of other Jasons, all landing at the same moment, each one warped a little differently by the choices he had made with the box. Some of them died at one another’s hands while trying to reach Daniela and Charlie.
Once Jason told Daniela the truth, she knocked Jason 2 unconscious and fled. He woke up, apologized, and gave Jason and his family a box of drugs so they could exit that world and go looking for something resembling a normal life.
Two threads were left dangling. Over in the alternate Chicago, Ryan tracked Amanda down and told her he was trying to recreate the chemicals that would carry them home. And Leighton set off into the multiverse using the supply he had bought from Jason 2.
What season two is chasing
The Dessens attempt to stay invisible. That doesn’t last. Yet another Jason shows up, and he wants Daniela back.
Jason grows obsessed with figuring out the box, in the hope of shutting multiversal travel down permanently. Daniela slides further into paranoia. Amanda and Ryan stay on the puzzle of getting back. And the Leighton who helped build the box wants to use it to assemble a better world.
Season two of Dark Matter premieres on Apple TV on Aug. 28, with fresh episodes landing Fridays through Oct. 30. Ten weeks of one man trying to prove he’s the real one.