Dark Matter Review | An Existential Sci-Fi Show with Universal Human Themes

Summary

• Dark Matter
  delves into alternate realities with emotional depth, exploring complex characters with intelligent storytelling.
• The sci-fi series navigates themes of regret, identity, and gratitude with style, action, and a great cast.
• Despite some possible plot holes and leaps of logic,
  Dark Matter
  offers an engaging, visually creative, and romantic journey through through the multiverse of our personal decisions.

The concept of a multiverse and alternate realities has been around for quite some time, but it’s certainly become more culturally popular than ever before. That’s largely because of the Marvel, DC, and other franchises that have incorporated the idea into their narratives, embracing the notion but largely discarding the quantum mechanics of it all. Dark Matter is the latest sci-fi series on Apple TV+ (and from Wayward Pines’ Blake Crouch), and goes in the other direction, grounding itself in the superposition principle to explore alternate worlds. Fortunately, you don’t need to be familiar with Fourier and Schrödinger to enjoy Dark Matter, which never lets its hard sci-fi ideas obfuscate the characters’ emotional realities.

Dark Matter is centered on Jason Dessen, played by Joel Edgerton (who also serves as executive producer). A physics professor, Jason has settled into the groove of being a father and a husband, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of love in the Dessen family, even if they are all going through the motions, in a way. He preps a coffee to go for his wife, Daniela (an excellent Jennifer Connelly), and rides with his son, Charlie (played by Oakes Fegley), to school. After drinking with his successful friend, Ryan (the always lovable Jimmi Simpson), Jason is held at gunpoint on his way home. But this isn’t a normal stick-up.

A masked man takes Jason to an industrial warehouse, drugs him, and takes him inside a giant, mysterious box. Jason emerges into a new world on the other side of the box, one that looks like his Chicago, but is actually a parallel world in which he neither married Daniela nor fathered Charlie. Because of that decision, in this alternate reality, he is a rich and famous scientist whose company has created a life-size version of Schrödinger’s box, in which a person can visit alternate realities. And if every decision splits off into a different reality in the multiverse, there are certainly many worlds, but Jason wants to return to his.

The Alternate Realities of Dark Matter Make for Cool Sci-Fi

Dark Matter (2024)

4/5

Based on his novel of the same name, Dark Matter is a sci-fi drama-thriller television series created for Apple TV+ by Blake Crouch. The series follows a physicist who is kidnapped and thrown into an alternate reality where he witnesses one potential path his life could have taken. However, he learns that the lives of his family are in jeopardy by an alternate version of himself.

Release Date May 8, 2024

Seasons 1

Writers Blake Crouch

Streaming Service(s) Apple TV+

Directors Jakob Verbruggen

Pros

• A very cool, romantic epic with great casting.
• Dark Matter takes its sci-fi seriously, but is also very rich in complex emotions.

Cons

• There are some plot holes and the whole thing requires many leaps in logic.

Jason ends up in a reality where everybody knows him, but not the ‘him’ he is familiar with. In this reality, he’s been missing for 14 months after stepping into the box, leaving behind his girlfriend, Amanda (a tender Alice Braga). Amanda is a psychiatrist working on Jason’s secret reality-hopping project, which has already sent a couple of people through the box and into the unknown. As such, the company is doing everything to maintain its privacy and avoid any legal or criminal attention. It’s a dangerous place to work, and an even more dangerous place to escape.

But that’s what Jason does, and even though he isn’t Amanda’s Jason, she decides to help him. Maybe she’ll find her Jason out there in the multiverse. Most of Dark Matter is the odyssey (quite literally in the Homeric sense) of Jason trying to get home to his wife and son. The giant box, combined with a hallucinogenic drug, essentially puts bodies in a state of superposition, in which any and every possible world is available to them. The mind manifests this quantum state as an infinite hallway with countless doors, alternate realities behind each.

However, it takes a lot of mental effort to determine what’s behind each door. That’s partly why Amanda was brought on; as a psychiatrist, she could train participants in finding certain alternate realities. It takes a great amount of will power and focused attention, a kind of super-mindfulness, to even come close to where you want to go. Jason and Amanda get better at it with each passing door, barely escaping the danger of different hostile worlds. But they only have a limited supply of the hallucinogen, so they’re racing against the clock in that sense, but Jason is also trying to get home to Daniela, who may be in danger.

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Jumping Around the Multiverse with Joel Edgerton and Alice Braga

It’s always fun when art explores different alternate realities; that’s the main draw of Rick & Morty, really. But Dark Matter never gets silly with the concept. Each alternate world is well-designed, from the freezing cold to the scorching hot, the futuristic to the forested. There are no worlds where people have legs for arms and arms for legs, or anything like that. Some of the worlds are downright tragic, and all of them progress the emotional narrative in wonderful ways, organically exploring the characters’ backstories and insecurities. It’s impressive storytelling.

Joel Edgerton and Alice Braga completely sell it, and it’s fascinating to watch these characters traverse the multiverse. They don’t actually know each other, since they’re from different realities, but Amanda obviously still loves Jason, even if that’s not her Jason.

The tragedy is, though, that Amanda’s helping him leave her, assisting Jason in finding his real family. Braga has a dignity and beauty to her as Amanda that’s truly heroic, even in its melancholy. And Edgerton, despite his tendency toward stoic brooding, gives a complex performance as a man learning to truly appreciate what he may have been taking for granted.

So much of Dark Matter is about that theme — respecting the present and the decisions that got you there. The show studies regret and identity in very thoughtful ways; it’s possibly the best expression of “the grass is always greener” that we’ve ever seen in media. And we get to see what changes take root in people after their choices, with Dark Matter showing us Jasons, Danielas, and Amandas who have made a range of different decisions in their lives, and have ended up in different realities as a result.

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Jimmi Simpson Deserves More, but Jennifer Connelly Gets Her Due

Jimmi Simpson is genuinely underused as Ryan, though we get to see multiple versions of him, too, and Simpson has fun imbuing each of them with distinctions based on their choices in life. He’s a great actor, and one of the best ambassadors for science fiction we have today, so it would’ve been nice to see more of him. Although the ending of the series does hint at that possibility.

Related Jennifer Connelly Praises Joel Edgerton and Explains Her Multiple Roles in Dark Matter Jennifer Connelly explains marriage and motherhood in Dark Matter, praises Joel Edgerton, and has no words about 2003’s Hulk.

Jennifer Connelly certainly gets her due, though, and is prominently excellent throughout. We see multiple versions of her, from a platinum blonde artist to a dying widow, and she’s always very present no matter the reality she’s in. Her main storyline is a tense marital drama that plays out while Daniela’s Jason attempts to get back to her. It’s not really a spoiler to detail much about that — it was a bigger spoiler in the book by Blake Crouch — but it’s still best to go into the show as blind as you can (and not even watch the trailer, to be honest).

Plot Holes and Little Lapses in Logic Don’t Ruin Dark Matter

The final few episodes of Dark Matter are riveting and wonderfully directed, if a bit unrealistic. This is obviously a TV show, but there are still a lot of little illogical moments for a series that takes its sci-fi devices and characters seriously. Everything works on an emotional level, but you might find yourself trying to piece together the narrative in hindsight and realizing that certain things just don’t fit together.

These could be details that are very small and practically superfluous (people eat, stay at hotels, and take taxis without having any money), or it could be a potential plot hole. Like, how does Jason end up in Amanda’s reality in the first place if he’s not from there, and if it takes so much concentration and mindfulness to choose the reality behind a door?

These are mostly small quibbles, though, and Dark Matter succeeds at crafting an epic, multiversal romance that’s also a cool thriller. It looks and sounds great, the cast is superb, and it provokes a lot of existential soul-searching and gratitude with its heady themes.

Dark Matter will premiere globally on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, followed by one new episode weekly through June 26, 2024. You can watch it through the link below:

Watch Dark Matter

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