From “Pluribus” to “Silo,” Apple TV has given life to many of the decade’s best sci-fi series. There have also been some middling ones, which is a category that season one of “Dark Matter” fell into. Based on Blake Crouch’s novel of the same name, the series follows quantum physicist Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), who gets sucked into an alternate reality by his doppelgänger, Jason 2, who wants to take over his life. At the end of season one, Jason, his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) finally reunite and find safety in a version of Chicago not too different from their own.
Season two begins with the family living an idyllic life, waking up bathed in sunlight and bickering over fixing their leaky roof. But the safety they’ve found all comes crumbling down seven months after their arrival, when another Jason breaks into the house and attempts to seduce Daniella, just like the first season. But this time, instead of falling for his charm, she shoots and kills him. When a cop shows up and spots the dead body, the Dessens are forced to go on the run again, desperately searching for a world where versions of themselves exist far away.
In its second season, the series takes a step back, and what was once a mind-numbing, reality-hopping sci-fi becomes a thrilling examination of humanity and belonging. Finally, the multiverse isn’t the focus of the story; instead, the characters within these realities are. While season one focused almost entirely on how the Box—the invention that enables travel between dimensions—affected Jason and his family, season two explores how the Box has affected the other people in his life and the world at large. By shedding CGI-laden landscapes and bloated physics jargon, the series has tethered itself back to earth, and therefore, humanity.
By grounding the series, Crouch (who serves as the series’ showrunner and primary writer for season two) forces Jason to take a back seat as Daniela, Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), and Amanda (Alice Braga) get more deserved screen time. Haunted by their old lives, the three are no longer on a mission to return home, but to make sense of their place within the Box’s different dimensions. Any semblance of life as they knew it has crumbled, and with this transformation comes their own unraveling. As the toll of fleeing their old lives begins to fracture each of their resolves, all three actors harness their respective arcs with a magnitude that ripples through the series.
As good as Edgerton is in this series, it’s refreshing that Jason is no longer the sole connector bringing these characters together. By focusing less on him, characters like Blair Caplan (Amanda Brugel) and Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi), who spent season one on the sidelines, are given some of the show’s best material. With Jason now a side character, his peers begin to orbit each other in unexpected ways, and watching different versions of them no longer feels confusing; it’s simply fascinating. As the series leans more into an espionage flair, it becomes the best version of itself, as the multiverse gives way to thrilling car chases, tense moments of file searching, and emotional character arcs.
This isn’t to say the show sheds its sci-fi shell completely; rather, its mystical aspects are woven into the story’s human foundation instead of overtaking it entirely. From the first episode, this season feels less bloated than it did in 2024, putting the spotlight on its fascinating characters instead of the world they operate within. In doing so, the series has two standout episodes that shape up to be some of the year’s best, each focusing on a character (or version of a character) viewers have little to no prior knowledge of. With these episodes, Crouch allows the humanity of this story to not simply take root, but to grow into a foundational aspect of the series going forward.
Scaling back its most excessive parts has made “Dark Matter” one of the best science fiction series of the year. By allowing its characters to sit in their grief, the series makes it clear that the versions of them who existed in their original worlds are gone, and no matter how hard they try, they cannot get those lost pieces of themselves back. Though it often feels like a requiem, the series is ultimately concerned with how we can retain our humanity through the transformations science makes, and, if anything, proves that although the ego of man is unstoppable, so is the fundamental empathy and drive for community found in human nature.
All episodes were screened for review.
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