Dark Matter Review
Dark Matter, AppleTV+’s adaptation of the best-selling novel by Blake Crouch, is telling a variation on the story that’s already been told by the likes of Fringe, Rick and Morty, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s a tale of a protagonist so desperate to get back the people they love that they’ll tear down the walls between realities. By keeping the scope of its story narrow and emotionally grounded, Dark Matter manages to add something to the crowded genre, but it falls into the same trap as so many other limited series by taking too long to get to the point.
The fact that Dark Matter is walking such a well-worn path could have kept Crouch, who also wrote the first four episodes, from needing to explain how the multiverse works. It’s been two years since the release of Everything Everywhere All at Once, after all – these primers on quantum mechanics are now the stuff of a Best Picture winner. Instead, Crouch’s script lapses into cliché, showing physics professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) delivering a lecture on Schrödinger’s cat that will become immediately relevant to his life.
Jason was once a rising star in his field, but 15 years ago he prioritized family over his career. Now he teaches inattentive students at a middling school, but has a comfortable life of family dinners and wine with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) – who he shares an easy chemistry with – and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Then the path not taken comes crashing into his life: a Jason who never put his ambitions aside has decided to steal his chance at domestic bliss. The episode does a fine job laying out the simple joys Jason spends the rest of the series trying to recover – though it contributes to Dark Matter’s feeling of “it’s all been done before” by setting its most intriguing passages in a storage locker, evoking the mind-bending time travel film Primer.
The early episodes of Dark Matter that hew the closest to Crouch’s novel are also the weakest. Supposedly brilliant characters flail around trying to piece together plot points that should be obvious to them and are infuriatingly obvious to someone who knows the premise of the show or has seen a blockbuster movie in the last few years. Even once Jason realizes that he doesn’t have a brain tumor and isn’t the victim of an elaborate prank, he makes a series of glaring mistakes while exploring numerous post-apocalyptic Chicagos.
Dark Matter was shot on location in Chicago, and the many iterations of its recognizable landmarks help immediately set the tone for each new world Jason steps into. In a clever and neatly executed choice, the skyline of one utopian spin on the city features the Spire, a scrapped skyscraper that was intended to be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Similarly, grounding Jason’s life in the Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square and nights spent at a favorite watering hole help emphasize how devastating it is to find versions of his home that are so close to right and yet just as alien as the ones frozen in endless ice.
Jason is joined in his adventures by Amanda (Alice Braga), a psychologist who unlocked multiverse travel alongside her world’s Jason – or “Jason2” in Dark Matter’s parlance. While this Amanda is significantly more developed than her counterpart in the book, she still primarily serves as a vehicle for exposition about how dimension-hopping works, only showing any agency very late in the game.
The stakes of Dark Matter mostly boil down to Jason battling with his own worst impulses.
The writers do a far better job bolstering Daniela, who is at first wooed by her “husband”’s newfound enthusiasm and confidence, but quickly grows wary of his personality changes. Jason2 may be able to meticulously research the guests of a dinner party so he can dazzle people he’s never actually met, but he can’t fake the impact of the shared joys and tragedies that have worn the two of them into puzzle pieces that fit just right – he put himself over Daniela once, and he can’t stop doing that. A scene where his attempt at a grand romantic gesture colossally backfires is one of Dark Matter’s best, an opportunity for a fierce and emotionally agonizing performance from Connelly as she reveals how little Jason2 actually knows her.
The action picks up steam in the back half, particularly the final two episodes, when the show doubles down on its themes. Most multiverse stories force their protagonists to confront what they are truly capable of and what actually makes them who they are, but this one stays laser focused on those ideas by avoiding any other science-fiction elements. While there’s a brief nod to Sliders that shows just how dangerous traveling the multiverse can be, the stakes mostly boil down to Jason battling with his own worst impulses.
Edgerton conveys this conflict beautifully, taking on the challenge of playing duplicates of the same guy with a skill comparable to John Noble in Fringe or Paul Rudd in Living with Yourself. The series also enriches Jason2, who quickly comes to wonder if the grass really was greener on the other side.We’re given a sound cue – a pleasant chime – to indicate whenever Dark Matter shifts between worlds, but it’s not wholly necessary. Edgerton brings enough variation to the way he carries himself and his delivery to distinguish between the Jasons even when they’re wearing the same clothes.
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