‘Dark Matter’ Boss Explains Bleak Season 2 Finale and How Long the Apple Series Could Go

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Dark Matter” Season 2, Episode 10.“Dark Matter” can be a depressing show and never was that more clear than in the Season 2 finale. The second season of the Apple TV series moved beyond the adaptation of Blake Crouch’s novel and into uncharted waters — though with Crouch still at the show’s helm as showrunner, broadening the story’s scope was somewhat of a less daunting challenge. The core Dessen family — Jason (Joel Edgerton), Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and Charlie (Oakes Fegley) — and their various multiversal counterparts are still at the heart of things as they try finding a world to live in. But the new season meant many of the first’s side characters were able to broaden. It also meant the show could take time in its 10-episode run for some standalones, which included a stellar story about Jason finding a world and reconnecting with his still-living mother, and another which guest-starred Margo Martindale as a woman who turned her home into a way station for those traveling through The Box after it appeared in her living room. “I had not had the idea for either of those,” Crouch told TheWrap. “I’d always wondered. Like, it’d be cool to do an episode where Jason and Amanda get together. Like, that would be a fun episode to do. That was about it. The fifth episode was the first kind of discussion we had during the Season 2 sessions where I got really excited about doing it. Because I was skeptical about doing more. I was very happy with where we landed season one. The book was done and tied up fairly nicely. And there’s always the fear that you go and you kind of f–k it up. But the idea of doing something like Ep. 5 was so appealing to me that it was kind of the reason I wanted to do another episode or another season.” He added about Martindale’s inclusion: “She was like our literal our template for that character whose house was the way station. We wrote her name on a whiteboard when we were just brainstorming. It never happens that who you first see as the character actually ends up playing. That’s so rare.” Those episodes were meant to serve as optimistic and uplifting way stations for the viewers as well, because the rest of the season was one bleak and bummer moment after the next. “Everything beautiful, everything terrible” was the motto for the season according to Crouch and the finale captured both in spades. The finale had the characters spread out across various dimensions: Jason 1, Ryan, Amanda, and Blair had plans to destroy the original Box so all the other iterations of it would go offline and stop respawning, Daniela was off in another world looking for Charlie, one of the Leightons has plans to turn on The Pyramid which would make the first group destroying The Box pointless. A lot is going on. Dark Matter Season 2 (Credit: Apple TV) And kick all that off is a major action set piece – a first for the series – with Jason and Blair against one of Leighton’s thugs as they try taking the Box to the right world. In the chaos of fighting in the corridors of The Box, the three end up on wrong worlds: one is one locked in war and the other is a world coming apart at the seams and gravity failing. It was a big swing for the show and Crouch new it. “So Episode 8 is the bottle with Margo. Initially, we made that bottle episode to save money to be able to do the finale because that was a huge undertaking,” Crouch said. “The low-gravity world was an idea I had toyed around with when I was writing the book. I just had this idea of the Earth had just been fractured, and pieces and chunks of land were flying up into the sky, and buildings and cars, and and it never really fit in the book with Jason and Amanda’s journey. So we knew we wanted to do the whole world thing, and I actually just kind of pitched it as a joke to the team. They were like, ‘why don’t you write it?’ I was like, ‘I will write it. Fine.’” He added: “So I wrote it, and then our our we have we have one of the best crew – the ‘Dark Matter’ crew is the best crew I’ve ever worked with, and when you challenge them like that they take it as like Michael Jordan, they’re offended if you don’t give them the chance to do it, and they were like, ‘Hold our beer, we’re gonna figure this out.’” Things turn out great though. Shades of the “everything beautiful.” The crew manages to ruin the original Box, after Amanda and Ryan manage a quick trip to drop off a plague cure to one of the Leightons of another world, and Daniela and Charlie are reunited and decide to return to Jason and get on with their lives. The “everything terrible” kicker comes in the final moments when Jason – who had no idea Daniela and Charlie had used the Box to travel – finally finds his wife’s note after they’ve already shut off the Box. Luckily, the pair were able to use the Box from the world they were on before things went offline but the bad news is they didn’t make it back to their Jason or the Analog World they were living on. It’s unclear where they are but the season comes to a close with Jason telling Amanda, Blair, and Ryan what went wrong. Now the questions are what lengths this Jason is going to go to to find them. “It’s an interesting question because they’ve all lost their worlds. They’ve all lost everything,” Crouch said. “This Jason happened was lucky enough to be the one out of however many thousands to be with the family, but now it hasn’t. It’s not working out, and he’s lost them. Like, why does he deserve them? Why? Why does he deserve to have everything? Everyone else in the show has lost everything. I’m not saying I’m not. I’m not giving spoilers away. I’m just saying that is a completely fair question that I think his friends would be asking him.” Those are questions that are going to linger until if and when “Dark Matter” gets picked up for a third season. Unlike Season 1, which ended where the book wrapped up and all thread were largely dealt with, Season 2 is banking on being able to continue the story. Crouch knew it was a gamble but he also knows where the story is going and exactly how many seasons it would take to get there. “When we pitched the second season, we were honest with everyone,” Crouch said. “We said, ‘Listen, we have it. To finish the show, it’s, you know, it’s not just 10 episodes to finish the show.’ We need more than that, and we’re going to proceed as if we are going to finish the series. Time will tell if that was foolish or not.” He finished: “When I talked to Apple in 2020. I pitched it as a three-season arc. I love. I think other than like fantasy – like ‘Game of Thrones’ I love – but I think three is kind of a perfect number when it comes to series.” “Dark Matter” Seasons 1-2 are now streaming on Apple TV.