The little multiverse-show-that-could is coming back for Season 2. After a critically acclaimed Season 1, Apple TV+’s Dark Matter continues its story of a very specific kind of parallel worlds show. But what makes this Season 2 renewal so interesting, and somewhat unique among sci-fi adaptations, is that the next season will be a brand new world.
When Dark Matter launched earlier this year, showrunner Blake Crouch told Inverse that in adapting his own 2016 novel for the screen, he was able to create a ton of new continuity for established characters. “As the writer, I know these characters and I can imagine where they might go after,” he said. And now that’s actually going to happen. According to an official announcement, Dark Matter has been renewed for Season 2.
“In the process of writing and filming Season 1, we discovered that there’s so much more story to tell,” Crouch has now revealed. “And we’ve only scratched the surface of these characters as they fight for survival and to find their way home through a landscape of mind-bending realities. See you in the Box!”
Dark Matter Season 2 can expand beyond the Dessen family
Although Dark Matter Season is primarily the journey of Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) back to his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), it also introduced an expanded story for Jason’s traveling companion, Amanda (Alice Braga), which was utterly absent in the original novel. In fact, Season 1 essentially ended on a cliffhanger in which Amanda had decided to stay in the pseudo-utopian world, but was met by a version of Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) who had been stranded there against his will. Will Amanda and Ryan team up and re-enter the Box?
In a sense, one could see Dark Matter Season 2 as a hypothetical revenge of Amanda and Ryan, as they were both screwed over by Jason 2, the version of Jason who opened up the multiverse in the first place. Previously, Crouch told Inverse that expanding Amanda’s story was a huge part of his motivation in doing the TV show at all, saying: “I always knew I wanted to do justice to [Amanda]. She's such a lovely character and once we had Alice [Braga], it was like, oh, well now I understand exactly who this and I want to expand her world as well.”
Dark Matter’s other Box Pilots
Early in Season 1, we learn that other people in Jason 2’s world were sent through the Box to explore the multiverse, including one version of Blair (Amanda Brugel), who by the end of Season 1 is poised ready to leave her exile in a dimension overrun with a plague of mutant flying creatures. Simultaneously, Dark Matter Season 1 showed us two versions of Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi), one from Jason 2’s world, and one from Jason 1’s world, both exploring different worlds through the Box.
The final scenes of Season 1 showed the more confident Leighton from Jason 1’s world getting ready to continue his adventure, but we never found out what happened to the injured, and furious Leighton from Jason 2’s world. On top of that, there’s a suggestion in Season 1 that there were at least two other unnamed Box Pilots roaming the multiverse, who we have never seen.
Essentially, although Dark Matter Season 1 ended the story of the novel, it left several questions about everyone else out there in the multiverse, to say nothing of the dimension where the Dessen family ended up. With Season 2 now a sure thing, it feels like the smallest, most compact sci-fi drama on TV is about to become much bigger than anyone expected.
