Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly are not merely returning to the multiverse in the second season of Apple TV's Dark Matter. Their characters are trying to hold together a marriage, raise a son and survive in a reality where, for all practical purposes, they do not exist.
"We get involved in conversations about our, particularly about the prime versions of our characters and our relationship," Edgerton told this reporter in a joint interview with Connelly. "Blake is really the architect of everything."
That relationship is where the Apple TV thriller finds its deepest stakes when its 10-episode second season of Dark Matter premieres Aug. 28. Jason Dessen, played by Edgerton, spent Season 1 fighting through alternate realities to return to his wife Daniela, played by Connelly, and their son Charlie. But the family's escape leaves them in a new world without a past, documents, or an obvious way to belong, echoing what many immigrant families face.
"I love that they included that in the show, those very practical things," Connelly said. "I think that's one of the things that I really like about the show: the combination of the sort of otherworldly and the spectacle of it, and then the really familiar aspects of it."
Based on Blake Crouch's bestselling 2016 novel, Dark Matter became an Apple TV hit in its first season by making a complex multiverse premise painfully personal. Jason, a Chicago physicist and professor, is abducted by another version of himself and wakes up in a life where he has achieved professional success but never married Daniela or become Charlie's father.
The adaptation resonated with both fans of Crouch's book and newcomers because it was never just about the scientific possibility of parallel worlds. It was about the road not taken, and the emotional cost of realizing too late that the life one dismissed as ordinary was the one worth protecting.
Season 2 moves past the events of the novel, which marks its 10th anniversary this year. Jason, Daniela and Charlie, played by Oakes Fegley, try to settle into what appears to be a safe reality. But Jason's renewed obsession with the Box, the device that enables travel between worlds, puts that hard-won stability at risk. Daniela's paranoia grows, while Charlie needs a sense of security his parents cannot provide.
Connelly said the new season explores the family's displacement with unusual specificity.
"And here they go so far as to explore, like, well, literally, how do they adapt to a new world?" she said. "Like, how do you get a job if you don't have ID? How do you get your kid enrolled in school? And how do you, you know, like on a daily basis, accomplish all of those things?"
The question gives Dark Matter an immigrant and refugee metaphor without reducing the series to one. The Dessens have crossed an impossible border, but they arrive with no records, no legal identity and no safe explanation for where they came from. The high-stakes multiverse drama becomes, in part, a story about a family living in the shadows of a place that does not recognize them.
"I thought that was really fun," Connelly said. "And, yeah, I think it's true. I mean, it's very destabilizing for all of them, what happens in Season 1. And it continues to be incredibly destabilizing now that this technology has been unleashed in the world."
"So they're all having to come to terms with that and what it means for their lives and their family and their marriage," she added.
Edgerton said Crouch, who created the series and serves as its showrunner, welcomes the actors' input as he develops the changing relationship between Jason and Daniela.
"He invites us into the process to sort of ask our opinion about putting the detail in, in the shifts and twists and turns of the relationship," Edgerton said. "It helps get our opinion, which makes us feel very valued creatively."
The family story is still driven by Jason's choices. In Season 1, he was determined to return home. In Season 2, the Box remains in his life, and his inability to leave its possibilities behind threatens the very people he crossed the multiverse to save.
The returning cast also includes Alice Braga as Amanda, Jimmi Simpson as Ryan, Dayo Okeniyi as Leighton and Amanda Brugel as Blair. Amanda and Ryan pursue their own path home, while Leighton continues his pursuit of a perfect world.
Asked how they would recognize the real version of one another amid the show's endless variations, Edgerton said, "I think if I turned up to work and Jennifer was not prepared for the day's work, I'd be like, something's wrong here."
Connelly answered, "If Joel were grumpy, if Joel were ever grumpy or had anything like not nice to say about anyone, I would know it wasn't him."
