The grass isn’t always greener on the other side — or in another dimension. Somewhere between the class struggles of Silo*** ***and the eerie isolation of Pluribus, Apple TV takes pride in its strong sci-fi catalog. ***Dark Matter ***is no exception. Based on Blake Crouch’s 2016 novel of the same name, with Crouch also serving as the series’ creator, Dark Matter’s high-concept sci-fi premise draws from real-life physics. However, when these innocent theories and equations are transformed into a deadly contraption, the pursuit of knowledge becomes less noble than it seems.
Dark Matter tests the idea of whether life would be better in a hypothetical parallel universe. At the core of the series is Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a Chicago physics professor living a quiet life at an unremarkable college. However, with intelligence like his, Jason is clearly destined for greater things in the scientific world. After his neuroscientist friend Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson) wins the prestigious Pavia Award (a fictional equivalent of the Nobel Prize), he asks Jason to join his neurotech startup in San Francisco. However, Jason is content with his humble life alongside his wife, Daniela Dessen (Jennifer Connelly), a former painter, and their 15-year-old son, Charlie Dessen (Oakes Fegley).
That peace is shattered when Jason is abducted following a party. Drugged and taken to an abandoned facility, he wakes up in another version of his life — one where he chose his scientific pursuits over family. Here, he’s a celebrated scientist and the founder of Velocity Labs, having perfected a superposition experiment that allows access to alternate dimensions using a large metal box and a specialized drug. The man behind his kidnapping is another Jason, one who now wants the life he previously abandoned in pursuit of building his own world. Meanwhile, the real Jason is desperate to return home to his family.
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*Dark Matter *revolves around a real-life theory called superposition, which, for creative reasons, is fictionalized to match the show’s parallel-universe storyline. As the show explains, superposition refers to a state in which a person can exist across all possible realities at the same time. This becomes possible through the invention of “the Box,” a quantum gateway that isolates the user from external factors and acts as a bridge to countless alternate realities, each represented by a different door.
The real Jason previously entertained the theory of superposition and even built a small, non-functional prototype of the Box. When he reached a dead end, he stopped pursuing it. However, his alternate counterpart succeeds in making both the theory and the Box a reality. In a way, it’s fortunate that the real Jason never brought the theory to life. Doing so would have required sacrificing his morality and putting others at risk in the name of scientific progress. The original Jason explored superposition out of curiosity, while** **the alternate Jason pursued it out of dangerous ambition.
Tricky science aside, Dark Matter questions the ethical boundaries that science often oversteps. Jason’s invention is meant to explore solutions across dimensions, tackling issues like disease, climate disasters, and world hunger. The idea is that there could be other universes where these problems have already been solved, and those solutions could then be applied to this one. It sounds like a hopeful pursuit, but science has a notorious way of becoming deeply personal. The alternate Jason believes he can fix his regrets by taking over another version of his life. Having already achieved professional success in his own universe, he sets his sights on a different one to claim the family he never had.
It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that every action carries consequences. In* Dark Matter*, those consequences aren’t simply a matter of forsaking ethics. Every time either version of Jason crosses into another dimension, he disrupts the very fabric of reality itself. At a certain point, no level of consciousness can fully process the existence of multiple overlapping realities. As the Jasons’ perception begins to fracture under the weight of liminal dimension-hopping, Dark Matter suggests there is only so much both the human mind and the universe itself can withstand.
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Science Fiction
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Jakob Verbruggen, Alik Sakharov, Roxann Dawson, Logan George
A man is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could’ve lived, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from a most terrifying foe: himself.