When Dark Matter returns for its second season on Apple TV+, it opens with a striking image: a row of bodies, each one a different version of Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton). It's a clever visual recap of where we left off, but it also serves as a warning. This season is packed with so many alternate Jasons that keeping track of them becomes a full-time job.
For those who need a refresher, the first season followed Jason, a physicist and professor, who is kidnapped by an alternate version of himself—the one who chose career over family. That version built a device called the Box, which allows travel between parallel universes, and used it to steal Jason's wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). The season ended with the family escaping into the Box, letting Charlie pick a destination to throw off any pursuers.
Season 2 picks up seven months later. The Dessens have found a seemingly safe world, but their peace is shattered when another Jason shows up claiming to be the original. They flee, choosing another door, and the story expands to follow Amanda (Alice Braga) and Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) trying to find their way back, while Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi) chases his vision of a perfect world, and Blair (Amanda Brugel) tries to stop him.
Edgerton remains the anchor, delivering a performance that keeps the show watchable even when the plot spirals. But this season, the various Jasons have diverged so much that it's hard to see them as the same man. Our Jason is obsessed with the Box, while another has teamed up with an alternate Leighton on a plan to strip technology from healthier universes to fix their own broken one—a scheme he's convinced himself is noble.
Connelly, meanwhile, gets some of the most gut-wrenching material but not enough screen time to fully explore it. Her Daniela is unraveling, growing more paranoid with each door they open. Connelly's raw portrayal makes you wish the show would just let her carry the emotional weight. Instead, the plot keeps yanking us elsewhere. Simpson delivers the season's funniest line while stuck in a world too colorful and polite to trust: "No one's getting banged here. They're just generously knocking." There's also an agent named Macnamara (Chris Diamantopoulos), who belongs to no named agency but enjoys donuts, and only matters when he's on-screen—a problem many characters share.
The show grapples with big questions about identity, regret, and whether the desire to be a better version of yourself is ambitious or destructive. Episode 3 digs into this when Jason 2 seeks ethical counsel about his multiverse project, and the answers cut to the core of what the show wants to be about. But there's so much plot crammed into each hour that these ideas get raised and then dropped. The worldbuilding is inventive, but it's gone in ten minutes.
The clearest sign of trouble is a small detail: the Dessens get matching tattoos so they can tell which versions of each other they belong with. The audience could use the same system. Keeping up with which Jason is which, which Leighton is which, and which world any of it is happening in turns into a season-long physics test you're always studying for and never feel like you'll pass. Once the confusion pulls you out of the emotional stakes, getting back in is difficult. It's hard to care about a character when any version of them might turn out to be a worse copy.
There are still real thrills. A chase sequence in Episode 3 unloads exposition with enough momentum that it plays as a set piece instead of homework, and it starts to make sense of why Jason is being hunted across timelines. A major reveal about how the Box operates midway through the season produces its sharpest sci-fi turn, the kind that reminds you why this premise grabbed readers in the first place. What's been made, in this case, cannot be unmade.
But Dark Matter Season 1 worked because it had a clean emotional throughline: a guy trying to get home to his family. Season 2 fractures that into a dozen competing threads, and the result is a show with plenty of big ideas and big consequences but not enough small, human stakes to connect them. The performances keep pulling you back in, and the plot keeps shoving you out the door before you've had time to feel anything.
If you're new to the series, you might want to catch up on the wild twists before diving in. And if you're a fan of Apple TV+'s sci-fi output, you might also enjoy the network's other ambitious adaptations. But for now, Dark Matter Season 2 is a brilliant mess—a show that's so busy being clever it forgets to be moving.
