Some major moves were made as Apple TV’s sci-fi drama Dark Matter comes to its sophomore conclusion. Warning: Spoiler for the Dark Matter Season 2 finale ahead!
The Box is destroyed. Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) has obliterated the creation that wreaked havoc on his life — and the lives of many other Jasons. But in the episode’s final moments, after he thinks everything is over and life may return to some normalcy, he finds a note from his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly). She has gone back into the Box after their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Jason has no way to follow. He is stranded — and alone.
“It was devastating,” says Edgerton of those last moments. “But it reminded me, too, of the puzzle that Dark Matter throws up for actors, which is, ‘OK, imagine this implausible, impossible scenario. The only thing I could equate it to is if I somehow caused the potential, forever separation of myself and my family, or I destroyed them in some way by accident. Those challenges are really interesting, and you can equate them or find some parallel, but never bring full experience to it.”
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And while Jason went through plenty of emotional turmoil of his own, Daniela had her fair share of heart-tugging moments, too. She got to meet another Daniela, who helped her come to terms with her past, and learn to forgive herself a bit. “It felt like the logical conclusion to her journey — it was sort of the last stop on the way. That, and meeting her [other] son,” Connelly notes. “We had a lot of conversations about, ‘What does she gain from [meeting herself]?’ And the one thing I knew that I felt strongly about from the beginning was, she didn’t need to learn the lesson that, ‘There’s no place like home.’ She already knew that there was no place like home. She just didn’t know if she could be there anymore. And she didn’t know if she deserved to be there anymore. And she didn’t know if she was safe for her family to be around anymore. So, what she needed to do was learn from herself this lesson to forgive herself and to be kind to herself. So she has this quite literal confrontation with another version of herself [who] hasn’t lost her child. And I thought that was quite a fitting way for her to finish her journey.”
Daniela even met the son who she never got to see grow up, Max (also Fegley), in a very poignant scene. “I liked that in the end, there really wasn’t much to say about it. Just, ‘it’s really nice to meet you,’” recalls Connelly. “There’s something about that that I thought was so beautiful. He’s in his place, and there’s nothing for her to say. It’s beautiful just to have seen him and know there’s a world in which he’s good and he’s OK.”
Now, the question remains, will we see the third season that author and series creator Blake Crouch has planned? And will we get the Dessens back together in the end? “There’s a feeling in my mind, that it’s sort of The Empire Strikes Back,” says Edgerton. “There’s darkness in the final notes of this season. The family are separated, and of course, if we’re invested in them like they are in each other, then we’ve got to find a way to bring them back together.”
But at what cost?
Dark Matter, Seasons 1-2, Streaming Now, Apple TV+