Streaming on: Apple TV+
Episodes viewed: 9 of 9
You know the old adage: you wait eons for an Apple sci-fi show about quantum superposition, and then two come along at once. Just a month after we unravelled the existential puzzles of Constellation, we now have another reality-bending rabbit hole to disappear into in this series by Blake Crouch, based from his 2016 novel. But if Constellation takes a methodical, even contemplative approach to merging parallel universes, confuzzling audiences right up until its slow-burn reveal, Dark Matter is a more up-front affair, wearing its fluctuating quantum state loudly on its five-dimensional sleeve.
Edgerton’s Jason Dessen lives a humble but happy existence with wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and kid Charlie (Oakes Fegley). Working as a college physics teacher, he’s professionally unfulfilled (but seemingly still able to afford a magnificent brownstone in downtown Chicago) and massively eclipsed by old classmate Ryan (Jimmi Simpson). After a night out though, Jason is ambushed by a masked stranger, who robs him, drugs him and gruffly asks him a cryptic yet leading question: does he ever ponder about the route not taken? When Jason groggily comes to, he realizes he’s no longer a professor striving to tame Schrödinger’s cat for vacant-eyed students, but a world-renowned physicist, with all the money and position he previously craved. His wife and son, meanwhile, are nowhere to be seen.
A reflection on the corrosiveness of regret as much as it is a convoluted sci-fi thriller.
What unfolds subsequently is better left unspoiled, but despite its changing probability spaces and adjacent worlds, Dark Matter rapidly reveals itself to be a meditation on the corrosiveness of regret as much as it is a knotty sci-fi thriller. It’s A Wonderful Life, if Clarence had come up in Bedford Falls with a Halloween mask, a semi-automatic, and a PhD in quantum mechanics. But there’s more here than cockle-warming affirmations of finding value in personal connections over financial prosperity, and the Sliding Doors event that caused Jason’s life to fork is the entry point to a darkly smart spin on the many-worlds interpretation.
For Edgerton, it’s a chance to take on numerous versions of the same character, each sculpted by lived experience and distinct, yet remaining near enough to their shared pattern to stay convincing – the story has no time for easy clichés of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But just as reality here twists and evolves, so too does the nature of the greater story, episodes switching from dramatic character study to conspiracy-laced mystery, revenge thriller, and even the occasional echo of an episodic ’90s sci-fi series. Dark Matter walks a purposeful line between high-concept science-fiction, introspective drama, and ruminatory examination of quantum physics, and while this tonal balancing-act usually works, its framework does occasionally crack under the pressure.
Crouch’s frenetically paced novel is punchy enough to be digested in a single extended sitting, while the series re-works the core tale over nine near-hour-long episodes. To its credit, this leaves substantially more room to explore the processes of its fundamental notion — and be creative with the results — while also adding extra dimensions (often literally) to the supporting cast. However, it also results in unevenness, with propulsive sequences sapped of impetus by sedentary interludes where the heroes halt in their life-or-death struggle to sit on the floor and speak about chocolate. While Dark Matter would have lost a lot of its complexity cut down to the two-hour feature it was first floated as, this series adaption would have benefited from a more snugly fitting packaging, with one or two less episodes.
But despite a sense of bloat —and juiced by a strong left-turn in the show’s latter half that almost utterly upends our expectations — Dark Matter is an intriguing, accessible trans-dimensional thriller. And one that won’t leave you with a headache.