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Editor’s Note: The following contains major spoilers for the finale of Dark Matter Season 2.After a shocking twist in its finale, Dark Matter has wrapped up Season 2 with a major cliffhanger. For all of the second season, the Apple TV sci-fi thriller has been dealing with the fallout after Season 1. As the universes expand and more characters get pulled into the orbit of the box, the scope of the show has grown as well. For the Dessens, much of the season was about finally settling somewhere where they could be safe from the other Jasons (Joel Edgerton) and dismantling the box to prevent more people from coming in. However, that’s easier said than done, and Jason spends much of the season trying to undo the damage that Jason 2 first wrought.
Season 2 culminates in a heart-pounding finale that not only kills off Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi), but traps Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and Charlie (Oakes Fegley) in the box just as Jason and the gang are finally able to shut it down. With threats still out there and a story left on a cliffhanger, showrunner Blake Crouch breaks down that roller coaster of a season with Collider. Crouch reveals that the twist ending has always been in the books since the beginning of planning for the season; he gets into the heartfelt Episode 5 “Love and Be Loved,” as well as the bottle episode of Episode 8 “The Basic Oneness of Everything”. After explaining his biggest issue with sci-fi stories and how he avoids them with Dark Matter, Crouch also gives us a tease of what to expect should the show come back for Season 3, and it has us on the edge of our seats.
COLLIDER: I can’t wait to talk to you about Season 2’s finale. But first of all, any news on Season 3? After a finale like that, I need a Season 3.
BLAKE CROUCH: No, we don’t have news on a Season 3 yet, but I don’t think that’s super shocking. We ran the whole first season before we heard news. But we have a very cool notion for a third season, which would wrap up the show, if we’re so fortunate.
Blake Crouch Reveals Leighton’s Death Was Always in the Works
“… those were our north stars for the second season.”
Okay, for the finale, I have a lot of things to break down, but one of them that was not the most shocking — you know what the most shocking one was — was seeing Olu kill Leighton. It was such a devastating moment because Leighton was finally starting to see the consequences of his ambition, and he was turning over a new leaf, and to see all of that lost was devastating. How early on was that decision made to give Leighton such a like a tragic ending?
CROUCH: From the beginning. In a weird way, a lot of the episodes took a long time to really come into focus, but we always had a very strong sense of what the finale was going to be. We knew that Leighton was going to get killed by Olu — we also call him Guru Leighton. We knew that Leighton was going to get killed; we knew that Charlie and Daniela would be stranded, and those were our north stars for the second season.
Can you tease anything about what happens after Olu goes into that pyramid? We haven’t seen anybody use the box or the pyramid in that way. Can you explain what’s going on there?
CROUCH: Well, what’s intended is the idea that this is a guy who has kind of mastered meditation, control of thoughts, and for that moment, he transcended the need for the drug that makes the corridor visible. He actually put himself within the corridor in a super-positional state, which has never happened in the show before.
Should we be worried about him?
CROUCH: Yes, very worried about him.
Crouch Explains What Happens To Charlie and Daniela in the Season 2 Finale
“…it’s a nice metaphor for what he’s done the whole season, which is to put his work above the family.”
Moving on to the big twist of Season 2, where we see Charlie and Daniela stuck in the box. Can you talk about where Jason’s mind is after finding that information out? He’s been pursuing this goal of shutting everything down, and now that he’s finally done it, he’s cut himself off once again from his family.
CROUCH: He misses seeing Daniela’s note telling him that she went into the box after Charlie. In fact, he puts a piece of his research and his work on top, like he throws it down on top of her note. I honestly just realized this recently when someone mentioned it on a Reddit thing that it’s a nice metaphor for what he’s done the whole season, which is to put his work above the family.
Yes, he is trying to disentangle the box and then shut it down to protect his family. But he’s also become so obsessed with it. At this point, I think, he’s being led more by obsession, or as much by obsession as the love of his family. And, I think at the end, I think he’s starting to come to terms with, and Amanda embraces him, [the fact that] my family is fucking stranded in another world. I stranded them and I didn’t only strand them. It is my obsession that led to this.
Crouch Explains MacNamara and Introducing a New Antagonist for Season 2
“We wanted to place someone in the shoes of an audience member who knows nothing about Dark Matter.”
MacNamara is an interesting character that you guys introduced in Season 2. In Season 1, most of the antagonists, if not all of them, are scientists of some sort, but he’s an investigator or even a suit in some of the other universes. What was your decision to approach it in that way? For him to be the one to walk in on this and find this discovery of alternate universes?
CROUCH: We really wanted an outsider to come into the world of Dark Matter and not someone who knew what the box was. It was really intriguing to us, and he was one of the first characters. In fact, the very first scene written for the entirety of Season 2 was when he’s bouncing the ball. That’s the first thing that was written for Season 2. We wanted to place someone in the shoes of an audience member who knows nothing about Dark Matter. We started asking ourselves, what would you think the box meant if you just found it without any context at all?
What would you think the box meant? What would you think if 18 Jasons were found killed all over Chicago? What would that actually be like? I think a lot of people assumed we would gloss over that and just head off into these other worlds. But we kind of wanted to live in that for a minute and ask, what would smart people make of this? It was so fun to write.
Yeah, a single dead body is one thing, but 18 of the same dead body turn up is a whole other thing.
CROUCH: [Laughs] Exactly. Exactly.
Episode 5 Was the Episode That Inspired ‘Dark Matter’ Season 2
“The marriage is idealized, the relationship is idealized, the family is perfect, all these things.”
I loved seeing in Episode 5 all these different versions of Jason, especially them living together and healing together after not getting to be with Daniela and Charlie. Can you talk about why you guys chose to investigate this different side of these Jasons’ stories? I really liked the ending where we see that Jason moving on from Daniela, even after meeting her in a world where he could technically pursue a romance with her.
CROUCH: I think a lot of folks who read the book and watched the show — particularly just read the book — there’s an idealized element going on where Jason really idealizes the marriage. The marriage is idealized, the relationship is idealized, the family is perfect, all these things. I wanted to really deconstruct that a little bit. We were starting to talk about Season 2, and I was really questioning, like, did we really need to do a Season 2? We had left it at a great place.
I was looking for a reason to be excited about it, and we started talking about, like, well, what do you think happened to all those Jasons who were left behind? Because it’s kind of a moral wound on Season 1. Like, yes, one Jason gets to be with Daniela. It’s really a tragedy because he spun off so many versions of himself who are living in misery, and understandably, the show in the final moments of Season 1 can’t talk about that, but it felt like an omission.
And I got really excited at the prospect of writing an episode like that, and one that was maybe different in tone, different in approach, just doing something really different. It lit some fire in me to do Season 2; I mean, I kind of did Season 2 to be able to make that episode. It was such a special thing to me, and it became such a special thing to the crew.
Episode 8’s Bottle Episode Was Born Out of Necessity for ‘Dark Matter’
“… we needed more money and more days to complete [Episodes 10 and 8].”
The other episode that I really loved is Episode 8, where we get to meet Laurel, and we get to see her playing host to all of these different travelers and offering them insight and comfort. Can you talk about your decision to include a character like that? She’s like MacNamara, where they’re being thrown into this world without any prior knowledge, but she’s the other side of the coin. Also, can you promise that nothing bad will ever happen to her? Because if she dies or she’s evil in one of those worlds, I can’t handle that. She has to be good in all of the universes.
CROUCH: [Laughs] Yeah, in the early brainstorming sessions, one of the ideas that bubbled up was of a way station, and the box always seems to be in a very abandoned, quiet place out of sight, tucked away in rundown areas. And we just start talking about, like, what do you do if a box exploded in your house? It’s not going to go anywhere, and then people started coming through it. We just got so much juice out of it, but we weren’t really going to do that episode — it was just something we were talking about. And then as we were planning for the end of the season, Episode 10 and 8 were the biggest episodes of Dark Matter we’ve ever done, and we needed more money and more days to complete those.
So we start talking about doing a bottle episode, which is something shows often do to try to save a lot of money for your big episodes, and we’re like, oh shit, we should do one where it’s all within this woman’s house, and we’ll never leave the house, and it’ll be another standalone, but we’ll also tie the end of it back to Episode 8. It just was one of those things; it just all locked in. And one of the weirdest things is that when we were first brainstorming the character of Laurel, we had written Margo [Martindale]’s name down on a whiteboard just as a template, not serious, just as a template for somebody like that. And the universe smiled on this episode because it never happens that the first person you think of is the one who actually ends up playing the character.
And she’s so warm too! It’s so nice. Especially when she sees Charlie, and you can imagine the kind of trauma he’s been through, going through all of those different worlds and coming to this nice old lady’s house, and you can sleep on the couch, and a version of your dad’s there.
CROUCH: It was the last episode that we shot. And Season 2 was a beast to make, and it was just a really hard season, and it was just really lovely. Our last day of filming was with Jason and Amanda and their kiss. That was how we wrapped filming, and it was just a very special day.
Blake Crouch Reveals His Beef With Sci-Fi and How He Avoided It in Season 2
“… we’re really writing a season about the aftermath of something terrible happening and how you move through grief.”
As much as this is a sci-fi show about alternate universes and quantum entanglement, it’s also a show about human connection. And Episodes 5 and 8 are so much more about human connection than it is about the sci-fi element. Can you talk about how important it is for you guys to balance these more wild sci-fi concepts and ground them in these character study moments?
CROUCH: One of my beefs with science fiction is that a lot of it is cold. I think it’s really easy to get so obsessed with the conceit at the center of it or the device or whatever, that the characters become secondary to the plot, and we really did not want that to happen with this show. And as we were writing the second season, we realized we had left all of our characters are in really bad places. Even though Amanda’s in a nice world and Ryan’s in a nice world, they’ve been evicted from their world, and they don’t know how to get back. The Dessens are on the run.
We really left them in such a bad spot. And we realized halfway through, oh, we’re really writing a season about the aftermath of something terrible happening and how you move through grief, and the idea that there is hope on the other side. You have to just keep going through it. Going back to what we’re talking about with Episode 5, it’s very romantic to think that there’s just one person out there for you, but that’s not true, and it felt like the first season was maybe saying that there was. What we really wanted was to present the idea that there’s more than one path to happiness in life, if you’re open.
I think that you really get that in this season, especially when you see Amanda and Jason together, and you see the other Jason finding love. I thought that was a very sweet idea that even if you miss somebody, you can still find love again in your life.
CROUCH: I think it’s been interesting to watch audience reactions because I don’t think Season 2 was what people expected to get. I think because Season 1 was much more of a straight thriller, whereas this one slows down and takes time, and it sometimes meanders down certain roads. That’s why Episode 5 was the way into this season for me, because I didn’t just want to do the same thing again. Like, I’d just go write a book. It has to, for me, as a creator, there has to be something new and exciting to continue that story.
What Character Does Crouch Find the Most Exciting To Explore?
“They all approach it differently, but they are all very collaborative.”
What character for you, as a creator, is the most exciting to write and explore? Because I feel like when I watch a show, Leighton is the most exciting character because of all his different versions. What character gets you excited to write?
CROUCH: It’s neck-and-neck with Agent MacNamara and Leighton 3, which we also call “Party Boy Leighton”; that’s the Leighton who comes through Laurel’s door. Those two actors are just a blast, and part of it is the characters. But also part of it is… and it’s not taking away from anyone else, because all of our actors are so fun and they have their own things. But there’s something about Chris Diamantopoulos; he’s just so up for whatever.
You can just go on to set, and they’re filming something like the Gold Star moment. I was sitting there in video village watching that scene, and I had this thought, oh my God, he should give him a gold star. I just had this line of dialogue, and I rushed in between takes, and I was like, “I want you to give him a gold star in this one.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And it’s fun because you just tell him, and then it surprises the other actor because they don’t know, and then you get a real response and the scene feels alive. He and Dayo [Okeniyi] were just so fun. But so are Jimmy [Simpson], Joel [Edgerton], and Jen [Connelly]. They all approach it differently, but they are all very collaborative.
Well, it’s a fantastic season. I really hope we get more because I need to know what’s happening! Like what do they see behind the door? I need to know!
CROUCH: I tell you what, nothing good.
- Release Date
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May 7, 2024
- Network
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Apple TV+
- Showrunner
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Blake Crouch
- Directors
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Jakob Verbruggen, Alik Sakharov, Roxann Dawson, Logan George
- Writers
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Blake Crouch
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https://collider.com/dark-matter-season-2-finale-blake-crouch-showrunner-twist-meaning/
Therese Lacson
Almontather Rassoul
