Dark Matter | ★★★★
Streaming on Apple TV+ starting May 8th
Apple TV+ has quickly established itself as a premiere destination for smart, mature sci-fi. Whether you’re into the apocalyptic or grounded brain-teasers, the streamer has you covered. It’s that wide selection that also makes it difficult for new series to stand out. After all, ask someone about Apple’s latest show; the one about the multiple paths life can take, and how our reality is shaped by experiences and perception that is as unknowable as the depths of space, and they’d be right to ask: “Which one?”
Starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, Dark Matter is a twisty, often devastating thriller about regret and paths not taken. It blends together visions of The Matrix, The Cube, and the hyper low-budget Primer into a surprising and ultimately rewarding whole. I wouldn’t say it’s hugely original — fans of the genre will spot certain twists coming miles away — but it’s always entertaining and never boring. Even when it doesn’t keep us guessing, the magic trick is so deftly performed that it doesn’t matter.
Edgerton plays Jason, a professor of physics in Boston, who lives a seemingly charmed life with Daniela (Connelly), and their teenage son. One day, coming home from the bar, Jason is kidnapped and drugged. When he wakes up, it’s in a place he’s never seen, surrounded by people he doesn’t recognize. Yet to them, he’s been in their lives for decades. The more questions Jason asks, the further the rabbit hole goes, and soon it’s not just his world that’s turned upside down, but the multiverse of his entire existence.
The setup takes a few episodes to really get going, and a late-in-the-game development forces the audience to reorient themselves in a hurry. But both are necessary evils to tell a story this complex, especially with the delicate touch that Dark Matter often employs. For every big idea, it always has room for touching moments of silence, as characters come to terms with their losses and failures.
In one of the best scenes of the series, one of our leads gets another chance at a goodbye to a parent they had drifted apart with years earlier. In another timeline, they’re not dead, but haven’t been a part of each other’s lives for so long, they may as well be. When the chance comes to make amends, it’s used as a farewell they couldn’t say in person.
It’s in these moments that Dark Matter sets itself apart from any other sci-fi series out there. Edgerton gives a career best performance as Jason (and his variants), subtly adjusting mannerisms to ensure that we always know who we’re watching. It’s a deeply complex and beautiful part that makes the series believable even at its loopiest.
Jennifer Connelly is equally good in a part that in lesser hands could have become deeply unpleasant. Daniela is the object of Jason’s desires, not just in one timeline, but all of them. Yet she’s never left in the dust as purely an ornament. Connelly is perfect in balancing both newfound interest in the other Jason in her life, and the terror in feeling like she’s living with a stranger that wears a familiar face.
Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson round the stellar cast with superb supporting roles. Neither get as much screen time as they deserve, yet they make the most of every minute.
At nine hour-long episodes, Dark Matter is both a bit too long and still left me hankering for a second season. Though the conclusion is as solid as these things can get, the unanswered questions and what-ifs are too tantalizing to left unexplored. Perhaps that’s the idea. We’ll always have paths we won’t take, and it’s up to us to learn to live with them. Otherwise, we’ll be lost in the forest of our making, unable to see just how far we’ve come, because we’re searching for yet another path to take, if only for a little while.