NOC Recaps ‘Dark Matter’ S2, E1: Scared of Fear

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these recaps, so bear with me. But Apple TV’s Dark Matter is back for a second season, and since it was one of my favorite shows when it debuted two years ago, I figure now’s as good a time as any to follow each episode as it releases.

Also like the last time I did TV show recaps, I need a gimmick. When Into the Badlands was airing, I was deep into my Hamilton fandom — plus it was peak hashtag mashups era on Twitter, where the show creators followed us¹ — so each recap made reference to everyone’s favorite ten-dollar-founding-father. With Dark Matter, the obvious mashup is with the Pearl Jam album of the same name. Not only did the release of season one coincide with the release of the band’s most recent album, but each of the album’s ten² tracks dovetails nicely with each episode thematically. This leads me to the second season premiere: “A Quiet Life³.”

The opener to the Pearl Jam record is quite an appropriate companion to this episode because Jason and Daniela (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, respectively) are “Scared of Fear” despite the happy life they were able to build in an alternate universe. Before that, though, we are back on Earth One as we’re introduced to a new character, Chris Diamantopoulos’ Agent MacNamara who’s investigating the mysterious deaths of a lot of Jasons. We don’t learn a lot about him other than he’s not part of any law enforcement agency you’ve heard of. He also thinks the Jasons are clones and not multi-dimensional beings. Or maybe he knows? Who knows?

Meanwhile, the Dessens’ peaceful cabin-in-the-woods existence is upended when Daniela is visited by another dimension-hopping Jason who’s a little too insistent she run away with him. It makes you wonder how many desperate Jasons she has to deal with on a regular basis. When Jason X gets too demanding, Daniela shoots and kills him before Jason1 comes home.

This is where the Pearl Jam song comes in. “Scared of Fear” is about a person who’s losing connection to the ones he loves. And that, at heart, is what this whole series is about. Jason2 essentially destroyed everything in two universes because he regretted missing out on the life he thought he wanted. That singular desire is what drives the actions of all the subsequent Jasons. These lyrics, in particular, are kinda what get this Jason shot:

There’s something I should have known?
Was I acting too proud?
Oh in my weakness
Did I somehow get too loud?

In the song, Pearl Jam frames the fighting as something these two are doing to each other almost on purpose, weighed against memories of a version of themselves that used to work — which is basically the show’s premise in miniature. Every Jason who shows up at Daniela’s door isn’t really attacking a stranger; he’s trying to sabotage the one version of this life that actually survived, precisely because he remembers what it felt like to have it.

Hurting yourself, it’s plain to see
I think you’re hurting yourself ’cause you hurt me
We used to laugh, we used to sing
We used to dance, we used to believe

Since Daniela and Jason’s efforts to bury the body in the yard get ruined by the police, the couple has to get their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) and use The Box to travel to yet another reality, preferably one where no one has heard of the Dessens. The last one they try is a familiar one, and one that Jason1 immediately refuses before taking his family through another door.

That world just happens to be the utopian version of Chicago where we last saw Amanda2 (Alice Braga) meet Ryan1 (Jimmi Simpson) in the Season 1 finale. That tease from last season gets expanded upon as we learn that Ryan has been spending the last several months working on a way to develop lavender wings — the drug that allows humans to achieve superposition and engage in multi-dimensional travel — and reconnecting with his sister who’s been mourning the death of that universe’s Ryan.

Unfortunately, even if he’s able to reproduce the drug, Ryan might not be able to use the Box because it’s been moved by local authorities from its original location, thus severing its quantum connection to other realities. Despite all this, Amanda agrees to help him adjust to this new world, now that she has someone who knows exactly what she’s going through.

In yet another parallel world, we learn Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi) is not just dimension-hopping, but he’s gathering other Leightons to form a brain trust of himself, a council of Leightons, as it were. This world’s Leighton never became a tech mogul and is instead a strip mall yoga instructor with aspirations to be a cult leader. I’m sure that will be not relevant later in the season at all.

All in all, this first episode does a good job of catching viewers up to speed since the show’s been off the air for nearly two years⁴. But once you’re back in and reacquainted with familiar faces, whichever version, the show is set up for many interesting storylines. Given that Blake Crouch never wrote a second book, anything that happens from here on out will be completely original, and that’s the most exciting thing about this new season.

Without a book to guide us, the bridge of “Scared of Fear” is actually a good predictor of what’s to come.

I’ll give, but I can’t give up, I’ll live, not long enough
To stop these voices calling, stop the voices calling
All around my head, as if you never left

Those “voices calling” feel less like a metaphor than a mission statement for the rest of the season. It’s not just going to be more Jasons pounding on doors — there’s a whole council of Leightons forming somewhere out there, after all. By the time the season’s through, expect nearly every character to get crowded by a version of themselves who wants what they have, unless our heroes find a way to stop them.

The first episode of Dark Matter season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV. Subsequent episodes will premiere every Friday through October 30.

1. Trust me, in the before times, social media was actually fun. ↩︎
2. I’m going to leave out the song “Dark Matter” because duh. ↩︎
3. Granted, the episode title is actually referencing the song of the same name by Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld; it’s even played during a pivotal scene in the middle of the episode. ↩︎
4. The problem with most streaming shows, to be honest. ↩︎