Dayo Okeniyi Breaks Down the Many Faces of Leighton in ‘Dark Matter’ Season 2

Season two of Dark Matter multiplies its central antagonist across the multiverse, and nobody knows that better than Dayo Okeniyi, who returns as Leighton Vance — or rather, as an entire Council of Leightons. We caught up with the actor to talk about playing multiple versions of the same character, the corrupting nature of unchecked power, and why the season’s villain might not be a villain at all.

With so many alternate versions of Leighton running loose across the multiverse this season, Okeniyi says even he and his castmates haven’t settled on a name for the group. “We never thought about that until right now,” he laughed, when asked whether there’s an official title for what I’ve taken to calling the Council of Leightons. He compared it, half-jokingly, to a certain Marvel multiverse trope: “We’re trying to be the grounded Big Brother version of that.”

That comparison undersells how deliberately season two complicates Leighton. In season one, he’s easy to read as a straightforward villain — a tech mogul willing to kill to protect the Box. But Okeniyi points to an early scene this season, a flashback to the Box’s launch, where Leighton frames his invention in almost utopian terms: infinite knowledge behind these walls that could make the world a better place. It’s a pitch that echoes real-world tech founders, and Okeniyi doesn’t let his character off the hook for how that idealism curdles. “That’s the dilemma with every inventor or creator who ever made something bigger than they could have possibly imagined,” he said. “You think you know what you’re wielding when you don’t.” He pointed to social media’s effect on mental health, dating, and community as an example of the same trap — “trying to create something and trying to keep your hands around it, but it’s just bigger than you can fathom.”

For Leighton specifically, Okeniyi argues there’s an added layer of pressure baked into the character: he’s a Black man who inherited a tech empire, Velocity, that his grandfather built from nothing. “There’s an added pressure of, this is your family legacy, this is the legacy of being Black in that space, and you don’t want to be the person who squanders that,” he said. “The moment you have that much pressure and technology that big and that important, you’re bound to make some questionable moral choices.” It’s why, despite everything, Okeniyi resists calling Leighton a villain outright: “I just think he’s forced to do extremely questionable things.”

Season two also digs into where those choices come from. Without spoiling anything past episode three, Okeniyi teased a flashback to what he calls “OG Leighton” — the original, season-one version of the character — being raised by his grandfather, who is dying in that timeline. “We see why he wants to save him,” Okeniyi said, even though “it’s not literally his grandfather — it’s his grandfather in another world.” The scene gave him a chance to work opposite a screen legend, Mykelti Williamson of Forrest Gump fame, and he lit up talking about it, geeking out over sharing scenes with an actor he admires.

That backstory, Okeniyi says, is the point. “I think in season one it’s very easy to paint him as this arch-nemesis, evil corporate guy,” he said. “But in season two we really see the humanity behind him… it gets the audience to judge their own morality, and how judgmental they can be when you’re only given a quick picture of who a character is.” Even as Leighton keeps making questionable calls, Okeniyi wants viewers to sit with him rather than write him off.

Season two of Dark Matter is now streaming on Apple TV, with new episodes rolling out weekly through October 30. Check out our full conversation with Dayo Okeniyi above, and keep an eye out for our episode-by-episode recaps as the season unfolds.