NOC Recaps ‘Dark Matter’ S2, E5: Upper Hand

This week’s episode of Dark Matter is a unique one because it’s all about Jason moving on from a life with Daniela, but not in the way you think. After Daniela dropped the emotional bomb of leaving him last episode, this week circles all the way back to last season’s finale when an infinite number of Jasons escorted the Prime Dessens to the Box to start a new life in a new world.

The corresponding track on Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter album is titled “Upper Hand,” but the episode’s title, “Love and Be Loved,” sounds like a variation of the lyrics from the next song on the album, “Waiting for Stevie:”

You can be loved by everyone
And not feel… not feel love

Alas, my bit is going track-by-track, so we’re gonna make “Upper Hand” work (and it will!), but I have to say this is one of the most moving episodes of genre TV I’ve ever seen. Author and showrunner Blake Crouch told his followers on Threads that this episode is the best thing he’s ever written and was the main reason he wanted to do a second season:

He also warned that the episode might be polarizing. And while I’m writing this recap before I’m able to see how the fans are reacting, I can only assume it’s because we spend the entire hour with a completely different Jason (or three) who you could say never quite had the upper hand.

And I hope the people are smiling
Oh, how I always wanted to be like one of them
Oh, I apologize, so sorry ’bout the timing
Oh, but you know, something that I never had was the upper hand

After the Dessens enter the Box, we follow one of the alternate Jasons as he has a crisis of purpose on one of the rooftops of Chicago. Remember, all of the infinite Jasons were spawned from Prime Jason’s desire to get back to his world and his family. Now that they’ve ceded to the original Jason, what happens to the others? Well, this one is about to jump off of said rooftop before he backs down and realizes he has one last ampule to use. Instead of killing himself, he decides to find a universe to start over in.

He enters one that looks like a cross between our world and the retro one where he finds an elderly woman behind the door of his home. He’s shocked to find his mother, played by Deaf actress Linda Bove, but she’s even more shocked to see him because in this world, Jason died when he was a teenager. Through ASL¹, he is able to explain how he’s even there, and she accepts this miracle of her son’s resurrection after three decades.

Though he’s now reunited with his mother, Jason needs time to adjust to life in a new world. This is demonstrated via a time lapse of him drinking his life away at the Village Tap, mirroring the second verse from the song:

Lonely ship on the horizon
Silhouette fading out
Bright lights make for dark shadows
The lines once defined getting blurry now

This Jason was entirely driven by the desire to be with his family — that is, Daniela and Charlie — but that mission is no longer his driving purpose. After one drunken night, he’s confronted by his mother. She’s already watched him die once and can’t bear to see him die again. This is the talking-to Jason needed to get his life together. He also finds some solace by starting Marcel Proust’s magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time². Later, he visits his own gravesite and has an emotional heart-to-heart with his mother about loneliness and love.

On his way home from work one day, Jason stumbles upon a homeless man in an alley who happens to be yet another Jason. We’re never given clarity on which version this is exactly, but he must have entered this world at some point in the past and lost his way. So, like you do anytime you encounter an alternate universe version of yourself, you take him home to mama and get him cleaned up for dinner!

And because Mama Dessen was able to accept the notion that an alternate version of her dead son is alive, she is readily able to accept other versions of that other version. Pretty soon, bearded Jason becomes another part of the family. Imagine what it must be like to be Mama Dessen in this moment. Your only son dies tragically as a teenager, then 30 years later, he somehow returns, and some time after that, another version shows up on your doorstep. A house that was full of loneliness for decades is now full of family.

Some time later, Jason starts to build a thriving business as a chair artisan and even gifts a handcrafted chair to his mother for Christmas. It also goes completely unaddressed³, but our Jasons have apparently found a third, and now Mama Dessen suddenly has triplets! They also plant a tree in the backyard to honor the memories of Max — and now Charlie since both twins do not exist in this universe. Sadly, the happy home is short-lived because Mama Dessen is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

At the kitchen table that night, Mama worries that Jason is lonely, especially if she won’t be around much longer. We also learn in this scene that six years have passed since he arrived here. In a bookstore some time after, Jason has a meet-cute with Maria, played by Westworld alum⁴ Angela Sarafyan.

After a few dates, he shows her his grave and the Box, but she can’t handle the truth that her boyfriend is a visitor from an alternate universe — either that, or she just doesn’t buy the story that he traveled here via a giant metal box covered in graffiti and sitting in a forest. To make matters worse, Mama’s cancer has worsened, so he eases the pain by signing one of Bilbo’s songs from The Fellowship of the Ring by her hospital bedside.

The scene transitions as the eulogy at her funeral, and while the lines are from Lord of the Rings, I couldn’t help but think of the first verse from “Upper Hand.”

The distance to the end
Is closer now than it’s ever been
Road we traveled far
All the lights and sights we saw
No room left on the pages
We filled ’em up and painted some
Though the book, it may never be read
Oh, by anyone, oh, anyone but me

After the funeral, Jason reunites with Maria. She finally accepts him for who he is, and the two eventually move in together. To celebrate, she sends Jason to the market to pick up wine for the occasion. As he ponders which bouquet of flowers to bring home, he hears a familiar voice. It’s this world’s Daniela!

Back at home, Maria finds Jason’s journal, and we see the mindset he was in six years ago when he let Daniela and Charlie go: “Please let me find a world where I can love and be loved.” Maria starts crying. I start crying. We’re all crying.

Similarly, “Upper Hand” reaches its emotional climax at the bridge when Eddie sings:

Carry me home
Just need a few of you
A few of you
Oh, maybe just the two of you

When Jason finally returns, Maria hugs him. All of the pain and grief that Jason has endured is finally allowed to leave his body. That night, he’s able to remove Daniela’s hairband from his wedding finger. Finally able to let her — and his previous life — go. The episode ends on a tight closeup of Jason, finally loved.

This episode is what many in the industry call a “bottle episode” because it’s entirely self-contained and outside the main plot of the season. Often, bottle episodes are polarizing — as Crouch anticipates — precisely because of that. They’re also usually the best episodes from their respective series, think Breaking Bad’s “Fly” or Atlanta’s “Teddy Perkins.”

Well, you can definitively add Dark Matter’s “Love and Be Loved” to the list.

1. This explains what was seemingly a throwaway scene last episode when Jason1, working as a bartender, was able to sign to Deaf customers. ↩︎
2. Thematically, the episode mirrors Proust’s massive novel inasmuch as this Jason’s madeleine moment is seeing a vintage Cindy Crawford poster in his childhood bedroom. ↩︎
3. Seriously, who is this other bearded Jason?! ↩︎
4. Also Superman’s mom! ↩︎