Amanda Brugel Discusses Her Journey Through ‘Dark Matter’ Season 2

I sat down with Amanda Brugel, who plays Blair in Apple TV’s Dark Matter Season 2, to discuss her character’s complicated position in the retro world, the multiverse’s surprising gathering point, and what might be in store for Season 3.

If you’ve been following the NOC’s coverage of Dark Matter, you may know that I’ve been pairing each episode recap with a track from Pearl Jam’s album, also titled Dark Matter — a bit that took on a whole new dimension when the show itself started using actual Pearl Jam songs. Brugel’s reaction: “It’s multiverses. We’re entangled.”

That quantum entanglement is a fitting frame for Blair’s arc this season. When we first encounter Brugel’s character interacting with Jennifer Connely’s Daniela this season, fans clocked quickly that this wasn’t the Retro World Blair — she’s Earth 2 Blair, hiding in plain sight. What made that scene so charged, Brugel explains, is that she didn’t know which version of Daniela she was dealing with either. “I didn’t know if she was good, or if she would out me,” she says. “I knew I was also hiding in that world.” The result is a scene crackling with battling impulses — the desperate need for community warring against the equally desperate need for concealment.

Which raises the bigger question: why does the retro world keep drawing people in? Brugel has a clear-eyed answer. “The people who have made it this far in the Box travels realized that technology wasn’t necessarily their best friend,” she says. The retro world — low-tech, analog, human — becomes a refuge for those who’ve seen enough universes to know that more connectivity doesn’t mean more peace.

But Blair can’t fully let go. Even while laying low, she’s at galas, reconnecting with the scientific community, quietly encouraging Jason toward the life she’s supposedly left behind. Brugel frames this not as contradiction but as inevitability: “We can’t help ourselves. Even though we know something’s bad for us, we can’t help ourselves.” Science isn’t just Blair’s profession — it’s her identity, her community, her home. And to the point the entire series keeps making, you can travel from universe to universe and still remain, at the core, who you are.

As for the Retro World’s original Blair — the one Earth 2 Blair has seemingly replaced — Brugel’s already got a season 3 pitch ready for showrunner Blake Crouch: “I would love to meet a version of someone who’s just kidnapped a person and stuffed them in a closet and then had to reconcile with that.”

Dark Matter Season 2 is streaming now on Apple TV.