NOC Recaps ‘Dark Matter’ S2, E10: Setting Sun

After last week’s penultimate episode, we’ve reached the end of the road. Episode ten, “No Quiet Life,” is the Season 2 finale, and fittingly, it closes us out with the closing track on Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter album — “Setting Sun.”

And what a journey it’s been! When I set out to pair each episode of the season with each track from the Pearl Jam album, I honestly didn’t think it would work. I figured there would be a reach here or there, but for the most part, this whole season thematically dovetailed with the album so much that I wonder if it was actually intentional¹. For instance, the bridge to “Setting Sun” feels like the throughline of the whole Daniela-Jason story arc this season.

If you could see what I see now
You’d find a way to stay somehow

That said, this action-packed second season finale of Dark Matter almost feels like a juxtaposition against the more reflective and somber ballad that closes the album. Both, though, offer moments of hope amongst the darkness. The song, as emotionally rich as it is, closes with a plea from Eddie to “not fade²,” which is fitting with how the episode ends, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

We could become one last setting sun
Or be the sun at the break of dawn
Let us not fade

For anyone just joining us: after a season of racing between infinite versions of Chicago, Blair, Jason, Amanda, and Ryan have spent this final stretch trying to shut down the Box and the Pyramid for good, while Daniela chases one last chance to make things right with her family.

The episode picks up where the last one left off. Daniela and the Jason variant have just sent Agent MacNamara to his apocalyptic demise and are in the Corridor. Jason helps Daniela recall a lovely memory of Charlie and Max when they were little. This happy memory is what allows them to open the door to the world Charlie escaped to. Jason kisses Daniela on the hand but doesn’t join her. He doesn’t want to confuse his son, but more importantly, he doesn’t want to confuse himself³.

Daniela makes her way to the Dessen house and finds it unoccupied. Luckily, because this is a version of the family that is the closest to her own — save for Max being alive — she’s able to find the spare key and let herself in. She doesn’t get too far before she’s confronted… by herself.

When we come back from credits, we find Amanda and Ryan at the doorstep of the Velocity Labs building. Their plan is to inform Leighton about the Black Iris Plague infecting their adopted world and bring back a cure. Leighton, though, is still making his way through all of the worlds he inadvertently destroyed, so they meet with Oluko instead.

After explaining their situation, Oluko offers them the vaccine to bring back to their world. Later, back in the abandoned school with the Box, Amanda and Blair share that they both get the ick from Oluko, despite his good intentions. Armed with the cure, and a hacking device to end the Box for good, our heroic quarter prep for their final mission:

Blair and Jason will go to Earth 2 and hack the original Box’s programming to disentangle all of the Boxes in the multiverse. Amanda and Ryan will go back to the plague-infested utopia with the cure, and they will all meet back at the Village Tap in one hour. Now, I get the need for haste — they want to accomplish all of this before Leighton returns with the parts he needs to bring the Pyramid online, but 60 minutes seems like a comically short amount of time to do all of this. Still, they sync their watches like the Avengers before the Time Heist, and off we go.

But not so fast!

Blair and Amanda (and me, for what it’s worth, since I’ve been saying the heel turn is imminent all season) were right to suspect Oluko, as he’s had his assistant Sandra tailing our heroes since they arrived — though that’s all been off screen. Sandra reports that the four main characters are up to something, and Oluko gives her orders to not let them get in the Box.

After Ryan and Amanda venture off with the cure, Sandra confronts Blair and Jason before they’re able to go in the Box themselves. Brandishing a gun, she says Oluko wants to meet with them. Our heroes try to make their escape, but Sandra hops in the Box with them and because she’s wearing a Lavender Wings patch, is also transported to the Corridor when the door slams.

After some fisticuffs, Jason opens the door to another doomsday version of Chicago, one where it seems to be in the midst of a civil war. It’s hard to distinguish the bullets from the strike teams from the ones Sandra is firing at them. It’s all rather chaotic, and probably the biggest action set piece since the Dark Knight chase in episode four.

The whole sequence is shot in a single take, Children of Men style, and it’s very tense and impressive.

They aren’t able to shake Sandra, though, as she follows them back in the Box. After some more hand-to-hand fighting, they open another door to a world with no gravity that seems to be flying off into space — all of these emotions are not allowing them to find peaceful worlds, after all. Blair and Jason finally end up victorious when they’re able to shove Sandra out essentially into the vacuum of space.

Back in the main world of this season — I think it’s officially known as Earth-X among fans — OG Leighton has returned, disillusioned from his most recent travels. It’s not just that his solutions to problems only caused more problems for those universes, it’s also that other versions of him turned out to be terrible people too. Remember the original plague-world? Turns out that the Leighton of that world only used the vaccine on the one percent, and left the others to suffer and die⁴.

Jason2 tries to convince Leighton that he isn’t responsible for the death and destruction he witnesses. It’s the Box. They finally decide to end the beautiful and terrible thing they built, once and for all.

Not only do they intend to shut down the Box, they decide the Pyramid shouldn’t go online either. Fortunately, Leighton installed a killswitch already. Somewhere deep inside, he’s always known good intentions alone wouldn’t be enough to keep a technology this powerful in check.

Instead of being scientists, when this is all over, the two old friends plan to follow their old college dream to open a bar and lead a different kind of life. Leighton has to check with Oluko first. And we all know how that will go.

They say in the end everything will be okay
If it’s not okay, well then, it ain’t the end

Back in their respective Corridors, Blair/Jason and Amanda/Ryan are having difficulties locating the worlds they want to go to. Seems that the stress of the ticking clock — not to mention Blair and Jason’s side adventures with Sandra — are not allowing them the headspace to focus.

Eventually, both teams are able to zero in on their targets and accomplish their respective missions, though not without some difficulty. First, Ryan and Amanda successfully find the utopia world, but the Box entrance is swarmed with military guards who hold them at gunpoint the second they emerge. In the end, that world’s Leighton⁵ is able to distract the soldiers to give Ryan and Amanda time to escape.

Blair and Jason, meanwhile, damaged the hacking device — you know due to all the punching and kicking — and have to fix it before they’re caught by the Velocity Labs staff.

All of this is happening while Leighton and Oluko have it out in front of the Pyramid. Oluko does not, in fact, agree with the idea of shutting down the multiverse. Before OG Leighton walked into his yoga studio, he didn’t have a purpose. Despite Leighton explaining his rationale — the atrocities he witnessed on his travel — Oluko is unmoved.

Hand in hand, yeah, we took it on
You answered my prayers, now from my knees, I can’t get up
Lost patience with time, yeah, hurry up your patience tonight

As their argument escalates, Oluko is unable to control his anger. Of all the Leightons in the multiverse, his life was the least privileged. OG Leighton tells him he bears responsibility for his own life, but Olu accuses him of lying about being a loner. He’s had people like Jason and Blair and his grandfather to rely on, but Olu had no one. The anger bubbles up so much in him that he fatally strikes Leighton with a tool. Horrified by what he’s done, Olu nonetheless puts Leighton out of his misery and strangles what life is left out of him.

When Jason2 can’t find Leighton, he confronts Olu as he preps the Pyramid for travel.

Olu lies about Leighton agreeing to continue the project. Jason doesn’t buy it because a.) they just talked about it, and b.) Olu is sweating like a person who just murdered his alternate self. Before he can stop him, Olu runs into the Pyramid while Jason tries to shut it down from the outside. By the time he executes the shut down, though, Olu has vanished into the multiverse.

Jason ultimately finds his friend’s body, and gives him a Jedi’s farewell⁶ on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Meanwhile, Blair and Jason1 are able to install their poison pill into the original Box and set a timer to allow themselves to get back to the Tap and meet up with Ryan and Amanda. After some false starts, Jason clears his head and remembers the mantra Charlie used to find World X: “a peaceful world.”

They open the door and find the familiar abandoned school setting. Now all they have to do is wait for the timer to run down and hope Amanda and Ryan also made it back safely.

While all of this is going down, Daniela is having a conversation with her doppelganger about everything that has gone wrong in her marriage since the events of season one. Like her variant father before, this alternate Daniela is very understanding about the whole multiverse thing and actually gives the original Daniela the advice she needs to hear.

More than that, she’s able to locate Charlie who was out buying records⁷ with Max. And in one of the most heartbreaking, yet emotionally satisfying scenes this whole season, Daniela is finally able to come face to face with her long lost son.

I dreamt to you I would belong
Held the dream you would stay with me ’til kingdom come
Turns out it was more like hit-and-run
Am I the only one hanging on?

Now that Daniela has made peace with her choices — after some ahem self reflection, she and Charlie are ready to go back to their adopted world and be a family with Jason again. The only problem? Blair and Jason’s hack has worked and the Box is inoperable.

The good news? Ryan and Amanda successfully made it back and were waiting for Blair and Jason at the bar. The bad? Jason finally got the note Daniela left for him⁸ — and realizes he has just stranded his son and wife in the vast unknown of the multiverse.

If there’s a season three, it will be all about the Dessens finding their way back to one another. If there isn’t a renewal, while it’s a hell of a depressing ending, it’s also a fitting sunset on Jason’s hubris. Like, would it have hurt to check in on his family before shutting down the Box, you know just in case? Also, a running theme all season is that the only Jasons to make peace with their choices are the ones who had to confront life without their families. Will this be Jason1’s fate as well?

In the meantime, Daniela and Charlie open the door to an unknown world without Jason. What lies in store for them? Here’s hoping Dark Matter comes back to answer these questions. I just wonder which Pearl Jam album will be a proper soundtrack for the next season?

1. Especially considering that they referenced the corresponding song in episode three and then proceeded to open episode six with an actual Pearl Jam song. ↩︎
2. Which itself seems to be a call back to the “hearts and thoughts they fade” refrain from one of Pearl Jam’s most popular songs, “Elderly Woman…” ↩︎
3. Why does it seem that all of the Jason variants who didn’t reconnect with their family are the ones who have got it all figured out? ↩︎
4. Profit over people, eh? I guess we live in one of the terrible worlds too. ↩︎
5. a.k.a., the best Leighton. ↩︎
6. Love that they’re leaning into Joel Edgerton’s Star Wars legacy this season, btw. ↩︎
7. Ironically, Charlie was out buying Nirvana records (to remind him of home) instead of the other pioneering band of the Seattle sound. Ya know, the one we’ve been talking about all season! ↩︎
8. Let that be a lesson: this is what happens when you don’t clean the kitchen table, I guess. ↩︎