First, clarification: This is not Syfy’s Dark Matter. This is Apple TV’s Dark Matter, which is not about a spaceship’s amnesiac crew, but about a guy who kidnaps himself from another reality. If you did not watch the other Dark Matter, this won’t be confusing at all. The rest of us will just suffer, mildly.
The new Dark Matter is based on the novel by Blake Crouch. It stars Joel Edgerton as Jason Dessen, who has a nice life with his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and son (Oakes Fegley). He does mysterious science work and seems happy enough, until one night he is abducted and wakes up in a world that’s very, very different.
The summary spells it all out:
Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, Dark Matter is a story about the road not taken. The series will follow Jason Dessen (played by Joel Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived. In this labyrinth of realities, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from the most terrifying, unbeatable foe imaginable: himself.
The series also stars Westworld’s Jimmi Simpson and A Murder at the End of the World’s Alice Braga. Crouch himself is the series’ writer and showrunner—his third time working on an adaptation of his own work (he co-created Good Behavior with Chad Hodge, and was a writer for Hodge’s adaptation of Wayward Pines).
Get into the alternate-reality box on May 8th on Apple TV+.
