This post will discuss the plots and characters of the show Dark Matter up until the fifth episode of the second season. There will be heavy spoilers and speculation about what’s left in the back half of the season. However, as the author has no inside knowledge apart from the book the first season was based on, all speculation is just that.
We’re now at the mid-season point for Dark Matter, based on the airing schedule and I think I can only name a handful of shows that have taken such a detour from the first season storyline and kept delivering such a quality story that I not only cannot predict where the story is going but that I don’t really mind because I’m along for the ride, where ever they want to take me.
The most outstanding episode to date though is the one that just aired on September 25th, officially the mid-point of season two. Episode four ended with Ryan and Amanda returning to “Gentle Sex” Chicago to decide their next move and were subsequently arrested by men in hazmat suits who knew their names. But episode five doesn’t even bother to try and pick back up from that cliffhanger and give us some resolution.
Instead, we’re taken all the way back to the end of the first season and we follow the Jason who just wanted to say goodbye. One of the ones who didn’t get Daniella and Charlie but also wasn’t going to resort to violence to satisfy his obsession. He just watched his whole reason for being close the door on him and his life, effectively, end. This was also his conclusion as he stood on top of a very high ledge, preparing to throw himself off it when, remembering he still had a vial, he comes up with a plan B.
The Chicago he returns to is very much like the one he left except that his mother is still alive and he died as a teenager. (Trivia note, according to his tombstone, he’s about two weeks older than I am.) Much like Ryan’s sister in “Gentle Sex” Chicago, she welcomes him in and, in a very nice reuse of something we discovered in the last episode, that Jason can sign, we find out his mother was deaf. A very good payoff to a subtle character moment.
In one of the most slick passages of time I’ve ever seen, we see him slide into a constant state of drunkenness until Christmas when he’s confronted by his mother. Through spring and summer, we see him repair the family home, and take up woodworking. Then he encounters another Jason, living on the streets and brings him home. Before we know it, it’s Thanksgiving then Christmas and time just keeps passing until, suddenly, there’s a third Jason as part of the family.
For his mother, it must have been surreal but also the answer to a prayer. She thought she had lost her only child and now she had him back in triplicate. And she did seem thankful.
Before too long, we discover that Jason left his world six years before and, considering that this time passed in the space of about thirty minutes, it was one of the most moving and believable passages of time I’ve ever seen. And I don’t think more than a dozen words were said throughout.
It’s around this time when we finally meet Maria, a familiar face to people who have seen Westworld. She owns a bookshop and immediately connects with Jason over favorite books. It’s not clear how much time passed but, at some point, he reveals to her his backstory and, of course, it’s too much. But she returns when his mother passes and then they’re actually living together, celebrating the day he came into her world.
Daniella who, naturally, has no idea who he is since that world’s Jason died at sixteen
This is when he runs to the store for last minute supplies and bumps into that world’s Daniella who, naturally, has no idea who he is since that world’s Jason died at sixteen. It was this part in the story where I told my wife, I actually applauded his self-control in arriving there and not immediately searching her out. And, for a second, I was sure this would start the cycle over again but he goes home and Maria has read his field journal, with his last world-wish entry wanting to find a place where he could love and be loved.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen sweet melancholy displayed on screen in such an effective and compelling way. It was like poetry for one episode of an already excellent show.
And the season, so far, has been excellent by anyone’s lights! We’ve had multiple Ryans and my favorite line of the show up until now: When drunk Ryan refers to the fictional woman who separated them at birth as “that woman” and sober Ryan responds, “Hey, she has a name: Janet”. I choked on my bourbon.
We’ve had smart Amanda calling Jason2 on his bullshit. Just last episode we had the heartbreaking separation of Jason and Daniella being unable to stay together once the thing that brought them together, Charlie, left the nest. I mean, where else would you see an entire season revolve around a man trying to get home to then burn it down in the middle of the next season and it feels right?
And we still need to know what happened to Amanda and Ryan in Gentle Sex world and what the hell Leighton is up to, because that’s probably not good.
But I almost don’t care. And I don’t care because if you can deliver heart rending moments like Jason and Daniella in No computers world breaking up or Jason and Maria in… Mom’s still alive world… then I’m here for the ride. I’m game to watch the Leighton plot play out even if I find it the least compelling part because everything else is just so good I have faith that I’ll be rewarded as a viewer.
And I still haven’t even touched on Private Investigator/Black Ops guy MacNamara. When even a tertiary character is commanding so much interest, we’re talking about writing that’s truly next level. I can’t say enough good things about this show and I’m excited to come back one more time to wrap it up. Because, boy howdy, I expect the finale is going to be a humdinger.
