Apple TV’s Dark Matter is based on the New York Times bestseller by Blake Crouch, who also created the series and serves as showrunner. In season one, Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) was abducted from his home and left in an alternate universe where he never married his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly). As he fought to make his way back home, he discovered that another version of himself not only created the Box, which allows people to travel between realities, but he was also the person who kidnapped him to steal his life. Eventually, Jason makes his way back to his own reality where he and his wife and son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley), leave their world to find a place they can start over.

Season two, which is a completely new story, picks up with the Dessens trying to settle into a quiet life that is disturbed by another version of Jason, and they are forced to run again. But as Jason’s obsession with the Box grows, it threatens to tear his family apart.

Sci-Fi Vision recently spoke with Crouch about Dark Matter season two, expanding beyond the original book, and writing a sequel in a different medium. Crouch discussed how the new season explores regret, alternate worlds, the aftermath for Jason’s many iterations, and the challenge of tracking multiple versions of characters and worlds. He also talked about diverging from the main story for episodes five and eight, World X, the ambitious episode ten sequence, and writing more for characters like Amanda (Alice Braga), Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), Blair (Amanda Brugel), Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi), Charlie, and Daniela.

New episodes of Dark Matter premiere Fridays on Apple TV.

Listen to the full interview and read the transcript below.



SCIFI VISION:   Well, hi, thanks so much for talking to me. I appreciate it. I really loved season two. I mean, I love season one too, but I love season two.

BLAKE CROUCH:   …Thank you, Jamie. That's so nice of you.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, I just finished watching it last night. I really liked it. Oh, wow.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Oh, wow. Did it feel quite different? Just out of curiosity, did it feel very different of a piece? I'm curious what your impression was.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, it did in a way, because I feel like a lot of it was more about, at least to me, felt more emotional. It's less sci-fi, more character [driven], if that makes sense.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Yeah, yeah, totally.

SCIFI VISION:   So how do you think book fans will take the changes? Since obviously this is a completely new story, and you're going beyond what you had, what do you expect, I guess, to hear, and are you worried about that? How do you feel about that?

BLAKE CROUCH:   I have no idea what book fans will think of it. I think my book fans would like another book, which I am working on finishing right now. So, that is coming. I hope they enjoy it as a sequel to Dark Matter, because I've had a lot of people ask if I would ever write a sequel to it, and I've always said no. I love that it's just a standalone, but we actually ended up writing a sequel in just a different medium.

SCIFI VISION:   Was this idea of where to go, did you have this in the back of your mind back when you wrote the first book? Or did this really come about after you made the series last season?

BLAKE CROUCH:   I would say no. I never thought of any story ideas after the last page of Dark Matter until we started filming the show. And as we made season one and drew towards the end of that experience, we had to leave all of our characters at certain moments, certain places. And you can't help but think about what might be next for them. So, we wanted to leave them in a place where if all we did was season one, awesome. But to set it up in case we wanted the story to continue, at least we had some good jumping off points and hopefully hadn't painted ourselves into any corners plot-wise.

SCIFI VISION:   Talk about departing from the normal storytelling with episode five, and I think the other one was eight, to telling some of the other characters. Because that I didn't expect, and I really especially loved episode eight, too.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Oh, thank you. It was one of the things that really made me want to do season two, if I'm being honest. Pretty early on, we came up with the notion of episode five and episode eight. And I don't know, it was an opportunity to kind of make two little movies within the larger narrative structure of season two. And it seemed like a challenge, but also to have this great chance to not have to do justice to every plot point that's come before, but to use these standalone episodes to answer some questions we get from fans on a very regular basis. Like, what happened to all the good Jason 1 iterations who were left behind at the end of season one? That's a real - like, season one is a very dark ending. Like, yes, our hero Jason gets the family, but theoretically hundreds, maybe more copies of him, not of the bad, you know, of Jason 2, but of Jason 1, don't ever get to be with their family again. And what happens to them? I think answering the hard questions that came from season one was just a really exciting proposition for us.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah. I hope we see Laurel (Margo Martindale) again, too. I really liked her.

BLAKE CROUCH:   …Isn't she wonderful?

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, yeah, she's great.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Margo is incredible.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, she was. So, speaking of, you know, like you said, Jason 1 did get his family, but obviously a lot of this season is about kind of living with the choices you make. Can he ever be happy? Because it just seems like no matter what, when he gets what he wants, he's never happy. So, how does he kind of, I guess, accept things?

BLAKE CROUCH:   Well, I think you're probably starting, you're probably touching on, you know, Jason 1's large arc through the series. You know, Dark Matter is a series about regret. And I think if anything, it's his fatal flaw. And his task as a character is, I think, to overcome that one way or another.

SCIFI VISION:   Another big theme is kind of, I feel, a lot about how anybody under the right circumstances is capable of both good and bad. Because without going into spoiler territory, like the stuff with McNamara (Chris Diamantopoulos), a lot of that really surprised me. So, talk about kind of that idea and theme that kind of moves through, you know, exploring that.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Yeah. I mean, even from the very opening scenes of season two, I think we're making a decided choice to show that under certain conditions and circumstances, particularly involved with protecting your family, anyone is capable of anything.

SCIFI VISION:   Would you, if you could, travel to alternate worlds? Or would you not want to know what other lives you could have had based on, you know, different choices? Because I don't know whether I'd want to know or not. So, I'm just curious, would you want to, if you could? If you wouldn't get stuck there, let's say.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Okay, fair enough. That was my question. I need a little more information. The corridor is a dangerous place. Would I travel to other worlds? Yeah. I think if I could do it safely and had the opportunity to see how a different version of myself lived, I think it would be fascinating. It would be like self-tourism, you know?

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I just don't know if it would make you feel regret for anything, though. At least for me, anyway. I just wonder, like, if it would make you kind of wonder if you should have done, you know, things differently. That's all.

BLAKE CROUCH:   I think it would. I think it would. But you would also see, you know, theoretically versions of yourself. You'd see versions of yourself who are happier, who are sadder, who are about the same, but laterally, you know, different lateral moves. I think you'd have to go in prepared emotionally for it.

SCIFI VISION:   That makes sense. Do you have a favorite alternate world for season 2? They’re all so different.

BLAKE CROUCH:   I really like, we call it World X. It's the world that the Dessens land in, in the pop of the second episode. You know, in Season 1, a lot of the worlds that we showed and that particularly Jason and Amanda visit, they're there only for a second. They kind of pop out. It's not right. Go back in. One of our goals in season 2 was to create a world that really did look different and to spend a lot of time there. Like, to actually do the world building of a whole Chicago. Not just to, like, have it be a five or fifteen minute part of an episode, but to spend extensive time there and to really explore what makes it different. I really loved getting to do that with our World X.

SCIFI VISION:   How do you think you would deal in that world, not having the technology that we're so used to today? I mean, would you find it more relaxing or would it - because I think it would probably drive crazy, but I'm just curious.

BLAKE CROUCH:   I'd love it. I would love it. I'm a solid Gen X-er, and I still remember growing up in the 80s and 90s and not in this time of, like, insane over-connectivity with everyone in the whole world. I think there's something really cool about it. I think you live more in the moment in those scenarios than you do now, where we're glued to our screens and sort of beholden to that, to the information age. Yeah, I think I'd do all right in it.

SCIFI VISION:   All right, fair enough. Now, without spoiling it, talk about the fight sequence, I guess I'd call it a fight sequence, in [episode] 10. I mean, there's a lot going on in that long, it seems like a continuous sequence. I know it probably wasn't filmed continuously, but it seems like it. I don't know. To me, that felt like a little mini-movie with the special effects and the hanging out of the box and all that kind of stuff, and the firefight. Talk about that and sort of what it was like to be able to add something like that in.

BLAKE CROUCH:   …Yeah, the idea of that sequence was something that began when we first started contemplating season 2. We wanted to do something like wild, with the box, the corridor. And it kind of became one of those things where we would almost write, like the first time we wrote those scenes, it was almost like a joke. It's because they were so crazy, and it was much bigger than anything we'd done before. But all of our department heads, visual effects, special effects, production, design, locations, they got really excited about it. And they were like, “Well, let's do this.” So, I guess we were like, “Well, I guess we're doing this.” And that sequence became more and more elaborate. And finally, when we saw what the end product was, we kind of couldn't believe that we had pulled that off. It was an extraordinary amount of work that reflects hundreds of people's vision and craftsmanship.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, it was quite a scene. I very much enjoyed it. I know obviously this is your story, so it's probably easier for you than other people may be working on the show, but do you ever have a hard time keeping the story line or the time? I don't know. They're not exactly timelines. World's straight in your head. Yeah. Because I know sometimes I'm like, “Wait a second...”

BLAKE CROUCH:   Yeah. Not anymore. Not anymore. It took a minute for us as a production to sort of wrap our heads around how do we talk about this? How do we talk about multiple versions of Jason? And not just multiple versions, but like subsets of the same version. How do we do that? How do we, like just in a script, how do you reflect how many worlds you have? We had a new hire this season, a creative consultant named Timoney Korbar. And she became sort of our Dark Matter Bible, like the source of all information in terms of like, oh, you have a question. It's not just about like Jason 31. It's not just like, oh, which one is he? It's which one is he? What was his history that led him to this point? What are his costumes? What props does he touch? It gets into the unbelievable granularity. Most of it was just figuring out how to reflect these things in a script. And like we came up with this process.

So, like Jason, the first Jason that we see in episode one of season two is Jason 13. He's the 13th Jason, because that is literally the 13th Jason we meet in chronological order in the process of telling the story. Same thing with worlds, except for things like World X where we give a separate name too. All those worlds are numbered in order of us meeting them. You would think that Jason 2 would be from World 2 and so on. But that's really not how it works. But at this point, all the department heads, 95% of them who have been with us since the very beginning, we have a good shorthand.

SCIFI VISION:   We get to see a lot of the other people besides just the Dessen family. So talk a bit about Amanda and Ryan and Blair and…Leighton. Yeah, talk about kind of integrating their stories. Because I really like the way they all twist around each other.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Oh, thank you. I would say maybe the hardest thing about season 2 is figuring out a way to tell these stories which all start in separate worlds. Because all of our characters are spread across the multiverse. How do you tell that story and start to bring it together? In season 1, we hired all our actors and season 1 was basically following the book. And the book is mostly Jason and Daniela and Amanda. But over the course of filming season 1, we discovered, I mean we knew when we hired him, but we didn't know how great Dayo Okeniyi would be for Leighton. We didn't know how amazing Amanda Brugal would be as Blair. And when you get actors who just go so far above and beyond, you want to write for them. And you want to write towards their strengths. And most of season 2 was just us writing scenes that we wanted to see. Like we wanted to see Jimmi Simpson act against Jimmi Simpson. That was literally one of the first things we wrote on a whiteboard for season 2. We knew we had to get two Ryans in a room together. We knew that, well I don't want to give some other spoilers that people don't know about yet, but it was very important for us to have a lot of our cast getting to do the different versions and also getting to act against themselves.

SCIFI VISION:   Fair enough…Talk a bit about Charlie and Daniela, because we get to kind of see them go on their own separate journeys too.

BLAKE CROUCH:   In a lot of ways, Charlie and Daniela and what they end up doing a little deeper into the season is the engine of season 2. Daniela in particular lived with a false version of her husband in season 1. I think her seeing what Jason was capable of, because even though Jason 1 are good in quotes, Jason obviously didn't do the heinous stuff that Jason 2 did, I think you would wonder if he was capable of that deep down. And that brings up and stirs up some really old trauma for Daniela, and she kind of needs to go off and sort that out for herself.

SCIFI VISION:   Right. Well, I know we are definitely over ten minutes at this point, but thank you so much. I appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. I can't wait. I know we're going to be talking about it on our live stream. So, I'm excited for that too. Yeah, I really love the show. It's great. I was confused a lot. Like I said, I did have to kind of pause it and be like, “Wait a second…”

BLAKE CROUCH:   It's not one of those shows where you can be checking up on your Instagram comments. I don't think it's a crazy thing. We just ask that people pay attention to it.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, it's not passive watching. I like that though. Some shows they spoon feed you everything. So I really like that. But yeah, thank you for your time. It was great talking to you. And have a good rest of your day.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Nice talking to you as well.

SCIFI VISION:   Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

BLAKE CROUCH:   Appreciate it. Take care now. Bye.