Dark Matter: Season 2, Lost In The Box

Dark Matter Season Two treads new ground for both its audience and its author, Blake Crouch. As a second book to the original does not exist, he and writer, Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry had to create an entirely new expansion, made for the series.

I was excited to see where they were going to take it, as I enjoyed the first season, and it had just started ramping up after having been quite slow in the beginning. The possibilities of where it could go were endless.

I was hoping Season Two would stick more with the Sci-Fi elements and the exploration of the worlds within the Box, but it ended up bogged down in a lot of the other versions of the main character’s lives, while throwing in further back stories of the OG main characters.

This made the momentum even slower and left hardly any room for excitement or seeing other worlds. The other worlds became nearly obsolete, in comparison to Season One.

THE CHESS BOARD IS SET

The last season ended with Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), rescuing his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), from the multitude of other Jasons from alternate worlds, pursuing them for Daniela. They manage to escape back into the Box.

Season two starts off in Jason 1’s world, where a mysterious “agent”, of sorts, Mitchell MacNamera (Chris Diamantopoulos), is left examining all of the deaths of the multiple Jason’s who had either killed each other or were killed in their pursuits of Daniela and Charlie.

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Jason and Daniela had found a house to live in, thinking it was safe, until another Jason shows up and Daniela is forced to kill him. When a cop shows up at the house, noticing the dead body, they are forced to run to find another safe haven.

They end up back in the Box, and they choose a form of Chicago with no internet or computers, where that world’s Desson’s live far away in San Francisco. Daniela starts to struggle with her own PTSD regarding her experiences with the shooting and all that the family has been through prior to that.

Jason hires MacNamara 2 in this world, who happens to be a PI, and asks him to create them some fake papers with new alias’s and investigate his own family so he can know everything he needs to know about the Desson’s in this world.

This, however, starts unintended consequences that apparently Jason doesn’t think about.

Meanwhile, a new Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi) - and this becomes unbelievably hard to keep up with throughout - meets up with another Leighton who is a yoga instructor, named Oluko. He believes that this Leighton will help to balance him, helping him clear his mind better, and wants his help with a new project that he is working on.

This Leighton also has good intentions, but we aren’t sure yet what his overall plan and motive is. However, Jason realizes that he needs to destroy the box in order to end its use and stop triggering more replicas from being created.

But as he finds out, that’s not as easy as he thought it would be.

EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

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When Season One ended, Ryan Holder 1, (Jimmi Simpson) found Amanda Lucas 2 (Alice Braga) in the Chicago he was left in by Jason 2.

He updates her about what had happened with him and what he has been working on, with yet another Leighton Vance of that particular world. They have come up with more of the solution for traveling he calls ”Lilac Wings” as opposed to the OG “Lavender Wings” that Ryan 2 called it.

Ryan was supposed to be able to go back home with that, then the Chicago that he currently is in, moves the box. Amanda begins to work with Ryan and this world’s Leighton on bettering the solution that they have quickly to try to get Ryan moving towards his goal.

Within this process, Ryan sees that the box has reappeared at its old location, because someone, who he believes is Jason 2, has spawned a new box in the original location and is filmed stepping out of the box there and then retreating back in.

He informs this Amanda that, though he wants to get home still, he also wants to make it his mission to get revenge on Jason 2 for both him, her and the OG Desson’s. Still feeling guilty about what happened to OG Blair (Amanda Brugel) in Season One, Amanda decides that she wants to join Ryan on his quest in order to make things on her end right.

IN ALL HONESTY …

If you’re confused, it’s ok. I’m not even entirely sure if the summary I’ve written is spot on and I’ve researched and researched it.

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This season is intensely confusing. It throws in way too many “others” that all look much too alike to keep track of. It would’ve been very easy for the makeup/hair department or wardrobe department to distinguish between all of the Jason’s and Leighton’s shown in the series.

The Leighton’s were done better than the Jason’s with more distinguishable costumes and hairstyles, but the Jason’s are all in muted colors like black, army green, khaki and navy. Most of them have the exact same hairstyle in all worlds and actor Edgerton isn’t the most memorable looking person to begin with.

It keeps audiences wondering “which one is this”, “who’s that?”, and why wouldn’t at least some of the different world Jason’s have strikingly different hairstyles, clothing, ways they walked, talked etc. The lack of creativity on that part was a huge failure.

Heck, I thought Leighton 1 was involved with Oluko in the beginning, but that was wrong too. They just added two more Leightons apparently and ran with it. How would the audience have an inkling about that?

It may have been a director’s decision, but for a regular person just watching, it takes so much away from the story trying to keep track of “who’s who” rather than just following something a bit more obvious. Even when I thought I had it, I looked up more information only to find out that I didn’t. Ridiculous.

Maybe that would’ve been more effective in a book where we could READ “Jason 247 says...”, but that also was another thing I found wrong with the show. It was very obvious to me that a book author wrote this script.

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There were so many side stories and endless stops that really didn’t feed anything into the action or direct line of the story, that would have fit much better in a novel. Movies and television are meant to be written faster and more succinctly for a reason. It makes for a faster moving, exciting piece, that creates mostly action and less talking.

It may be that Crouch and crew are setting something up for Season Three, but I’m not at all excited to see where it goes. Worst of all, I don’t care anymore about these characters nor their goals.

Perhaps had there been a ticking clock, or something really necessary that they were all fighting for or against that made a huge difference in their lives and the lives of others I would’ve. I don’t care about seeing characters playing cards by a fire nor Jason 2 sitting around with his mom for years and having a girlfriend.

I realize that it may be integral to his growth and all, but why an entire episode about it? Yawn! They had limitless possibilities within their grasp with the first season and they chose this. The ending was more annoying than a true cliff hanger.

Why not just stick with the main few characters and add any duplicates where necessary? Adding stories about duplicates we don’t even know and their possibilities aren’t relevant to the world we were drawn into to begin with.

They tried to do too many things at once to the demise of the story when they could’ve done way more with just the ones we already knew and cared about. For example, Daniela definitely needs more development other than being a distressed mom who stands by her man. She is still sorely underdeveloped, most likely due to the lack of time trying to fit everything else in.

I found the cinematography, lighting and FX to be the best part of this. I wish we could’ve had more time enjoying more of that in the alter worlds.

This season needed SO much more action and adventure. Overall, it was confusing, cringey at times, boring, and not worth the time and brain power needed to understand and get through it.

And someone, please get the beautiful Jennifer Connelly some help. I know she’s had her struggles younger, but eating disorders tend to return later in life too. There wasn’t a costume that properly fit her because she is so emaciated. I’ve grown up admiring her from when we both were young and I think it’s just tragic what this awful business has done to her and other actresses across the board. Sending healing and love to her.

Dark Matter is streaming on Apple TV