Summary
Dark Matterhas been an emotional roller coaster for scientist Jason Dessen, who was abducted from his world and dropped into an alternate reality by that world’s version of him. As he desperately searches for a way home with the help of Amanda Lucas, the other version of himself has stepped into his life, but it isn’t as easy as he may believe. Things come to a head when Jason finally returns home, but new threats reveal themselves, meaning that the horrors aren’t yet over as he tries to reunite and protect his family.
Blake Crouch is the creator ofDark Matter, based on his own acclaimed novel of the same name. Dark Matter features an incredible cast led by Joel Edgerton, with nearly every cast member playing multiple versions of their character, bringing different emotional core and physical attributes to each performance. WhileDark Matteris science fiction, the heart of the series is family and love as Jason strives to return home against all odds.
Dark Matter Episode 7 Ending Explained: What That Jason Scene Means
Apple TV+’s Dark Matter episode 7 ends with a major cliffhanger which suggests there is a lot more Jason’s multiversal adventures than meets the eye.
Screen Rantinterviewed creator Blake Crouch and producer Jacque Ben-Zekry while visiting The Official Dark Matter Immersive Experience, presented by Sony Pictures Television. Crouch and Ben-Zekry were able to experience the box for themselves at Sony’sDark Matteractivation, where one could step inside and discover new worlds just like in the show.
The producers each shared how it felt to step into the box themselves and experience a piece of the world they created, then discussed the challenges of adaptation and the casting process. They also explainedhowDark Matterofferedthe opportunity to expand upon what was in the novel and how the series leans more into the speculative fiction genre than science fiction.
Blake Crouch & Jacque Ben-Zekry Reveal Their Favorite Worlds In Dark Matter
Crouch is not stranger to his books being adapted with theWayward Pinestelevision series based on his book trilogy. However, withDark Matter, he and Ben-Zekry were directly involved in every part of the production and decision-making process. They explained why it was important to lean into the family drama and thriller aspects of the series without the sci-fi completely overtaking the narrative and the challenges of getting the visuals of each new world right.
Blake Crouch: For sure. Dialing in the visual look of the worlds was a big, big challenge because there’s a way of rendering some of these worlds where it looks like a Game of Thrones world - which, no disrespect, that’s a fantasy. This is not fantasy. We always want Dark Matter to be super grounded and to feel like a world you could step into. Something terrible, could have happened to change it, but how do you make each world feel grounded and spectacular? So I think that was my point of view. One of the harder challenges.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: I’d say talking about science in a way that doesn’t grind to a halt character moments and grind to a halt your momentum because it is a thriller, it is a drama. It needs to [keep the pace moving], it’s not a science class. I personally am that kind of dork who’s like, Let’s talk even more about entanglement and how that creates realities and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, No, that’s not actually interesting in a show. So that was probably, I think the biggest challenge.
I think the most exciting thing. Blake and I kind of divide and conquer. I spent a lot more time in the VFX department and visuals. He spent a lot more time with the actors and that kind of stuff. So he’s saying it’s the greatest, biggest challenge. I thought it was the most fun and to me the easiest part, it was like, Oh, just more snow. Just more snow. I loved that kind of work, so that was really fun for me.
Ben-Zekry revealed that the utopia that Amanda decides to stay in is her favorite of the worlds. However, she and Crouch each had favorites that set the tone for the series, with Jason and Amanda stumbling into terrifyingly hostile environments. These worlds not only set the tone for the series, but showed them thatDark Matterhad truly come to life on screen.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: Well, world 26 is my baby, and that’s the utopia world. That’s where Amanda ends up. That’s sort of the creation. I mean it’s in the book, but I really writing wise took it to the next level. But probably my favorite visual is the no atmosphere world. I think that that’s really, really cool. White sun, the dead world. I think that’s really cool.
Blake Crouch: I think Ash World, which is the one with the buildings coming down really was such a success and it kind of had to be because if that didn’t work like the other worlds and it was also the highest challenge bar of all the visual effects that we did. I think it sets the tone for you come out of these first three episodes and kind of feel like a noir thriller and then suddenly, no, it’s actually this big expansive thing. That had to work and I think our VFX department, which was led by John Heller, just crushed it.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: Yeah, the first time we saw that I cried. I actually cried because I was like, this is a real show because when you’re working on it every day, you don’t really know and you see the dailies, you still don’t really know. And then when that was put together, I actually balled in the house it’s so good.
Crouch revealed why Leighton was such a challenging character to cast. However, once they found Dayo Okeniyi and Amanda Brugel, who plays Blair, they were so impressed by their performances that they were inspired to write more scenes featuring different versions of their characters.
Blake Crouch: In some ways I think Leighton, because Leighton in the book is just, he’s kind of a villain. He’s not one dimensional. He’s an interesting character. We don’t see a lot of him. I think I went around and around a lot trying to really understand how do we give him a dimension, how do we get empathy? And then when we saw Dayo’s audition, it just was like, Oh, that’s what a great actor does when you’re not quite sure how you find the person to do this and then they put themselves on tape and you’re like punch in the air because that was it.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: We wrote more for Dayo because of how great he was. That’s so inspiring. Amanda Brugel, same thing. She inspired us to make Blair two and Blair three and change that character along.
Blake Crouch: We always knew that we were going to write a bunch for Jennifer and for Joel because we knew what those characters were. It’s really fun when an actor comes in and does such an amazing job, you’re like, oh, now I see a lot of launch points to make you more of a part of the show. We were never intending in episode five to have to meet a different version of Blair, but Amanda Brugel’s performance, is so inspired to be like, I just want to see more it.
Dark Matter Is An Opportunity To Flesh Out Characters That Weren’t Fully Explored In The Original Book
Dark Matterwas published eight years ago, so Crouch and Ben-Zekry reflected on how they were able to approach the story from a new perspective, given what they had learned since the novel first hit shelves. They further explored elements that may not have been at the forefront of the story. This included fleshing out certain characters, especially Daniela and her traumas.
Blake Crouch: That’s a great question. I think honestly those scenes in the corridor, especially in episode four, when the characters are first trying to understand what this is and how it works, that was so fun to write. It was so fun to piece that together. I believed it would, but you didn’t really know it would work. This transition from a box to a corridor visually would it feel the way I saw it in my head. So to see that land was really fun.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: I’m a Blake’s developmental story editor. So Pines is our first book that we worked together. So what, eight, nine books now we’ve done together. One of the cool things about the book Dark Matter is it is just about Jason1’s experience really get some Jason2, you get a little Daniella, but it’s really about what happens to him, how he feels about his family, how he feels about his life.
One of the biggest challenges, but also the thing that was the most exciting was getting to actually really spend months thinking about what is it like to be Amanda? Months thinking about what is it like to be Daniella? That was especially important when we talk about the last two episodes, when it is the impact on her experience, what’s the impact on Charlie, and not just as a woman was that important to me, but as a human thinking about trauma.
What happens to her is rape, Daniella, and her trauma point is the moment Jason1 arrives home, it’s not what actually Jason2 did to her. I think that was the hardest but also the most gratifying to be able to tell their stories for the first time. Because in the book it’s not that they’re not full characters, it’s that their experience isn’t the focus, We get to know what it’s like to be Ryan. We get to know what it’s like to be Leighton. I think that those things are high empathy points, but Daniella and Amanda were the most hard and difficult, but also the most gratifying to explore.
Crouch and Ben-Zekry broke down the importance of finding a balance between sci-fi and other genres. While the sci-fi element plays an important role in the plot, Ben-Zekry explained why they wanted to approach this as speculative fiction instead of just sci-fi.
Blake Crouch: A lot of sci-fi, it’s only sci-fi through the whole thing. A lot of family drama is only family drama through the whole thing. So finding a way to blend the two where you have incredibly domestic scenes that just happened in a kitchen.
It’s a family hanging out together at dinner and then you have these wild scenes, mind blowing worlds, buildings coming down. Getting to put both of those in the same hour of television is a cool challenge because how do you keep the tone the same through it and go back and forth? I really love that sort of Jekyll and Hyde aspect of our show.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: For sure in the writing, but absolutely a production. I was very, probably irritating to our department heads that this isn’t sci-fi, this is speculative fiction. By way, science fiction is a part of speculative, but speculative is like what is our world today? And then let’s just change the focus slightly. What’s five minutes from now? What’s happening in 10 years? Not what is Star Trek and things. I love those shows.
But when you ground yourself in that we didn’t produce the show to be sci-fi, we produced the show to be thriller drama and then we just treated the science as if it was a character. I think that that is the way for us that ended up with the best blend of not really by fixating on sci-fi. I think we tend to pigeonhole something and if we say I happen to Succession and Bones, those are two of my favorite TV shows. What if they had a baby? Let’s do that. That I think was a lot more our philosophy.
While sci-fi is an important part of theDark Matterstory, Crouch and Ben-Zekry wanted the thriller and family drama aspects at the forefront. They revealed which characters and television shows that are outside the sci-fi genre were inspirations both for their visuals and their characters.
Blake Crouch: I think there was a nice warmth about the way that Twin Peaks original season was shot. Not the tone, but how warm those interiors are, if you look at season one, especially how warm those interiors are. There is a coziness to them that I wanted because the house itself was the character you want it to feel like this lighthouse that he’s trying to get home to. That was a big touchstone for me, honestly.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: I would say we both come a lot from the crime fiction world. That’s the books that we primarily work in. I do a lot of sci-fi obviously Blake writes a lot of sci-fi. I love the character reveals the parallel between Jason1 and Jason2 to Walter White is a perfect example. I still don’t know to this day having watched all of Breaking Bad, was Walter White always that guy and this is just him revealing himself or did he slowly become that person? I think it’s the same thing here, Jason1 and Jason2 are the same person. We cannot forget that.
So how do you express both of those characters in a way where we believe that they would make different choices but come from the same mindset. So thinking about that, The Sopranos is a good example of duality that we looked at a lot. And I think you get a lot more of that in crime. Batman is a huge inspiration for me. The whole Bruce Wayne and Batman aspect of being two people that are also the same person. Is he really Batman or is he really persuade? We don’t know. We’ll never know. And I love that. So those were big inspiration points for us, for me at least.
Jacque Ben-Zekry Teases The Final 2 Episodes Of Dark Matter
“Get Ready For 7. That’s A Tough One. 8? Holy Sh-t!”
Crouch and Ben-Zekry also teased an exciting roller coaster in the final two episodes of the season. Crouch explained how the goal was to ramp up the intensity with each episode and Ben-Zekry promised a mind-blowing penultimate episode and finale.
Blake Crouch: Every episode just ramps up more intensely and more mind blowingly than the one before it. We structured the season to just get crazier, crazier, crazier. It’s like a roller coaster where the craziest part is the last 30 seconds.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: I would say yeah, buckle up bitches. It’s bigger people who are freaking out about six. I’m like, get ready for seven. That’s a tough one. Eight? Holy sh-t!
Crouch and Ben-Zekry were able to experience the box for themselves at the AppleTV+Dark Matteractivation, where one could step inside and discover new worlds just like in the show. They each shared how it felt to step into the box themselves and experience a piece of the world they created.
Blake Crouch: It’s amazing. It kind of reminds me a little bit of being on set because you just see all these things you imagine brought to life. It’s always amazing and humbling and really smart craftsmen build things that help you bring to life the stories that you see in your head.
Jacque Ben-Zekry: I think it’s probably how musicians feel when somebody really cool remixes your song. It’s like we were a part of the music. Every single VFX shot is meticulously, obsessively gone over by Blake and I. Every single thing on the show, every outfit, every sound, the way the box looks, all of that is like morning, noon, our living, breathing obsession.
And then somebody else turned it into something else and they took all of those same elements that we created and they did something else fun and interesting with it. Without our production designers, without our VFX people, without our musicians, we wouldn’t have had any of this. But it’s also us and so it’s like having somebody remake it into something cool.
About Dark Matter
Based on Blake Crouch’s international bestseller. Jason Dessen is abducted into an alternate version of his life. To get back to his true family, he embarks on a harrowing journey to save them from the most terrifying foe imaginable: himself.
Dark Matter
Cast
Dark Matter (2024): Jason Dessen is thrust into an alternate reality where he must confront an ominous version of himself. His quest to return to his original life leads him on a challenging journey to reunite with his family, navigating the complexities of parallel existences.
