Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 1, 2026
I stuck with Dark Matter through a frustrating first season and a half, but I’m out now. I wish we still had DVRs so I could at least have the satisfaction of removing it from my season pass, but deleting it from my streaming app will have to suffice.
The problem with Dark Matter is that it’s the rare show that isn’t compelling enough to be anything but background television, yet it requires vigilant attention to understand what’s going on. It’s not the kind of show you can watch while making dinner, because there are too many variants of the same character to keep track of without a chart, and it’s not a show worth the effort of making a chart.
Joel Edgerton plays Jason. And Jason. And Jason, Jason, Jason, and Jason. Most of these Jasons are not only played by the same actor and share similar personalities, but they also wear similar clothing. They all share a memory of the past, too, so even the Jason who isn’t Jason is still Jason, which means that when Jason kills a Jason, it should feel more tragic than it does. But since there seems to be an endless supply of Jasons, we’re left rooting for Jason, who created this mess of Jasons in the first place.
It doesn’t help that Dark Matter is so dimly lit that I can barely tell what’s happening, nor that there are also variants of other characters living in various multiverses, some of which we visit even though Jason isn’t there, because those characters may eventually converge with Jason in another universe. And Jason can’t seem to stay in one universe, because other Jasons keep following him around in the box, which he destroyed but which somehow still exists for reasons that involve science. None of it matters anyway, because the box is just a doorway to a corridor that exists everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Are you following this? Because I’m not.
And then, to make matters (dark matters) even worse, in episode five, something like 100 different Jasons greet Jason to tell him they’re not going to chase him through the corridor this time. Then Jason leaves, and the story follows a completely different Jason we’ve never met, who travels to a universe where his mother is still alive and cares for her until she dies. But so do two other Jasons. So episode five is an entirely standalone hour about Jason, Jason, and Jason, but not about Jason. Oh, and the opening scene of season two, episode five is actually the aftermath of a scene from the season one finale, in case that wasn’t confusing enough for you.
Anyway, if you followed all of this perfectly and/or are pedantically correcting any or all of my mistakes, congratulations! You’re the target audience for Dark Matter. If you gave up trying to follow along halfway through but kept reading anyway, you’re right where I am. Does it make sense? Or does the fact that it doesn’t make sense make sense? Do I now exist inside a nonsense paradox?
