Dark Matter Episode 1 And 2 Explained- We Are Are Own Worst Enemies, Regrets, And T.S, Elliot

Apple TV+ loves a good science fiction series. The weirder and smarter, the better. It has become the expert in genre entertainment. If you are a sci-fi or horror fan, you are watching Apple. Silo, Severance, Foundation, and Constellation are all fantastic. Admittedly, some of the science is a little shaky, but Apple is making palatable sci-fi for the masses, not hard science for the few. Their approach leans more into the why of things rather than the how. Should we do these things? Is progress always good? Does power corrupt even facts? Their newest Dark Matter is another thoughtful sci-fi journey into the possibilities of what if.

The road not taken. The opportunity not explored or the mistakes we make shape us. For better or worse, they make us who we are and who we will become. What happens when one could cheat the system and pick differently? Dark Matter Episode 1 and 2 set up the world of two Jason Dessen’s(Joel Edgerton) competing for the same reality. He is literally his own worst enemy.

The road less traveled, regrets, and possibilities. Philosophy, neuroscience, and physics are filled with these concepts. The quantum structure of the universe is made up of the fibers of these ideas. It is the basis of Jason Dessen’s work in another reality. We are first introduced to Jason, who I will refer to as “prime,” living his life. He is personally happy living with a wife and kid that he loves and loves him in return. Professionally, he teaches bored college students and is unsatisfied, but it is a price he chooses to pay. His friend Ryan, powerhouse Jimmi Simpson, who is gaining and losing weight at alarming rates, is a fellow scientist who just won the Pavia Award. This prestigious award comes with accolades and a sizable monetary prize. He’s happy for him but thinks about what could have been professionally.

That changes when Jason is mugged, stripped, injected with a weird substance, and left to be found by people in contamination suits and plopped into a reality that looks similar but is utterly different than his own. In the reality he now finds himself, the Jason from there(Jason Beta) is unmarried, a decorated scientist, and more than a little cold. By the end of Dark Matter Episode 1 and 2, Jason Prime and the viewer know what has happened, even if we don’t know how to fix things. Here’s everything you need to know about Dark Matter Episode 1 and 2.

Jason Beta, now living in Jason Prime’s world, designed and built a reality-shifting transporter. Our Jason conceived it in a much smaller form years ago, but Jason Beta made it a reality. As part of the Velocity Group owned by Leighton Vance, he built and tested it. He went into Prime’s world fourteen months ago. Evidently, he has been stalking Jason Prime for a while.

The scene of Jason in a storage facility keeping notes on the day’s events and housing the purple liquid was Jason Beta, not Jason Prime. He traveled there and decided to steal the life he regretted losing. Jason Beta realized what he lost when he decided to choose work over Daniela. This is why he was gone so long. More than likely, he was not stuck there, but he chose to stay there. We may also find out he has been traveling to many branch points and has been looking for this specific one.

In Jason Beta’s world, he lives with Amanda(Alice Braga), a psychiatrist working for Velocity. He has no son and is famous. Daniela(sublime Jennifer Connelly) is also unmarried and has no children. She is a successful artist whose latest work was inspired by a meeting with Jason Beta just before he activated the box and entered another reality. In Beta’s world, she and Jason Beta dated, and she became pregnant. Instead of choosing to marry her and start a family, Beta rejected her and chose his work.

At first, everyone in Beta’s world thinks Jason Prime is unstable, but eventually, he finds all of Jason Beta’s research in his house and pieces it all together. He is able to convince Daniela, but before they can act on anything, one of the security people from Velocity breaks down the door of her condo and shoots Daniela in the head. She also kidnaps him, presumably to return him to the lab. One important thing to note is that Prime knows the dangers of forgetting who he really is. In contrast, Beta doesn’t care who it is. He only cares about who he could be. He has become so lost in his own regret, he can only see the life he wishes he had.

This divergence is seen in other places. For example, Beta gives advice to Charlie that is decidedly different from what Prime gives, and he is harsh with Ryan because of jealousy. Undoubtedly, these differences will become a problem for him. What Beta doesn’t understand is he can never have the life he wanted because he isn’t the same person that the life was built with. We are more than our choices. We are the consequences of those choices and how they can strengthen us. Make us more empathetic, selfish, kind, or cruel. Dark Matter will explore the darkness in our minds as much as the matter that allows us to be the cat caught in limbo.

However, the split is the most important thing to take away from Prime’s explanation of the box. He believes the other Jason was created when he chose to leave Daniela. He fails to consider the inconceivable number of other choices he made in his lifetime. Each choice becomes another branch and another Jason. Prime is desperate to return to his reality with Daniela and Charlie. Eventually, he may have to make choices similar to those of Beta. Will he choose to sacrifice another version of himself to get where he belongs? Will each of those choices create secondary branches of reality shifting Jasons. He wears something to remind himself who he is. He is worried the indent on his ring finger will fade, and so will his memory. Hopefully, he won’t have to make choices that change who he is.

T.S. Elliot’s famous work the Four Quartets is about the past haunting us. Instead, we should live life in the moment. Regrets are just the past crippling us in the present. Footfalls echo in the memory. Down the passage, which we did not take towards the door, we did not take. The infamous incident in the rose garden in this work is about human’s arrogance and inability to understand that they do not exist outside of the laws of time and nature. Considering Jason Beta is attempting to cheat time itself, this is something he has never learned. Dark Matter is only getting started. Find all our coverage here.