The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub interviews creator and showrunner Blake Crouch and executive producer Matt Tolmach for the Apple TV+ series
Dark Matter
.
The sci-fi series is an adaptation of Crouch’s 2016 novel of the same title, starring Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, and more.
During this conversation, Crouch and Tolmach discuss the intended ending of Season 1, theorize other possibilities, talk Season 2 potential, and tons more.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Dark Matter Season 1.]Apple TV+’s sci-fi adaptation Dark Matter has concluded Season 1, but is that all there is to the story? According to author and showrunner Blake Crouch and executive producer Matt Tolmach (Venom: The Last Dance), yes, Season 1 was created to be “the best representation of the book as possible.” However, a series format opens a whole box of possibilities, and Crouch isn’t opposed to exploring more characters. In fact, maybe that even leaves room to revisit Alice Braga’s (Queen of the South) fan-favorite, Amanda Lucas?

In addition to Braga, Dark Matter stars Joel Edgerton (The Gift), who brings Crouch’s original character, Jason Dessen, to life on the screen as he travels through alternate realities in search of his true home and family. Other characters, some expanded for the show, include Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly’s (A Beautiful Mind) Daniela Vargas Dessen, Jimmi Simpson’s (Westworld) Ryan Holder, Dayo Okeniyi’s (See) Leighton Vance, and Oakes Fegley (The Fabelmans) as Jason and Daniela’s son Charlie.

During their interview, Crouch and Tolmach discuss the likelihood that the “wrong” Jason returns in the end, what World 26 is, where the Dessen family ultimately ends up, and what changed throughout the editing process. Crouch explains why Season 1’s finale is a “love letter” to all his book fans and shares which of his works he’s eyeing for adaptations next, and Tolmach reveals why Sony’s Kraven the Huntermoved its release date.

Dark Matter (2024) A man is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could’ve lived, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from a most terrifying foe: himself.Release Date May 8, 2024 Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 1 Creator(s) Blake Crouch Writers Blake Crouch Directors Jakob Verbruggen Expand

Which Jason Returns in the ‘Dark Matter’ Season 1 Finale?

COLLIDER: Is it is it possible that the Jason at the end of the series that ends up with his family is not the actual Jason that left, but a very, very close version of that Jason?

MATT TOLMACH: That’s a fantastic question, by the way.

BLAKE CROUCH: It’s a great question. It’s a little cynical. [Laughs] Yes, of course. Of course. It’s the multiverse. There could be millions and millions of Jasons. Our intention is that this is the guy we started with, and this is the guy we’re ending with. It was never like, “Oh, hey, audience, we just took you through nine episodes of something, but guess what? That’s not the guy.” That was never our intention, but in the world of infinities, yeah, it’s possible.

TOLMACH: Yeah, and in a world where the show also begs the question — and again, in the cynical read of it, but fun — “Can you ever really know anyone?” it’s a valid question. But it wasn’t the dramatic intent.

CROUCH: That’ll be the Season 10 ending beat. We’ll just reveal to the audience, “You’ve been watching the wrong Jason for 100 episodes.”

If you do statistics, it’s not the Jason who left. It’s a different version than the one that left, but it’s probably very close to that version. But there’s no way of actually knowing.

TOLMACH: Correct.

CROUCH: There’s not. Did he really make it back to his world, also? Is that really exactly his world? He didn’t check under every rock to make sure.

TOLMACH: Right. How do you know it is 100% his world?

CROUCH: How do you know?

This is exactly my point. By the way, that’s what I commend you guys on because you can read into this where he got back, but you can also read into this that he didn’t get back, this is just a closer version of everything.

TOLMACH: It’s a great read.

CROUCH: It is.

TOLMACH: I love that.

Where Do Jason and His Family End Up at the End of ‘Dark Matter’ Season 1?

Jason and his family, in the end, go into the box, and they enter a new world. Do you guys actually know what that world is or is it sort of one of those things where it’s just up to the audience to decide?

CROUCH: I never let myself contemplate what that world was. To me, the world represented a new start, it represented hope. I never wanted to know for myself, and I do this with a lot of my books. A lot of my books have, I wouldn’t call them fully open-ended endings, but they leave a lot of room for the reader to sort of take the ball and run with it. I did the same thing in Recursion. I love that when you get to the end, I hand the ball to the reader, or to the audience in the case of the show, and say, “Now you imagine what’s next.”

If this show ends up being a big hit for Apple, is this the kind of thing where you would continue, or do you both view this as a one-and-done season?

CROUCH: I think we’re of the mind, and we have been from the beginning, that we let the characters and the story tell us. Is there more to tell? I think it’s possible. It’s possible there’s more.

TOLMACH: Don’t forget, this thing has kind of evolved in a way. When we first bought the book, it was to adapt as a movie, and then the book sort of declared it needed to be a series. Then the conversation was around doing one season that was essentially the book, but there were conversations about, “Let’s see naturally if it lends itself to more.” So, we’re not being coy. That’s sort of what it’s been. It’s possible.

CROUCH: I’ll put it this way: we did not build the series thinking, “Oh, this is Season 1, and this is 2, and this is 3.” We made Season 1 to be the best representation of the book as possible. We’re not holding cards back for later things. We left it all on the field.

Blake Crouch Addressed Readers’ Amanda Concerns
“That ending where we leave Amanda and Ryan is literally a love letter back to all of the people who have written me.”

The other thing is, I want to bring up what happens with Ryan and Amanda and how they end up in that world finding each other. The fact is, another season could focus on other characters that are around the box, if you will.

TOLMACH: 1,000,000%.

CROUCH: 100%.

TOLMACH: Blake, I’m sure, will tell you that Amanda is a character that people consistently ask about and want to know more about — “What happened to Amanda?”

CROUCH: That ending where we leave Amanda and Ryan is literally a love letter back to all of the people who have written me since the book came out and said, “What happened to Amanda? She just vanished. Why did you do that to her? We loved her. Where’s Amanda?” That ending is my mea culpa to everyone who read the book and wondered.

How did Ryan find Amanda? What do you envision? Do you think they’re happy together, is it a relationship thing? What do you want to tease?

CROUCH: Now we do have to be coy because if there is more, now we’re starting to get into it. It’s a very smart question.

[Laughs] I’m just throwing that out there. As a viewer, I was wondering, “How did Ryan find her?

CROUCH: I know how he found her, but I can’t say.

I’m getting close to what could be more in the story. Do you think Leighton is having the time of his life traveling the box, and do you think he ends up picking a place to stay?

CROUCH: Which Leighton?

Image via Apple TV+

Right, exactly! [Laughs]

CROUCH: The one who built the box or more of the party Leighton, which we call Leighton3?

The Leighton that’s beat up is not going to make it. The Leighton that’s the partier, I think, will end up finding something.

CROUCH: He is having the time of his life.

TOLMACH: Yes.

CROUCH: He is living his best alternate reality world existence.

This is a very geeky, nerdy question. When Joel and Alice are traveling and they buy hot chocolate, or they’re buying things in the alt world, how are they paying for it?

CROUCH: [Laughs] That’s a great question.

TOLMACH: Apple Pay.

CROUCH: Apple Pay.

What Is World 26 in ‘Dark Matter’?
Image via Apple TV+

That’s a good answer, but I am curious if you thought about that because I never see anyone using money.

CROUCH: It’s a little bit of an Easter egg for that world. A little inside baseball: in the scripts, we number each world consecutively in the order they’re presented. That’s World 26. World 26 is a super important world for Dark Matter because we call it the “present perfect world.” It’s a world that figured a lot of stuff out, and one of those things is currency. We’ve always imagined it as a world where it’s not driven by money, where we figured out how to transcend those transactions. It’s a world of empathy. It’s a world of progress. It’s, frankly, the world that I wish we were all living in right now.

It’s also the world you could place a Star Trek series in.

CROUCH: 100%.

So one of the things that I also really enjoy is how Joel’s character is very smart but could not see the repercussions of all the decisions made in the box, like forming alt versions. It always makes me think, do you think scientists will ever learn from Hollywood? Because I think Jurassic Park and things like this are great examples of the repercussions, but scientists, I think, will always do what they’re going to do.

CROUCH: No, I don’t think they will.

TOLMACH: You don’t think they’ll do what they’re gonna do?

CROUCH: No, I don’t think they will learn from the cautionary tales. I mean, if you look at how we are just racing headlong into artificial intelligence with zero guardrails, like, “Let’s create something superintelligent as fast as is humanly possible.” Read Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence [Paths, Dangers, Strategies] if you just want to have an existential freakout. So, no, I don’t think so. I don’t think that we are limited by any type of, “Oh, should we do this?” It’s like the Jeff Goldblum quote in Jurassic Park: [“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”]

TOLMACH: Right. And is it the job of the scientist to even have that governor, or does that fall on us? You know what I mean? I don’t know that scientists should sit around, and– I don’t know. I mean, I think there was a big movie made about that recently.

Image via Universal Studios

The series is nine episodes. How did you decide on the nine? Was it almost eight? Was it almost 10?

CROUCH: It was gonna be eight. The moment that we were able to move it from being a movie to television, literally that day I just sat down and I sketched out the shape of Season 1, and it was eight episodes. I knew where every single end-of-episode cliffhanger was. And by the way, those all, for the most part, survived into what you’ve seen. But as we were doing it, it just became clear that we needed to build out the relationship of Amanda and Jason a little bit more, and so because we’re living in this beautiful world of long-form television that’s somewhere between TV and film, we said, “We need one more episode,” and they said, “Great.” So it’s nine episodes because that’s how many episodes we needed to tell the story.

How did the series change in the editing room in ways you guys did not expect?

CROUCH: We had a wealth of time to edit the show, and we had phenomenal editors. Joe Leonard and Jordan Goldman really helped shape these first episodes. They came in, you get these director’s cuts, and then you look at them, and you’re like, “Okay, now we have to start cutting.” It’s honestly my favorite part of the process because it’s rewriting. It’s just writing again. How did it change? I think the show found the big moments to build these episodes around and sort of made them the anchors of each episode.

TOLMACH: Also, we changed the point of view more, and so that became a departure, and not a departure necessarily from the script but from the book. So, we were finding, you can imagine, that some of that is what propels the drama. The intercutting and the growing suspense. There was a lot of work done around how and when to leave certain worlds for others and different characters. That was a find-it-as-you-go kind of thing.

CROUCH: It’s really tricky because you can imagine there’s a lot of potential for confusion. You’re going back and forth between worlds, going back and forth between different versions of characters, and we never wanted the audience to be confused. So, it’s a subtle thing, but you might hear these, it’s like a snap, and it’s subtle and it’s subliminal, but we started doing that. One of our editors had this idea and that became how we subliminally signal to the audience: we’re moving from one world to another.

Why ‘Kraven the Hunter’ Moved Its Release Date
Image via Sony Pictures

Matt, I’m very curious: why did Kraven the Hunter move to Christmas, and what can you tease about Kraven in the next Venom? And Blake, you obviously have many other books. What is the next thing that you’ve written that will end up on the screen or in a movie theater?

TOLMACH: Kraven moved to Christmas because we’re excited about it. Christmas is the best release period there is when you get people with time to go back to the movies over and over again. That was a real reflection of how the studio felt about the movie. We’re really excited. I’m absolutely not going anywhere near any other teasers in that universe. [Laughs] I’m here for Dark Matter. But that’s a great move that reflects just the feeling about the movie.

There’s also no other superhero movie then.

TOLMACH: It’s a perfect date.

CROUCH: I have two things based on books that may or may not go this year. One’s called Famous, off an ancient book that I wrote in 2002, and the other is Summer Frost, which is kind of my AI horror story. It’s a novella that I’m very hopeful we might see some fun news coming soon on that.

All nine episodes of Dark Matter Season 1 are available to stream on Apple TV+.

Watch on Apple TV