Dark Matter Season 1 Ending Explained: What Happens in 9th Episode of Apple TV+ Series
Dark Matter arrived like a real bolt from the blue in the sea of serial streaming offerings. Not because we doubted the production quality of Apple TV+ now clear and incontrovertible – but because we didn’t think that a new series on the Multiverse, a theme that has been more than abused by the audiovisual sector in recent years starting from the MCU, could have something new to say. By using an extremely human approach based on relationships and roads not taken on an extremely science fiction theme such as that of parallel worlds, the serial was able to demonstrate the opposite. Now, having reached the finale, available from 26 June on the platform, it seems like the perfect time to take stock of where the story has arrived, as well as where it started, to ideally close the circle, in our explanation of the ending of Dark Matter.
What Happens in the Final Episode of Dark Matter?
The episode opens with Jason 2 (the one who replaced the good Jason 1, the protagonist we have grown fond of) who is beaten by Jason-with-a-hat to find out where Charlie and Daniela are and is beaten again when Jason 2 explains that his wife and son (not his) discovered him and abandoned him after throwing him down the stairs. Jason 1, meanwhile, has finally been reunited with his family and they are on the run, but the numerous messages arriving on the phones of his wife and son make him understand that this dimension is now full of all the other Jasons who have been created every time he, alone or with Amanda, decided to open a door giving life to a new dimension.
So, the Dessen family is stuck and whatever ideas Jason comes up with will also come to the other parallel Jason. Charlie then thinks about creating a plan that the others can’t get to hide in the beach house of his friend James’s family. Here Jason finally has the time to talk first with Charlie and then with Daniela about what he had to face to return home. That night Jason opens his email and comes across a folder, called Entanglement, which takes him to a chat where all the other selves are found – there are 103 of them in the chat – exchanging information and proposals for settling accounts to decide who Daniela and Charlie will be held, for example with a lottery. The next morning, Daniela confesses to her husband that at first she liked the new Jason, but then realizes that he isn’t the right one, while he tells his wife about the other Daniela he met, the one who had become an artist without him.
Meanwhile, at the Dessen house, there is Jason-with-hat, who wakes up and has breakfast as if he were in his dimension, with Jason-1 tied up hostage while he begins to suspect the new Jason who joined the chat the night before and has no credit card or other records. So he writes to Blair, Daniela’s friend, from Jason 2’s cell phone and arranges to meet her pretending to be Jason 1 to give her back the car that she lent to her friend. Jason-hat tells Jason 2 that his Daniela-2 is dead, because of those with whom he had the dimensional breach project, who killed her to prevent her from helping the other Jason. Then there’s Leighton who killed Ryan and then there’s poor Amanda, who was so scared that when she opened the sixth door, she found herself in front of a forest and was killed by a large branch that fell on her.
“I thought you would like my life,” Jason 2 says, making Jason-hat even angrier, but he receives Blair’s response, ready to move on to the house under the subway track. When she arrives, in the silent house she finds Jason 2’s blood and climbs on her, finding Jason 2 tied up to her and Jason hat asking her to do the favor of tracking down her car.
Blair refuses, hits him, and tries to escape but Jason-hat stops her by firing a shot into the air. She is about to give up and give him the phone, but then she sprays a stinging spray in his eyes and knocks him out, demanding explanations from Jason 2. Daniela also asks Jason for explanations, who makes a comparison with a fish that swims in a lake and one day is moved to another lake and understands that the universe is much more mysterious than we can understand. Daniela asks him if he has ever thought about stopping in another world and Jason replies that yes, he was tempted once, but that he has never stopped wanting to return home.
Later that evening, after Daniela had taken a look at the chat and together with her husband they had put Charlie to bed, the wife told her husband that she had told the other Jasons that they had made a decision, obviously to be together. But shortly afterward Jason sees a shadow in the garden and understands that there is still a fight to be made. Outside he finds a dying Jason, and then another one being shot in short, the hideout is blown. Another Jason has entered the house and forces him to undress and tell him the safe word, a physical fight starts which is resolved when the “wrong” Jason is killed with a shot to the forehead fired by… another Jason, who however he gives his gun to Daniela: it’s Jason-2, the one who built the multidimensional box, regretting all the mess he caused.
Charlie punches him but he takes it without reacting and explains that he found them through a geolocation app on Blair’s phone, and the others in turn tracked him down. He leaves them a car and helps them escape, returning the wedding ring to its rightful owner. The Dessens run away, running over yet another Jason who tries to stop them by shooting. But where to go now? Charlie notices that Jason-2 left them in the car a box of 40 vials for interdimensional travel, and a bag with the ashes of his deceased son Max: everything they need to leave this dimension behind, including an iPhone with a recording of his confession of what he found in this dimension that made him so jealous that it turned his life and everyone else’s upside down. Jason 2 apologizes but explains that this world is no longer safe for the Dessen, who therefore must go to another dimension to start their lives again.
Charlie is understandably reluctant, given that it’s not easy for a teenager to change city, let alone size, but he is persuaded to make this move. The cube is full of other Jasons, but surprisingly they are not there to stop them but to say goodbye, because they have understood that that escape is the only way for them to have a normal existence. Some Jason still resists but, in the end, they let them pass and enter the cube, amidst murmurs of farewell. And while we see the other characters, from Ryan to Blair, leave the dimensions in which they were lost to return home and, in some cases, find themselves in Amanda’s, the Dessens let Charlie open the door that leads them to their new home.
One, None, One Hundred Thousand Joel?
All the Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) arrives in the world of the one we first knew, initially also trying to fool Daniela (Jennifer Connelly, among the most beautiful actresses in the world) and Charlie (Oakes Fegley), who however soon discover the double (actually multiple) games of non-husband and father. The most exciting aspect of this ending is perhaps the reunion between the original Jason and his wife and son, which cannot help but bring to mind the hug and the phone call between Penny and Desmond and the episode The Constant. Moreover, provocatively, a few weeks ago we asserted that Dark Matter could be the new Lost. Edgerton and Connelly are truly formidable in showing all the facets that strike their characters, from the small changes in their looks and tone of voice, among the many universes in which they have to play a version of themselves. There is a truly powerful emotional climax, and we cannot help but identify with Jason who has crossed all the universes to return to his family, which for him has always been the most important thing and this epilogue perfectly confirms the character’s circular path.
Race Against Time?
Once the Dessen family is reunited, what lies ahead for the protagonist trio is a real clockwork marathon to manage to get by and escape the aims of the other Jasons. However, the protagonist does not have to make the decisions otherwise the other versions of him could guess them, arriving at the same conclusions in their minds. Jason and Daniela then entrust themselves to Charlie, who makes them take refuge in an abandoned house of a friend and there they find a minimum of a family unit, while the couple ventures into the dark web where all the versions of the protagonist are connected. At that point, it is the woman who proves resolute once again and calls together all the Jasons from all the universes to help the original escape together with her family.
Initially hesitant, the Jasons accept and understand that they must let him live the life he should have. Various outside agents discover Jason’s incursion into their world, but he ultimately prevails. The Dessen must get to the heart of the problem, which is also the solution, namely the machine that the other Jason built and which proved to be a means of traveling between worlds, to leave what was his in favor of another. The only way to protect his family. The trio manages to reach her, opening the door to another universe that can hide and protect them: all three are willing to take an act of faith. A leap of faith, as the Anglo-Saxons would say. A leap into the void, literal and metaphorical. Hand in hand, ready for a new adventure, like a family: as it always should have been. A poetic and symbolic image that closes Dark Matter. Even the characters of Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson have their closure, their reality full of possibilities.
The Apple TV+ sci-fi series essentially wanted to remind us that we shouldn’t dwell too much on choices not made and paths not taken, because we risk taking refuge in a world that is not ours, a fantasy that is not the reality we deserve by right, risking only accumulating pain and suffering, frustration and regret, instead of appreciating the consequences of the choices made and the aspects with which they have enriched our lives. The ending, however, perfectly closes the circle on the characterization of the various Jasons, confirming how the one who manages to reunite with his loved ones was a family man and not a businessman, but not unambitious for this, simply human just like Jason n. 2 who had chosen a career but would have preferred to opt for love.
All The Things That Don’t Add Up In The Ending Of Dark Matter?
Okay, let’s accept without problems that the Dessen find a welcoming dimension before being exterminated. We also accept that others find each other without actually even knowing each other. It’s not the happy ending that leaves us perplexed, although it did raise a question: since the other Jasons seemed to have given up by now, why are the Dessens leaving anyway? Maybe to avoid having to deal with the complicated legal issues that will arise when dozens of bodies with Jason’s DNA are found? Apart from this, however, what we struggle most to accept and understand is precisely the question of the thousand Jason. Let’s start with a fact: the other Jasons are created, in the series as in the book, when Jason decides his travels inside the box. And therefore Jason-1 is nothing more than a creation of Jason-2, according to this reasoning. But so, in reality, it is Jason-2 who pre-exists all the others, while Jason-2 was created, he and his dimension, only when Jason-2 (we all agree that therefore he should be the 1 and the other is 2, right?
But let’s leave the numbers where they are to avoid further confusion) created the box and wanted to live in a world where he didn’t have a career but a family. And therefore Jason-1 is nothing more than a creation of Jason-2, and this leads to subsequent questions about all the other Jasons, who are creations of Jason-1 (but even if they were Jason-2, it makes little difference). So we come to the central question: why did all those Jasons want to be in the world of Jason-1? If those Jasons are the same as Jason-1 down to some decision in the box, they’ll have their own Daniela and their own Charlie to come back to, right? Or did something bad randomly happen to all their families? Alternatively, if they don’t have happy worlds to return to, why don’t they have them, if Jason-1 does and is himself a creation of Jason-2? In conclusion, something does not and cannot return in the plot, to use the title of the last episode, of Dark Matter. But luckily, if nothing else, there won’t be a season 2 to make things even worse.
