[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Dark Matter Season 1, Episode 8 “Jupiter.”]
Is physics professor Jason Desson (Joel Edgerton) about to have his happy ending? Maybe. At least, that’s what it looked like at the end of the June 19 episode of Apple TV+‘s sci-fi thriller Dark Matter when Jason met up with wife Daniela (Snowpiercer’s Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) at Chicago’s landmark sculpture known as The Bean. (The art piece, named “Cloud Gate,” really does look like something out of a science fiction.)
Jason used the safe word with Daniela — “Jupiter” — and Daniela looked pretty sure about the Jason she chose, after having escaped three other alternate versions of her husband, including the original kidnapper who had been living in her home that she pushed down the basement stairs (Heck yes!). But this action series, based on Blake Crouch’s 2016 bestselling novel, isn’t over yet and only one Jason can rule them all (a.k.a., win his family back). Wednesday, June 26’s ender, “Entanglement,” will conclude the Desson family’s twisted tale and hopefully offer plenty of resolution to fans gripping the edge of their seats.
For now, check out an exclusive clip above from the finale in which Jason discovers just how many other Jasons they’re up against and what the other Jasons want. (Some are nice and some are not…) Plus, read on as Edgerton teases what’s to come for the Desson clan and how he got into character(s).
Did you have any sort of process going into this show to tell the Jasons apart? What went on in your mind when you were trying to be all these different versions of the same guy?
Joel Edgerton: It’s weird knowing that it’s been a year and change since we finished shooting, and I look back on it like, “How did we do it all?” because I actually remember waking up every day and going to work really energized, but looking back I’m like, “Ugh, man, [doing that] constant changing and shifting [was crazy].” More than anything, everything I had to keep in my head [was challenging], particularly as we got towards the later episodes and [I was] playing multiple versions of Jason, and knowing that they all were essentially a version of the same person with varying different points of view and hindsight experiences of various things and trauma.
How they differentiated was sometimes subtle, and towards the end, it becomes the case that various incarnations of the character have been through more extreme things and they have an agenda, and those agendas butt up against each other a lot more, and it became very complicated [to act]. It just became a constant process of asking a ton of questions each time we were hitting any new scene, and particularly when we were doing a scene with multiple versions of the character in the same frame, or fighting each other, or holding each other hostage, and so on. It was a mammoth task, made easier by the support crew of people, obviously makeup and costume, Blake [Crouch] himself as the creator of the story, and my team of guys that were doubling me and doing stunts for me, or just performing opposite me, knowing that I was then going to be playing both roles. It was definitely one of the most complicated and challenging tasks I’ve ever undertaken.
Is that what you liked about this role, though? That challenge?
I could say that the whole reason I took on the job is because I knew how challenging it was going to be. I’m in Paris right now. I was at this place this morning, and this older French guy ran up to me and was like, “Oh, you’re that guy from Dark Matter,” and I was like, “Yeah, yeah…” and he goes “What’s going to happen? I’m so excited.”
That’s awesome.
I said, “Just watch it.” I don’t want to give it away. I’m constantly apologizing to my family — they’re asking me to fill the gaps, and to other people I’m apologizing about how many versions of me there are onscreen.
Apple TV+
And keeping track of them all gets trickier and trickier. But what would you say is the craziest thing that you shot for the show overall?
I think doing a scene in the bar opposite myself was a real mind-bending experience, because the result is different than the experience. The experience of performing opposite an acting double and then trying to also sort of guide them as to the rhythm of which I would respond… but the wildest one was actually doing fight scenes with myself, because then I’m educating a stunt guy, like, “Don’t be too cool, and don’t have too much physical prowess, you know, I am a physics teacher…”
My brother is a stunt guy — started in the industry as a stunt guy — and I understand from talking to him a lot that good actions sequences should tell their own story, and that they should be infused with character. So, you know, all of these things are a part of the smoothie of questions that I was constantly asking myself, [like] how desperate is his situation — and how would you feel after you’ve murdered a version of yourself?
It’s pretty hard to relate to that, I’d imagine, but Jason’s still a relatable guy!
As an actor, usually I work knowing that I’ve had some experience with anything I’m about to do, whether it’s grief, or love, or anything. But this was a show where I’m like, “Okay, every day I’m going to work going, ‘I would never be in this scenario.’” How do I handle it?
And of course now the family unit is back together, and Daniela is kind of trusting this Jason — it seems like she is, I wouldn’t say all in, but she’s pretty in. Does Jason still need to convince Daniela and Charlie that he’s the right guy moving into the finale episode, or do they see him and they’re just like “Yeah, this is our guy”?
Daniela and Charlie are really catching up to the concept of it all, how to trust that they actually have the right version, and knowing that with Jason 1 himself, there are possibly multiple right versions of him. What I love about the show is — and the book touches on it, but the show actually goes there — these questions of the processing of the trauma, of this unrealistic situation of going, What if the person you thought was your dad, or your family member, was an imposter, and what kind of an infraction is that? What kind of injustice is being done upon you, [in Daniela’s case] sexually, or just as a presence in your house? I think the show does a good job of addressing that what’s happening with Daniela, too, is unforgivable.
Apple TV+
And what level of pure joy can be experienced by Daniela going, “Alright, I think I’ve got my guy back”? There’s been a trauma there, and so there’s sort of an equal balance of relief and curiosity about trusting the return to a status quo. But things have changed, and things have happened that are hard to navigate.
Jason learns just how many other Jasons are out there in our exclusive clip, and that number seems astronomical. How does that information affect his actions moving through the finale?
I remember when I read that scene in the book, and the version of it in the screenplays and just going, “Oh my god, could you imagine?”
RelatedIs ‘Dark Matter’ Series Faithful to Book? Creator & Author Blake Crouch Explains
Being in a chatroom with yourself, it’s surprising and yet inevitable. On storytelling terms, it’s a very neat, elegant and efficient way of showing the scale of the potential dangers that lurk and the agendas that are at play out there. I think when people watch that scene, it [will] fill them with dread, and they’re right in the seat of what Jason 1 is feeling at that moment, which is not only how do you contend with it, but maybe even questioning himself. Is he actually the deserving version of himself?
I love that point that one of them brought up that was, essentially, “I deserve them more than you because I’ve had it hardest.” But it’s an interesting perspective, because how do you know that this Jason is the Jason, or just the luckiest Jason?
I think that’s what’s great about what Blake’s created, and the way that the show pans out is that it puts the audience in the perspective of Daniela. How do they trust anything? Is anyone who they say they are? All they have is a safe-word, at this point, and she’s just going with her gut on the Jason that she feels good about.
What would you say to viewers getting ready to watch this crazy finale episode?
It’s like [1971 film] Straw Dogs meets The Matrix. It’s really a siege of Jasons, and my Matrix references are in regard to the lovely Hugo Weaving and his army of Hugos, but it feels like a siege, and yet, the show manages to ground itself in these very human questions. As big and wild as the show gets in its science fiction conceit, it’s all for the purposes of getting under the hood of things that we think about on a daily basis: the track we’ve ran along in our life and how that might have hinged on different choices we’ve made along the way.
The whole reason I got involved with the show was for these things, and the fact that, you know, I have a family. I’m at a point now where I wouldn’t exchange my life for anything. And I often, in the past, pre-having a family, did think, “How would life have led me to a different place?” But now I’m firmly in Jason 1’s perspective — I know what I’ve got, and I would fiercely protect it.
Dark Matter, Season 1 Finale, Wednesday, June 26, Apple TV+
More Headlines:
‘The View’: Whoopi Goldberg ‘Spits’ After Saying Donald Trump’s Name – Viewers ReactHow to Watch the U.S. Gymnastics Olympic Trials on TV & StreamingHallmark & Kansas City Chiefs Unite for New Holiday Romance With Tyler Hynes & Hunter King‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’: Everything We Know About Season 3‘SEAL Team’ Final Season Premiere Date Set: Trailer Teases End of Bravo (VIDEO)
