(Courtesy of Apple TV+)
Chicagoans, we need to talk about Dark Matter. If you somehow missed the first season of Apple TV’s wildly ambitious science-fiction thriller, now is the time to catch up, because Dark Matter returned Friday, August 28 with a second season that is bigger, stranger, more emotionally complex and arguably even more compelling than what came before.
And Chicago is still right at the center of it all.
Based on Blake Crouch’s bestselling novel, Dark Matter stars Joel Edgerton as Jason Dessen, a Chicago physicist, professor, husband and father whose life was shattered in Season 1 when another version of himself emerged from an alternate reality and decided he wanted Jason’s life for his own. Jennifer Connelly stars as Jason’s wife Daniela, with Oakes Fegley as their son Charlie.
What followed was one of television’s more brain-bending explorations of the multiverse, not superheroes leaping through portals. Still, ordinary people confronting the thousands of lives they might have lived had they made different choices.
Season 2 picks up seven months after Jason, Daniela and Charlie escaped their original reality and found what appeared to be a peaceful new version of Chicago where they could finally begin again. For a few minutes, things almost look normal.
That should immediately make Dark Matter viewers nervous.
Daniela is home alone when another Jason appears. He tries to convince her that he is her husband. She has learned a few things since last season.
So, Daniela shoots him.
Jason returns home to discover another dead version of himself. Before the Dessens can deal with the world’s most complicated home invasion, a police officer arrives to investigate an abandoned vehicle. He discovers the body, Jason ties him to a tree, and the family’s carefully constructed new life collapses almost instantly.
Because the officer has already called for backup, Jason and Daniela race to retrieve Charlie and head back to the Box – the mysterious device capable of opening doors into an infinite number of realities.
Charlie isn’t thrilled.
After seven months of finally having friends, school, and something resembling a teenage life, he is forced to abandon everything again because another version of his father has appeared. In a series built around quantum physics and infinite realities, one of its smartest choices remains surprisingly simple: Dark Matter never forgets what all of this would actually do to a family.
Meanwhile, things are getting considerably stranger back in another Chicago.
The Season 2 premiere opens with the aftermath of last season’s convergence of countless Jason Dessens. A mysterious new figure, Agent Mitchel MacNamara, played by Chris Diamantopoulos, arrives to investigate the pile of identical bodies and immediately assumes something resembling human cloning is involved.
The audience knows better.
Somewhere out there is the original Jason. Jason 2. Other Jasons. Dead Jasons. Angry Jasons.
Yes, keeping track can occasionally feel like doing calculus on Lower Wacker Drive.
But that complexity is also part of what makes the series so much fun.
Season 2 expands its focus beyond Jason and gives the show’s terrific supporting characters considerably more room to breathe. Ryan, played by Jimmi Simpson, reconnects with Amanda, played by Alice Braga, in the seemingly utopian reality where Jason 2 abandoned him.
Ryan has discovered that the version of himself who belonged to this world died years earlier. Amanda, meanwhile, explains that she originally entered this reality with the real Jason, not Jason 2.
The two immediately share something nobody else around them possibly can: they are strangers living inside lives that almost belong to them.
Their story leads to one of the premiere’s best Chicago moments.
Ryan and Amanda are standing near Cloud Gate — yes, the Bean — discussing how unnervingly perfect this version of society feels. Everyone is patient. Emotionally intelligent. Considerate.
Ryan hilariously describes it as a world of “polite sex.”
Then a new piece of public art is unveiled.
It’s the Box.
Only in Dark Matter could one of Chicago’s most recognizable landmarks become the setting for the reveal of another object capable of destroying everyone’s understanding of reality.
Elsewhere, Leighton Vance, played by Dayo Okeniyi, has apparently undergone the multiverse’s most dramatic career change and become a yoga and meditation instructor. Then another version of Leighton walks through his door asking for help learning how to quiet his mind so he can better control the Box.
He claims he wants to use it to help other worlds.
Whether anyone should believe him is another question entirely.
The Dessens, meanwhile, continue jumping through realities looking for somewhere — anywhere — they can live safely. A violent storm is destroying one world. Another offers an almost comically mundane hotel and a cheerful digital concierge cat.
Their standards for paradise are dropping quickly.
Eventually, Jason promises Charlie they will find a quiet world, settle down, and destroy the Box once and for all.
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Jason enters it imagining exactly what his family needs: somewhere safe. Somewhere kind. Somewhere they can begin again.
Then he opens the door.
He’s been there before.
That is where Dark Matter leaves us after its Season 2 premiere, reminding viewers that on this series, even finding home doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found your way home.
And this season is venturing into completely new territory. Season 1 adapted Crouch’s 2016 novel, but Season 2 moves beyond the source material, with Crouch continuing as creator, showrunner and primary creative force behind the expanding story. Apple has ordered 10 episodes, with new installments arriving Fridays through October 30.
Early reviews suggest the series may also be evolving. Rather than simply piling more realities onto the screen, Season 2 increasingly examines the people trapped inside them — Daniela, Amanda, Ryan, Leighton and others whose lives have been permanently altered by Jason’s creation. The multiverse becomes less the show’s subject than the pressure cooker exposing who these people really are.
For Chicago audiences, there is another reason to embrace the series.
Dark Matter actually shoots in Chicago.
Season 2 production returned to Chicago in 2025, with filming throughout the city and surrounding communities, including a highly visible shoot in downtown Glencoe featuring Edgerton, Connelly and Fegley. Production records also identify Chicago as the principal Season 2 location.
That authenticity matters because Chicago isn’t treated like interchangeable scenery.
The city is essentially Dark Matter’s compass.
No matter how bizarre the Mattery becomes, recognizable streets, neighborhoods and landmarks tell us where we are — even when we have absolutely no idea which version of where we are.
Few television shows have used Chicago’s visual identity more dramatically.
So if you live here and haven’t watched Dark Matter, you’re missing something special: a sophisticated, sometimes dizzying, deeply human science-fiction series that turns our city into an infinite playground of roads not taken.
Or, to put it another way:
There’s only one Chicago in well… One Chicago, but there are countless Chicagos in the Dark Matter multiverse.
You only need to live in one of them to start watching. That is what Matters!
