Review: Dark Matter Season 2, Episode 5: “Love and Be Loved”
Written by Blake Crouch & Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry
Directed by Alik Sakharov
With a series like Dark Matter that is so heavily serialized, it can be a gamble to hit the pause button and tell a standalone side story. Some fans are going to hate the lack of forward momentum. Others will enjoy the opportunity to explore the wider multiverse. For my part, as much as I wanted to see the next chapter in the ongoing story, I found this side story quite involving.
The story itself is actually quite simple. One of the Jasons that helped Jason and his family escape into the multiverse at the end of the first season, Jason 24, finds himself at a crossroads. He’s on the verge of suicide when he realizes that he has an ampule in his pocket; instead of embracing the end, he chooses to find a new world and try to find a place in it.
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We never find out precisely which world he finds. All we know is that he goes to find “his” mother. He learns that the Jason of this world died at the age of sixteen. So this is a new start for Jason 24 and the mother. As the episode unfolds, Jason 24 finds a few other versions of himself who found a refuge of sorts on this world, and he helps them find a new life and purpose as well. In the end, he makes a connection to a woman named Maria, a bookseller in Chicago.
It’s really that simple, and yet, it works tremendously well. It makes sense that we would be most invested in the Jason at the center of the tale. But this episode reminds us that the other Jasons, even the ones that “splintered off” from the original Jason as a result of his multiversal adventures, are real people with real lives of their own.
We’re so used to the idea that the other Jasons are single-minded, chasing after Daniela and “their” family, that it’s an interesting and novel idea to see the story of a Jason that learns to move on from all of that. Even when Jason 24 encounters the Daniela of his new world, he has already fallen in love with Maria. He’s told Maria the truth about his origins; Maria has also discovered the depth of Jason 24’s desire to “love and be loved”. Jason 24 has made his choice and found a purpose.
But one might still ask: why does this story matter? On the one hand, I think the writers just wanted the opportunity to explore the implications of their premise a bit more broadly. But also, this raises the possibility that Jasons can find a meaning and purpose in life beyond chasing down Daniela and Charlie. And it therefore follows that maybe Jason 2, for example, does not have to continue to be a villain. After all, the previous episode asked the audience to consider the possibility that Jason 2 could find redemption. While Jason 24 never did any of the horrible things that Jason 2 has done, Jason 24’s success in a second chance at life opens the door for other Jasons to do the same.
It also adds other possibilities to the story. Jason sees the other versions of himself as a clear and present danger. It hasn’t occurred to him that another Jason could actually be an ally. Given his experiences, his assumptions are reasonable, but now we see that some Jasons might just want to find their own path.
Ultimately it is a gamble for the writers to pause the main narrative to tell a side story that seemingly has nothing to do with the overall season arc. But as an experiment in exploring the wider multiverse of the Dark Matter tapestry, I think it more than succeeds.
