This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here!When Jason Dessen and his reclaimed family left a world full of turmoil for an unknown alternate reality at the end of Dark Matter season 1, that could easily have been the end of the story for Apple TV’s ambitious sci-fi series. As Jason closes the door behind him, the quantum tunnel stretches off into forever, allowing the audience to decide what future lay in store for the Dessens after the ostensibly happy ending.“I loved the notion of leaving the audience in the corridor, because we didn’t know at that point if we would do a second season or not,” admits showrunner Blake Crouch. “We’ve left these little cookie crumbs for what might happen, but now you’re in the infinite corridor with doors leading to all possible realities of what this story could become.”cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Based on Crouch’s bestselling novel of the same name, Dark Matter follows physics professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) after he’s kidnapped by an alternate version of himself and thrust into a labyrinth of parallel realities. As Jason searches for a way back to his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), he discovers other lives he might have lived and learns more about the giant Schrödinger’s box that makes the journey possible.In season 2, Dark Matter will move from themes of regret and reunion to survival and fulfillment.“I think season 1 in some ways is a very idealistic story,” Crouch says. “This man who’s in love with his life but has some dissatisfaction is thrust through this wild sci-fi journey where he learns that the things that bugged him about his life are actually what make it special. But now what? How do you keep your family when all of the idealistic trappings fall away, and you have nothing, and you’re stuck trying to find a world that’s safe enough to settle in?”Edgerton agrees that the second season has a deeper morality to explore. “Season 2 has this feeling of what happens next when you release technology,” he says. “It’s like a gun: a gun could sit on a table and not hurt anyone for a hundred years, but what hand holds the gun? Season 2 is watching different hands hold the gun and what they do with it. How does it influence ego? How does it become a tool to help the world? How does it become destructive? How does it become a selfish, personal tool?”After all, the Dessens weren’t the only ones traveling to different worlds through the box last season. Venture capitalist Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi), who financed the quantum physics project that built the reality-bridging technology, was also seen confidently skipping between worlds.“The Leighton that we see at the very end of season 1 is ‘hedonistic Leighton,’” Okeniyi explains, referring to the fancy-free playboy version of his character who wasn’t originally involved with the project. “That Leighton is a Leighton who’s traversing the multiverse. He’s having the time of his life, he fully knows how to do it, and when you’ve done every space drug possible, what’s at the end for that person? I think there’s a full-circle, transcendent thing that will happen with a human being like that.”Crouch points out that the original Leighton took a broader view of what the box could be used for, and that vision might coalesce in season 2: “He had a big dream of what this box could help them achieve. There are worlds out there where cancer has been solved. There are worlds out there where global conflict has been sorted out. There’s a part of him that is idealistic in terms of what the box could possibly do. So I think we’re going to see in season two Leighton pursuing his original dream for what the box was.”Taken together, Crouch and Okeniyi describe a man whose desire to change the world is inseparable from his desire to leave his mark on it. “He thinks about it from a very industrialist, capitalist place,” Okeniyi says. “His intention was, ‘I want to change the world,’ but I think he wanted to be awarded the medal of changing the world rather than really wanting to change the world. Those are two different things… I think there’s a certain level of ego for people who want to be the savior.”There’s also Jason 2, the inventor of the box who seemed to have seen the error of his ways in the final moments of season 1. Edgerton explains that there’s still plenty to explore for the version of his character who started this whole mess. “What is Jason 2’s experience of guilt?” Edgerton posits. “How does that amplify as the walls of the narrative around his deception start to fall and he goes, ‘I shouldn’t have done this, and I always knew it was the wrong thing to do, and how do I try and at least atone for it in some way?’ I started to feel like Jason 2 was maybe as interesting or perhaps an even more interesting journey than Jason 1.”All of the characters’ journeys were much more open-ended for Crouch and his writing partner, Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, in season 2 since the entirety of the novel upon which Dark Matter is based was adapted in the first season.“It was one of the biggest challenges I think I’ve ever faced creatively,” Crouch admits. “The entire book had been exhausted of content… we left ourselves in that corridor as well [with] wide open choices. Where do you go when you’re literally writing about the multiverse where anything can happen? We had to come up with what that was from scratch, which I’d never done before, and it was exhilarating and terrifying.”The fresh narrative opportunities also allowed Crouch to address concerns some Dark Matter fans had about how Jason was able to pay for food and hotels in all of the multiverses he visited in season 1. “It was all people could talk about on Reddit: ‘Where are you getting money?’” notes Crouch. “One of the very first things we wrote on our whiteboard was ‘going to answer the money question.’ We heard the questions and the curiosity from fans… and, alright, lesson learned. People want the details.”Edgerton explains that the more embedded the Dessen family becomes in the multiverse, the more important such matters will become.“There was real care and attention in season 2 put into this idea of documentation and things like money… the idea of trying to enroll Charlie in a high school and then find out you need his records,” the actor considers. “How do you explain that? ‘Oh, wow, our house burnt down!’ But you need ID, so then how do you get ID? And Jason having to go to somebody who can make him a fake ID, and then what can of worms does that open?”Despite efforts to stay off the grid, the Dessens can’t help but run into Leighton, Ryan, Amanda and the other characters from season one, and that’s by design. “One of the big themes of season 2 is this notion of entanglement,” says Crouch. “There’s a reason why this group of characters seems to keep finding each other, why they seem to keep crossing paths in a seemingly infinite universe of different realities, and playing with that was sort of the thing that unlocked the season for us.”Ultimately, Dark Matter may be all about choosing between countless realities, but season 2 appears determined to explore the consequences that follow once that choice has been made.Dark Matter season 2 premieres Friday, August 28 on Apple TV.The post Dark Matter Season 2 Preview: Joel Edgerton on What to Expect from Infinite Possibilities appeared first on Den of Geek.