Dark Matter: Blake Crouch on Apple TV + Adaptation

Wwhen we met Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) on Apple TV+ Dark matter, it quickly becomes clear that he is a committed family man who cares deeply about his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and his teenage son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). But as a humble college professor who gave up what could have been a groundbreaking career in quantum physics, he sometimes still thinks about the path not yet taken.

That all changes when a mysterious masked man kidnaps Jason off the streets of Chicago one night and transports him to an alternate version of his life, where he chose work over family 15 years earlier. In this universe, Jason is an award-winning physicist who built a metal cube that acts as a gateway to multiple realities. And it was that Jason, Jason2, who kidnapped our Jason in a strategy to exchange places with him.

Based on showrunner Blake Crouch’s best-selling 2016 novel of the same name Dark matter follows Jason as he struggles to return to his own reality and reunite with his wife and son. The story and the show, the first two episodes of which are now streaming, explore the “what ifs” of existence, which Crouch says he was reflecting on in his own life when he came up with the idea for the book.

“I was in my early 30s,” he says. “And I felt like I’d been alive long enough to look back at all the paths I took and didn’t take, and start to wonder what if I had done this instead of that.”

This line of thinking is also what won over executive producer Matt Tolmach (The incredible Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming) on board for adaptation. “I was immediately drawn to the existential questions that run through the heart of this series, which are so universal and deeply rooted,” he told TIME in an email. “These are questions that I think most people ask themselves at some point in their lives: Is this all there is? the forks in the road? These are basic questions, but in Blake’s world, they open up a can of worms.”

See more information: The Best Sci-Fi TV Shows of All Time

What is it Dark matter about?

Without revealing the game, Dark matter sends Jason on what at first appears to be a wild goose chase into the box’s multiverse, an endless corridor that serves as a physical manifestation of human consciousness. The mind-bending corridor contains an infinite number of doors that lead to an infinite number of parallel universes that represent every possible outcome of every possible event. Think of Schrödinger’s cat on a grand scale.

The scientific concepts on which the show’s plot depends have the potential to send viewers down the rabbit hole of quantum mechanics. But Crouch doesn’t think it’s necessary to worry about details. “Science is there for whoever wants it,” he says. “But we did our best not to hit people over the head with it. All you really need to know is that you enter the box, take a drug, the box becomes an infinite hallway, and behind every door in that hallway is a different world.”

How the show brings the book to life

In adaptation Dark matter to the screen, Crouch saw an opportunity to explore a path not taken in his book. Although the novel is told almost exclusively from Jason’s point of view, the series alternates between a variety of character perspectives, giving viewers more insight into the different relationships.

“Some years later Dark matter was published, there was this lingering thing in my mind about not having really devoted time to the Daniela and Jason2 storyline,” he says. “And I always wondered what that story would have been like, if we had followed this woman who lives with a man who looks like her husband, but isn’t, and she’s slowly realizing that something is wrong. It seemed like a missed opportunity. So when the chance to do the show came up, I immediately thought, ‘Well, that would be amazing.’

But in establishing the laws of the series’ universe, Crouch also realized that he would have to eliminate elements of the novel that he had become attached to. “There’s a moment in the book that I love when Jason is alone in the hallway and sees another version of himself stumbling around, who is cut up and naked and has obviously been through something terrible,” says Crouch. “But I realized I had broken the rules in my own book by doing that scene. It actually wasn’t logical. It was hard to let go of.”

Entering the multiverse fray

As the show got closer to becoming a reality, there was also a huge increase in multiverse-centric content to consider. When Crouch published Dark matter in 2016, it was before the multiverse boom caused by Marvel films, Everything everywhere at the same time, and more. Nearly 10 years later, a plethora of universe-hopping stories have entered the mainstream, all earning both praise and criticism. “The question was how can we differentiate ourselves a little bit,” says Crouch.

For Tolmach, this meant establishing a tone that would make viewers buy into the show’s fantastical sci-fi premise. “When Blake and I started working on this adaptation, there weren’t that many shows or movies in the multiverse space,” he says. “But what attracted me most [with Dark Matter] this idea was happening in a very grounded world, among very relatable characters – not superheroes, regular people exploring paths not taken. It still feels very original and unique to me.”

Ultimately, it is Dark matterCrouch’s engaging characters believe will keep viewers coming back for more. “You can do whatever you want in storytelling if you make the audience fall in love with the characters,” he says. “We tried to inoculate ourselves against the craze for alternate reality fiction by saying, ‘Let’s just make great characters that people care about and hope want to follow them on their journey.'”