Since I missed out on the episode last week, we will be diving into Dark Matter Episodes 3 & 4 together. After the premiere episodes, the show slows down and becomes a tad bit less engaging. I mean, the plot is constantly moving ahead, but the fate of the multiverse and things moving in a circle are a curse the show can’t step away from. The most important aspect of the show till now has to be Joel Edgerton as both the Jasons. The slight change in stance, posture, and character twitches is what keeps things interesting. Till now, the show hasn’t dropped any bombs in the form of major twist and turns so we can anticipate those pretty soon, for now, lets take a look at episodes 3 & 4 and discuss what that ending means for the next half of the show.
Please be aware that the article contains spoilers.
Dark Matter Episode 3 “The Box” Recap:
Episode 3 of Dark Matter begins with Amanda receiving a frightening call from Leighton in the middle of the night, sharing the news that Daniela has been shot dead by Dawn. The news shocks her as she knows exactly how this changes the course of events.
Back at the quarantine compounds inside Velocity, Jason wakes up to find Leighton closely watching him. Leighton tells Jason that they were not prepared for his return after his sudden disappearance. Although he takes the blame for what has occurred, he believes that Jason is a threat to everyone and needs to be restrained for his own good.
Next, we see Detective Jamie Mason (Kate Eastman) interrogating Leighton about Jason’s whereabouts after failing to find him at the hospital, where he checked in, and later at the art show. She even mentions other Velocity employees who are also missing, making Leighton dread the investigation. Mason also questions Amanda to cross-check information. However, despite lying to the detective, Amanda is not pleased with the way Leighton is handling the situation.
What is inside the box?
Leighton and Amanda decide to speak to Jason again, believing that he has no memory past a certain point. To better understand the situation, they take Jason to see the box inside the lab that the “other” Jason made, which is a literal representation of Schrödinger’s cat experiment that Jason had been working on in his world.
It turns out that the other Jason had decided to enter the box himself when the dedicated employees he sent for the experiment failed to return. Curious to learn more, Jason enters the box, but there is nothing inside but alloy walls, leaving him even more confused about how he was able to teleport from his world to the other Jason’s world. He even watches a surveillance video of the other Jason entering the box and then crawling out of it, leaving everyone at Velocity confused.
Later, Amanda speaks to Jason, where he shares that he is not the one they have been believing him to be. This confusion leads Leighton to interview Jason again, but this time with Ryan’s presence, whom Jason has shared his impossible situation with.
Leighton accuses Jason of doing something to the other Jason. After leaving Ryan and Jason in the same room at the quarantine compound, Jason tells Ryan about Daniella’s death. When questioned about the other Jason’s motive and ideas, Ryan shares that the other Jason had asked him to prepare a psychedelic drug that would possibly alter the brain’s chemistry inside the box, leading the experiment to work successfully.
Why is Daniella suspicious about her husband’s behavior?
Meanwhile, the other Jason and Daniella meet for dinner, where Daniella reminds Jason that despite all the lovey-dovey affairs the two have been indulging in, it has been a while since they have been this intimate. This is also where Daniella senses a bit of oddness in Jason, considering he keeps forgetting basic things, for instance, a dinner party the couple had planned together. So, the other Jason tries to piece together the fuzzy pieces of Jason’s life by stalking common contacts through social media posts and casually questioning his son to know things better.
The following night, after the dinner party, Daniella gets a bit tipsy with her wine drinking and confronts her husband (the other Jason) about his odd, changed behavior lately. The other Jason cooks up a story to handle the situation about how a near-death experience after meeting Ryan made him more conscious about his life and changed his perspective toward the family. Later in the night, while going through Jason’s research things at his home office, the other Jason stumbles on a box that contains what seems like a birth and a death certificate of a baby.
Dark Matter Episode 3 “The Box” Ending Explained:
The scene then cuts back to Jason at the Velocity compounds, where Amanda barges into his room and tells him that she is going to fix what she thinks has been wronged. The two then try to flee the scene; however, Leighton and Dawn follow them. To get away from them, Jason and Amanda somehow get inside the box, mistakenly chopping off Dawn’s fingers while closing the big alloy doors.
The ending of Dark Matter episode 3 shows Jason and Amanda inside the box with only a few cartridges of the psychedelic drug that might take them somewhere away from Leighton and his team. Amanda sets an alarm for 3 minutes and injects the drug into Jason first and then into herself. Upon injecting, the two almost immediately pass out and, 3 minutes later, wake up to find themselves inside the never-ending multidimensional space that may be open to infinite worlds they could have never imagined.
Dark Matter Episode 4 “The Corridor” Recap:
After the events of Episode 3, where Amanda and Jason find themselves in the infinite corridor with doors leading to different universes, Leighton, who claims that he has nothing in his current universe and in Velocity Labs, impulsively gets into the box and also teleportes himself to the corridor.
Meanwhile, Amanda and Jason are unable to figure out how to navigate this infinite maze and which of them would lead them home. So, they open one of the doors that Jason finds an instinct for and reach a reality where the world is in a post-apocalyptic, ash-filled form. They realize that the box moves them into a different reality but the location of the box seems to still be at the exact same place where Velocity Labs is in the other Jason’s world. The world doesn’t hold any clues for them, so when they are on and about realizing what could be done, they see a building collapsing in front of them and barely escape back to the box.
This incident, however, helps them understand one thing: that they need to take the drug to get back to the corridor. However, if they don’t spend too much time in a reality, they need not take the drug again in order to navigate. They also realize that the high of the drug isn’t as strong after the first two times.
After a major mishap where they open the door to reality without any atmosphere, Amanda gets extremely anxious and starts running in the corridor to find an exit. However, there isn’t one, as Jason explains the infinite possibilities of the multiverse. They realize that in order for the drug to help them navigate the place better before they run out of all of it, they would need to find food and water.
What does Amanda realize about Leighton?
On opening another one of the doors, Jason and Amanda find themselves back in the Velocity Labs. Only this time, they have reached the exact same time the two of them are trying to run away by getting into the box. This reality feels almost exactly like their own, but they are just a tad bit late, which allows Dawn (as instructed by Leighton) to shoot this reality’s Amanda, killing her.
This freaks the fuck out of Amanda, and she and Jason rush back into the box to get to the corridor. They keep opening doors, but nothing takes them anywhere concrete. So, a really frustrated Amanda decides to open a door and step out. In spite of a blazing snowstorm, she decides to go out, but she is unable to take the cold. Jason somehow manages to carry her and find a shelter in an abandoned house. When they wake up the next morning, the box is submerged under a thick layer of snow.
On the other hand, the other Jason has been at it, trying to get Daniela and Charlie to like him more and more. On his drive with Charlie, he allows him to speed up, which makes Charlie feel happy but weird at the change. Similarly, when he goes to Jason’s college, he randomly decides to quit the job, leaving the class midway.
Why does the other Jason go to Leighton in Jason’s world?
After leaving his job, the other Jason goes to Leighton’s house in Jason’s world. In this world, Leighton has no idea what Velocity is, and he only has a vague idea of starting a company that Ryan and Jason would be heading together. So, he dismisses any of his investment ideas.
However, the other Jason is cunning and has his way around people. So, he somehow convinces Leighton to take a psychoactive drug with him and use the box – the same box he used to send the real Jason into his reality. We don’t see where they go, but from the likes of it, he must have shown Leighton his family members alive and kicking in an alternate universe. He then also tells him that he is, in fact, not the Jason from his reality, and he needs his help to continue exploring his work with the Box.
What does Jason learn about controlling the box?
Meanwhile, Amanda and Jason are trapped in the snow-clad world, trying to figure out how to find the box now that everything is covered in a thick layer of snow. While talking and actually bonding for the first time, Amanda tells Jason about the time in her childhood when her father would take her to a whiteboard place that was sort of submerged in snow. Jason asks her if she had that image in her mind when they opened the door to this world.
This makes him realize that the box’s control lies in the imagination of the person who is about to use it. So, determined to find the box, Amanda and Jason step out. They use the GPS tracker they had found, but when it gets discharged and stops working, Amanda takes out her manual compass and uses the Box’s magnetic field to track it. When they finally get to the location, they dig in and manage to step right back in.
After reaching the box, Jason tells Amanda about Max and tries to understand why the other Jason chose not to kill him and just get a hold of his life instead. He understands that the other Jason has everything except Daniela and Charlie. This prompts him to be quick and understand how to get back to his world.
Dark Matter Episode 4 “The Corridor” Ending, Explained:
Who is Max?
The episode also focuses on the possible reason Daniela is distant from the real Jason. In the first episode itself, we saw how she was drawing away from him, focusing on things she had to prioritize herself until the other Jason showed up and took a real interest in her wishes and wants.
We learn that Daniela and Jason had twins. The older one, who was weaker than Charlie, was named Max – he had a low heartbeat and could not really survive for a long time. The grief of losing their beloved son had set in within the family. Today, when the other Jason was supposed to be there to celebrate Charlie’s birthday and Max’s loss, he went ahead and went to Leighton.
Charlie and Daniela did not put it against him because he did show up handsomely late with a brand new car for Charlie as a gift. Now, the original Jason would have spent the day with the family and went on to live his life the way he did: distant, lost, and unhappy. However, the other Jason chose to step up and do something wild – something the family did not expect.
Now, how that would pan out for him in the longer run is still unknown, but so far, his straight-forward outlook is doing him good; now that he has also teamed up with Leighton is the real Jason’s world their finances, which were one of the problems that the family was facing is also fixed.
Will Leighton live or die?
The ending of Dark Matter Episode 4 brings us back to the corridor with wounded Leighton trying his best to stay afloat after having opened too many doors to no avail.
We can see that he is almost fatally wounded, with blood dripping down his body, and his light flickers to its end. The final shot of the episode sees him opening another door, which looks like another dystopia with the sun’s scorching heat coming down hard. Dejected by that sight, he closes the door and heads to the next one. Will he survive and find Jason and Amanda? At this point, it’s hard to say. His wounds are not going to heal automatically until he opens the door to a world where there’s a hospital that can magically fix him. However, anything is possible in the multiverse, so let’s not stick to that theory just yet.
