Dark Matter Season 2 Subtly Adapts The Most Tragic Scene From Blake Crouch's Book

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Dark Matter" Season 2, Episode 5, "Love and Be Loved."

Did anyone ever expect an hour like this from "Dark Matter," the Apple TV series that has always told a fairly straightforward, episodic narrative ... until now? In all fairness, this ambitious second season has been nothing but one surprise after another so far. Prior weeks have given us "For All Mankind" tie-ins, "Star Wars" references, and plenty more nerdy Easter eggs as showrunner Blake Crouch essentially plots a sequel to his own original novel. But this latest one slams the brakes on the ongoing narrative, brings us all the way back to the events of the Season 1 finale, and delivers arguably the most emotional, moving installment the series has ever seen.

"Love and Be Loved" marks a first for this mind-bending, reality-hopping saga. To date, the focus has remained squarely on our original Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) and his efforts to protect his family and make a new home amid this vast, infinite multiverse. But just as the action appears to have been building towards a tipping point, Crouch and his writers instead opt for a standalone episode revolving around a version of Jason that we've never even met before. What follows is a wholly original minidrama about this Jason learning to let go of the only family he's ever known, process his grief, and allow himself to move on to whatever life has in store for him next.

More impressively, however? In the process, the episode actually ends up adapting the darkest, most tragic moment from the original book. But rather than a direct, 1:1 retelling of when the original Jason was at his lowest possible point, Crouch instead re-contextualizes this arc for a very different story.

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This wouldn't be the first time the sophomore season of "Dark Matter" has managed to take advantage of an opportunity to find room for aspects that Season 1 had to leave out. Just one week ago, Episode 4 brought back a minor but crucial aspect from the book — an alternate method of ingesting the drug compound in the ampoules in order to use the box and travel the multiverse. This time around, Blake Crouch has found a way to depict one of the most harrowing moments from his book. And, to his credit, it's done as tastefully as possible.

To fully appreciate what Episode 5 pulls off, let's wind back the clocks back to Season 1 of "Dark Matter." In the later episodes, the original Jason is left on his own by Amanda Lucas (Alice Braga) to find his way back to his original world and save his family from the intruder "Jason2." Instead, he finds himself traveling to realities almost like his own, but not quite. There, he keeps finding versions of himself with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) where they're still happily married and enjoying the innocent life that our Jason wishes he still had.

What the show left out, however, is just how desperate Jason gets in the book. At the end of his rope and with his ampoules rapidly running out, he all but gives up hope of ever returning home and surrenders to his darkest thoughts. In one bleak chapter, he drinks himself into a stupor, becomes a vagrant living anonymously in his own neighborhood, and nearly loses sight of who he is and where he truly belongs. Season 2 revisits this general idea, but with a significant twist.

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Viewers, of course, just experienced a very similar version of events in "Dark Matter" Season 2. Here, we flash back to the Season 1 finale and follow this alternate Jason Dessen. After watching his wife and son depart to a new home with the original Jason, he decides to leave his original world behind forever. He winds up reconnecting with his elderly mother Ellie (Linda Bove) in a different reality, though he struggles to adjust to the crushing loneliness of no longer having his family by his side. We then experience an eerily familiar set of circumstances: Jason slowly drinking himself to death, his rapidly deteriorating mental state, and a very dire ending should he continue on this self-destructive spiral.

But, encouragingly enough, Blake Crouch and episode co-writer Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry pull Jason out of this depressive episode and use this to tell the most hopeful story we've seen so far. After a stern talk with his deaf mother, he decides to make the most of this new chapter of his life. He cleans himself up, fixes up their house, and even processes his complicated feelings by reading Marcel Proust's epic "In Search of Lost Time" novels — a series with similarly weighty themes about life, regrets, and the passage of time (and which, incredibly, links "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" together).

Yet, it's only when he takes in other Jasons wandering this same world and discovers the prospects of new love in Maria (Angela Sarafyan) that this episode transforms into a found-family narrative about one lonesome individual in this vast multiverse defying fate and living his own life. And it's, by far, the highlight of Season 2. New episodes of "Dark Matter" stream on Apple TV every Friday.