‘Dark Matter’ Season 2: Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly Talk New Season and Using The Box to Travel to India (EXCLUSIVE)

For anyone who has watched “Dark Matter”, the sci-fi series on Apple TV starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, going into ”The Box” invokes instant anxiety. The Box, conceived as a brilliant idea by Edgerton’s physicist Jason Dessen in the first season, allows anyone under the influence of a particular psychoactive drug to achieve quantum superposition and access a multiverse where different versions of them and their loved ones exist. 

In an exclusive chat with Variety India, the actors from “Dark Matter” Season 2, Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, were asked if they’d ever consider stepping into a box similar to the one from the show that instantly teleports them and lets them experience different places and cultures, like India, perhaps? For actors who inhabit a multiverse of characters in their lifetime, it would be an interesting acting exercise.

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Edgerton is quick to dismiss the idea, but with a caveat. “I would not get in The Box if it took me to alternate realities of my own life, because I'd be afraid of disrupting all of the wonderful things I have in my life. But if you gave me a box that could save me from having to go to the airport and deliver me to India, that would be fantastic! I could just walk out the door and be, you know, somewhere new. That would be unbelievable. But I wouldn't change anything in my life.“

The Australian actor has been to India twice—once in 2008 to shoot his film “The Waiting City” in Kolkata, and again in 2017 to promote “Bright,” a Netflix fantasy action film he starred in alongside Will Smith and Noomi Rapace. 

His co-star, Jennifer Connelly, whose character on “Dark Matter”, Daniela, continues to live with the consequences of The Box’s fallout, echoes the sentiment and offers another alternative. “If you could create another reality, if there could be a version of oneself that could control time so that you could immediately be in another place and then immediately get back, that would be amazing.” The Box might not be the device for that, but Connelly’s off-screen partner, Paul Bettany, plays the Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And he might just know another cube—the Tesseract—that could help with interdimensional travel.

“Dark Matter” Season 2 picks up with the Dessen family—Jason, Daniela and their son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley)—who escaped their world and slowly settled into their life on World 26. However, Jason’s obsession with the box and Daniela’s growing paranoia about her husband begin to threaten their relationship. Speaking of their characters’ individual conflicts this season, Edgerton hinted at how Season 2 will explore how much Jason 1 and Jason 2 might be alike or different. “We start to see Jason 1, not necessarily being as good a person as we had judged him simply in Season 1.” 

While Connelly had described "Dark Matter" Season 1 as one man’s Odyssey to return home to his wife and son as external factors drove them apart, she elaborated on the Dessens' struggles for Season 2 being more internal. “There's this really interesting drama that's more psychological. The family may need to separate for reasons that are internal. It becomes its own kind of quest of reuniting and rebuilding on a more psychological level, which still happens within the grand spectacle of the show. It’s very human and introspective and at the same time quite big and mechanical in its fantasticness and scale.

Season 2 will follow three timelines. While the first tracks the Dessen family, in the second timeline, Amanda (Alice Braga) and Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) are on a mission of their own as they traverse through the multiverse. And in the third timeline, Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi) continues to travel using The Box to find his “perfect” world, while Blair (Amanda Brugel), who has finally decided to leave the world she was stuck in, tries to stop Leighton before he causes irreparable damage to reality.

The 10-episode “Dark Matter” Season 2 will begin streaming its first episode on Apple TV on August 28, 2026, with new episodes arriving weekly until October 30, 2026.