Apple TV’s ‘Inception meets Black Mirror’ thriller has just overtaken Severance worldwide

If you follow streaming sci-fi at all, you know Apple TV+ has quietly piled up a lineup that knocks the stuffing out of half its competitors — but without the widespread hype you'd expect for shows of this calibre. While Severance or Foundation grab most of the headlines, it's actually one of Apple's less flashy series that's currently punching above its weight on the global charts. Enter Dark Matter, which, if you haven't clocked it yet, has just leapfrogged Severance in the rankings and isn't showing any sign of dropping back.

Dark Matter hit number four worldwide on Apple TV+ as of 4 October, outpacing Severance, and holding its own behind only Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, and Silo.

Season Two: Off Book and on the Rise

Dark Matter comes from Blake Crouch — who's upfront about finding the whole second season 'genuinely terrifying', since season one already burned through his 2016 novel. There's been no easy fall-back plan: having faithfully adapted the original story, the show had to go completely off-piste for its next act. Season two dropped on 28 August and has kept viewers hooked with fresh episodes each Friday, all building towards an end-of-October finale. As a result, the show hasn't just maintained its audience — it's grown it, with FlixPatrol's stats showing it jumping back and forth between fourth and eighth in the US, and climbing steadily in countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, and Armenia.

Blake Crouch described the daunting leap into season two after finishing his source material in fairly blunt terms for Collider:

'Being off-book for the second season literally scared the shit out of me, because we didn't save anything in the book. We blew through everything.'

Still, the risk seems to have paid off. The current run features a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score — even a touch higher than the debut season. Speaking to GamesRadar+, Crouch said working from a blank page was at first much tougher, but 'totally freeing' once he found his stride. Oddly enough, it's Joel Edgerton who sums up the vibe best with an almost-morality play take on parallel universes: for him, season two is like watching what happens when different people get hold of the same dangerous piece of kit — echoing his comment to Den of Geek about the gun that harms nobody, until someone picks it up.

Building Out the World

The biggest grumble the first season caught was that decent supporting actors didn’t get much of a say, because everything was anchored to one man's midlife sci-fi crisis. That's changed in round two. Jennifer Connelly's Daniela moves to centre stage, while Alice Braga (Amanda) and Jimmi Simpson (Ryan) all get their turns to carry the action. Behind the curtain, Crouch and executive producer Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry have said they mapped out the series as a proper trilogy, plotting season three simultaneously with two — so, in theory, there's a proper endgame ready to go.

Crouch spelled out the intention for this arc, stressing they wanted to tell one complete story, beginning, middle, and end, and hinting pretty strongly that the current season lines up the pieces for another chapter. Trouble is, Apple hasn't yet signed off on that final season, so whether the mapped-out ending actually happens will entirely depend on a renewal.

• Joel Edgerton leads as Jason Dessen, a physicist snatched into alternate realities, forced to contend with another version of himself who could well destroy his family and his life.
• Jennifer Connelly plays Daniela, whose role deepens in the new episodes.
• Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson both see their parts expanded from the book's structure, each offering a fresh angle as the multiverse stakes ramp up.
• The show was conceived by Blake Crouch, adapting his own novel, with Jack Ben-Zekry on executive producing duties.