Apple TV ‘Dark Matter’ Season 2 Episode 9 Review - Multiverse Collapse

The ninth episode, “How to Build the Box,” opens with Agent MacNamara (Chris Diamantopoulos) lecturing an imprisoned Jason variant who has been held for roughly two years. This marks the temporal breakpoint where the original Jasons began proliferating. This particular Jason has a wedding ring but no tattoo; he is a version connected to Laurel’s world (similar to the Jason who fell in love with Amanda and chose to stay). MacNamara claims he has figured out the Boxes’ power source, which involves quantum entanglement in an unseen way (later partially confirmed by Jason Prime’s theorizing).

Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), searching for Charlie, stumbles into this world and is immediately apprehended and placed in the same transparent cell. She has smuggled vials of Lilac Wings. She proposes a deal: she will explain how the Box works if MacNamara releases them. He agrees. They lead him into the Box. Jason distracts him by claiming there is a keyhole in the corner; while he looks, they forcibly drug him so he can perceive the Corridor.

MacNamara insists on opening a door and steps into an eccentric beach party filled with high spirits and oddly out-of-place attire. It is a celebration of the end of days due to an impending celestial calamity. He wanders far from the Box, entranced. Jason and Daniela lock the door behind him, stranding him. The world is a previously unseen Chicago that is about to be struck by a giant meteor. MacNamara realizes the truth too late and is left to the apocalypse. Earlier in the season, Jason had already thrust a multiversal counterpart of MacNamara (from Retro Chicago) into the Box, leaving that version stranded as well. This permanently removes MacNamara as a pursuer.

The episode reconnects with Jason 2’s cold call to Jason Prime from the end of a prior episode. Jason 2 explains that building the Box—the pinnacle of scientific achievement—demands complete and total sacrifice of everything except the work itself. It requires losing everything personal. The episode title comes from this philosophy rather than any literal how-to. Jason Prime’s own obsessive fixation on the Box has already driven his wife and son away.

While near a Box, Jason Prime encounters Amanda and Ryan (versions from Jason 2’s world) who emerge through it. He takes them to his apartment. Blair arrives (conveniently). The group discusses Leighton’s Pyramid and the problem of Boxes endlessly respawning. They formulate a plan: Blair will return to the original Box and insert a kill switch into its master code. Because all other Boxes draw power from that original one, deactivating it should shut down every Box and end multiversal travel entirely. This carries major consequences, including the incomplete quest by Amanda and a Jason for a plague cure in their world.

Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi) enters the Box to retrieve quantum computing parts needed for the Pyramid. The technical sequence is dense and somewhat obscure. More importantly, he reaches a depressing realization: his grand vision of using multiversal collaboration and the Box (and now the Pyramid) to improve life across realities has not paid off. The negatives of dangerous or failed universes have outweighed the positives. He has largely ignored repeated warnings from Velocity colleagues. It is left open whether he will abandon the Pyramid and the idea of a network connecting the multiverse for the betterment of infinite worlds. He is ambitious and driven but not portrayed as inherently evil.

In the episode’s strongest emotional thread, Charlie (Oakes Fegley) emerges in a world where his twin brother Max is still alive. In Charlie’s original world, Max died at age four because he never received the heart transplant that saved this version of him. Charlie quickly and convincingly explains the multiversal truth. Their interactions are warm and heartfelt. Charlie uses Max as a sounding board to process lifelong loss, anxiety about his parents potentially divorcing, and the implications of his father’s hyper-fixation on the Box. He achieves a measure of personal resolution and prepares to return before the ability to travel is removed by the kill-switch plan.

The pieces of the season’s endgame come into clearer alignment: MacNamara is eliminated through a calculated use of the multiverse’s dangers, a concrete plan exists to permanently shut down the Boxes, Leighton confronts the net harm of his ambitions, Jason 2 articulates the personal cost of the science, and Charlie gets a human-scale resolution to his search for Max. The episode balances high-concept sci-fi (quantum entanglement, the Pyramid, master codes) with character-driven moments, especially the Charlie–Max scenes.

Final Score - [9/10]