Dark Matter Season 2 Finally Explains Leighton Vance's Original Plan For The Box

Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Dark Matter" Season 2, Episode 2, "A Perfect World."

Despite it's big-brained premise and the allure (or is it the threat?) of some of the nerdiest concepts you'll ever see on streaming TV, "Dark Matter" isn't really all that interested in keeping viewers on their back foot. It might take a little time and patience to receive the answers to questions we've been asking ever since the first season, sure. But this is one show where our ability and willingness to "trust the process" actually tends to pay off.

The second episode of Season 2, titled "A Perfect World," wastes no time proving this point. After the premiere finally returned to the character of Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi), the one man outside of Joel Edgerton's "Jason2" most responsible for unleashing the multiverse-hopping chaos of the box upon us, this week's episode slows down and brings us right back to the beginning of it all. In the opening flashback scene, we're shown the moment that the box first becomes operational and goes online — along with the motivational speech that Leighton makes as the CEO of Velocity Labs.

Where Season 1 mostly showed us a corrupt and obsessive Leighton who had long ago lost his way, here we see how his mission into the multiverse genuinely came from idealistic roots. Apparently, Leighton intended to use the box to discover parallel worlds that have found cures for all their most existential concerns — climate change, disease, poverty, and even war itself — and bring that knowledge back to their own reality for the betterment of humankind. It's a sobering, insightful, and slightly tragic reveal, given we know where this well-intentioned path eventually takes Leighton and many others in that room. 

Maybe the road to hell truly is paved with the best of intentions. After all, Murphy's Law stipulates that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. No show better sums that up than the endless amount of possibilities explored throughout "Dark Matter." As much as fans may have balked at that controversial change in the premiere to completely undo Season 1's hopeful ending, it admittedly lines up with the core idea driving this series. And nobody represents the danger of this more than the cautionary tale of Leighton Vance.

After beginning Season 1 as one of the primary antagonists, Leighton ended up receding into the background as the show went on and his multiverse travels fell by the wayside. Season 2, which significantly expands Blake Crouch's book of the same name, appears as if it's making up for that choice and then some, foregrounding Leighton and further exploring his grand plan. Unlike before, when his most defining characteristic was his willingness to kill both the original Jason Dessen and his friend Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson) if it meant protecting the secrets of the box, here we're shown how even a villain like Leighton started out as a hero.

What's more, we're now getting to see how he's attempting to pick up right where he left off. As another version of Leighton tells Amanda Lucas (Alice Braga), the Leighton of Jason2's world is busy setting up a "technology-trading network across realities" by recruiting various versions of himself. This includes a meditation guru who goes by the name Oluko, which essentially means "teacher." Should this live up to the potential of his original vision, well, Season 2 could be even more compelling than we thought.

Are we watching a villain's redemption arc unfold before our very eyes? The possibility is an intriguing one. There's certainly no excusing any of Leighton Vance's actions in the past, to be clear. His actions doomed his trusted engineer and first-ever box pilot Blair Caplan (Amanda Brugel) to a chilling and lonely fate in that world overrun by giant murder hornets, as we glimpsed back in Season 1. That's not even mentioning his attempt to kill Amanda Lucas and Jason when they attempted to flee Velocity through the box. And, yes, his intentions to build "a perfect world" are almost certainly fraught with peril and maybe even destined to fail.

But "Dark Matter" has shown a willingness to look at the world in shades of grey, not a moral sense of black and white. Jason2 may have been a monster to try and ruthlessly take over Jason's life of domestic bliss with Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and Charlie (Oakes Fegley), but creator Blake Crouch and his writers have humanized him in a multitude of ways. He ended Season 1, after all, by helping Jason and his family escape. Likewise, perhaps Leighton might view this as an opportunity to make things right — perhaps even embarking on a path towards atonement and redemption. Whether viewers accept this or not (let alone characters like Jason and Amanda and Blair), however, is another matter entirely.

Luckily, we have an entire season to see if the creative team can pull something like this off. Of course, this is assuming that's what they have in store for Leighton Vance in the first place. We'll find out, as new episodes of "Dark Matter" Season 2 stream on Apple TV every Friday.