Who is Alex in Dark Matter? Theories

The second season of Apple TV’s ‘Dark Matter’ continues to expand the multiverse created after a version of Jason Dessen tries to steal another’s life. Each choice leads to a new pathway and a new version, creating countless variations in the characters’ journeys and endings. In between this, we are introduced to a woman named Laurel, who becomes a safe space for travelers seeking help. As the number and versions of travelers increase, she starts keeping records of her visitors. While most of her list echoes the names we already know, one name stands out: Alex. It is mentioned in passing and is easy to miss. But the context in which it is mentioned makes it an incredibly important detail. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Alex is a Mysterious Multiverse Traveler

In the eighth episode of Season 2, ‘Dark Matter’ chooses to take a break from all the different worlds and limits the scope of the story to just one room. This is the same place that Charlie ends up in when he asks for help from the Box in the previous episode. He meets a woman named Laurel who seems to have transformed the room into a welcoming space for visitors, and she immediately recognizes Charlie, suggesting she has met some version of Jason before. The eighth episode reveals that she knows much more than expected. It turns out that the Box crashed into her house when a version of Jason and Amanda were in desperate need of help. Laurel saved their lives, helped them recuperate, and gave them a safe space, which they would later return to when they needed a break from their travels.

Laurel is delighted to meet them, but it takes a while to fully grasp the scope of the travelers within the Box. While her original visitors keep coming back until they eventually decide to stay, she also hosts other visitors of different variations. When her Jason and Amanda return, she updates them on the visitor log. She names Leighton, Blair, Ryan, and other versions of Jason and Amanda. She also mentions “an Alex,” but hearing Blair’s name catches Amanda off guard, and the list is not discussed again. Still, it is curious that a character who has never been mentioned before on the show is so casually set up as another multiverse traveler. Since details matter in the world of ‘Dark Matter,’ this is a detail worth holding on to and keeping an eye out for.

The rest of the episode focuses on the familiar travelers again, and there is no mention or further visits from the Alex that only Laurel has crossed paths with so far. Still, it does raise the question of their identity. To begin with, Alex is a gender-neutral name, and no pronouns have been used to describe them. Moreover, because nothing else is added on the matter, we have no idea how this person is related to the other characters, or who they must be if Jason1’s theory of quantum entanglement is correct. This person has to be connected to Jason in some way because the whole thing started to unravel after he made some questionable choices. So far, everyone who has been in the Box is either his family member or a friend/co-worker from Jason2’s world where the Box was made, which serves as a major hint.

Alex is Likely the Third Person Who Entered the Box

At this point, we have seen Jason’s family in different variations, but almost always consisting of Daniela, Charlie, and Max. We also meet Daniela’s stepfather,r but he hasn’t entered the fray yet. In fact, anyone we haven’t seen enter the box is unlikely to be this mysterious visitor, because the traveling is purely multiversal. There are no time travelers, so any future traveler is already scrapped from the list. This means we have to keep going back into the past, which leads us back to the world of Jason2. When Jason1 woke up in this parallel world, he became aware of the Box and what it can do. At this point, he was told that three people had entered the Box. The first was Blair and the second was Jason. When they didn’t return, Leighton had to turn towards volunteers who would go in knowing what they were risking.

Not surprisingly, he got a curious volunteer to be the third person to enter the Box. This volunteer is unnamed and soon forgotten, as we are inundated with the myriad complexities of the Box and all the other possibilities it can give rise to, as more versions of people make choices inside and outside of it. Since each choice Jason1 and later Jason2 made inside the Box leads to the creation of more variants, it is not too far-fetched to believe that this unnamed volunteer also survived long enough to give rise to more variants. Since so many Jasons, Amandas, and Leightons, among others, have been crisscrossing across the universe, one of them was bound to run into this third person. But interestingly, none of them did. Either this, or that they did cross paths with this unnamed traveler but didn’t know enough about them to recognize them.

Since this traveler had been on their own, it makes sense that they too would have craved help, even if in the form of basic human company, and landed at Laurel’s door. Thus, Alex may be that third traveler who went in after Jason2. The fact that the show didn’t name-drop them until the Laurel episode means it’s about time we were introduced to this lone, unknown figure. With the amount of thought that goes into the details of the complex world of ‘Dark Matter,’ it seems unlikely that a name would be mentioned without any significance to the plot. Perhaps the show’s creators simply want us to know there is someone else out there. Whether or not we get to meet them, and how and when that happens, remains to be seen.

Read More: Who is Agent Mitchel McNamara? Who Plays Him in Dark Matter?