Warning! Contains Spoilers For Apple TV+’s Dark Matter.

Christopher Nolan has never revisited Inception with a sequel, but a new Apple TV+ sci-fi show could be its perfect spiritual follow-up. Of all the movies Christopher Nolan has directed, Inception is perhaps the only one that perfectly paves the way for a follow-up prequel, sequel, or spin-off. While a prequel could explore the origins and usage of Inception‘s central dream machine in the military, a sequel could walk through Cobb and his team’s future dream exploration adventures. A spin-off, on the other hand, could dive deeper into the story of one of the main characters involved in Cobb’s Inception mission.

Unfortunately, despite the expansion potential, Christopher Nolan seems uninterested in revisiting the film. Since The Dark Knight movies are the only sequels he has worked on, the director seemingly has an unwritten rule of moving on to a whole new standalone project after finishing one film. Owing to this, Inception 2 will likely never happen. However, an Apple TV+ show seems eerily similar to Inception in more ways than one and can be enjoyed by anyone who loved the mind-bending Nolan flick.

Inception & Dark Matter’s Similarities Explained

From Mind-Altering Drugs To Grieving Male Leads, The Two Share Many Story Beats

Apple TV+’s Dark Matter has nothing to do with dream manipulation. However, like Inception, its main characters possess the technology to construct their own realities by injecting themselves with mind-altering drugs. While the characters in Inception enter a dream state after taking strong sedatives, the ones in Dark Matter inject themselves with a drug that shuts off their prefrontal cortex. Similarly, Inception‘s characters use their imaginations to design their dreamscapes by accessing the dream world through the PASIV device. Meanwhile, Dark Matter‘s characters manifest their realities through a technology called “The Box.”

Like Inception‘s Cobb, one of Dark Matter‘s main characters, Jason, also misuses the central technology to escape his reality and the harsh consequences of his own actions. Like Cobb, Jason also tries to hold on to a “version” of his wife he could not have, which leads to dangerous consequences. Cobb’s arc is more redemptive in Inception, but his failure to cope with the loss of his wife is what drives his story, like Jason’s in Dark Matter. Dark Matter also plays with the idea of digging deep into one’s consciousness to manifest/incept ideas into the real world.

Inception & Dark Matter’s Parallels Are Not Coincidental

Dark Matter’s Author Was Inspired By Christopher Nolan’s Works

Since Apple TV+’s Dark Matter is based on a book written by Blake Crouch, and Inception follows an original storyline conceived by Christopher Nolan, the similarities between the two might seem coincidental. However, as Blake Crouch confirmed in an interview (via Paul Semel), Christopher Nolan’s films, especially Inception, were in the back of his head when he was penning down Dark Matter. Despite drawing inspiration from Inception, Blake Crouch embraces his own curiosity and unique artistic vision by inclining more toward exploring the philosophical implications of some complex quantum physics concepts in Apple TV+‘s Dark Matter.