Warning! Spoilers for Dark Matter Episode 7 below.

Dark Matter episode 7 just dropped another huge bomb on Jason Desson’s world (his original one, at least). Joel Edgerton’s alternate-universe-hopping protagonist finally makes it back to his Chicago, and he starts formulating a plan to kill Jason2 and take back his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connolly) and his son Charlie (Oakes Fegley).

It’s not just Jason2 he’ll have to contend with, though. Jason1’s time in the box produced multiple copies of himself that are also looking to get their wife and child back from Jason2. It’s another mind-blowing twist in a series full of them, and it adds another layer to the mind-bending antics that the Apple TV+ sci-fi series has produced thus far. When coming up with the scene where Jason1 realizes he’ll have some competition, series creator Blake Crouch (who also wrote the book on which Dark Matter is based) said it was always his plan to adapt the scene from the book: “[it was] never anything else than the gun shop.”

So What Happens At The End Of Dark Matter Episode 7?

Jason1’s life is about to get a lot more complicated

Originally, Crouch did not know what to do with Jason1 once he returned to his original world. He says, “I originally thought it was just going to be Jason1 versus Jason2 — that was the plan the whole time” but “then it just sort of felt a little anticlimactic.” In order to figure out where to go next while writing the novel, Crouch went back to the journal he began at the beginning of the writing process:

[Jason1 versus Jason2] felt like what was expected and it kind of derailed me for about a month on the book…And I went back to my journal and on the third day of journaling about Dark Matte, I had written down, “What if Jason gets back and hundreds of other Jason’s have also gotten back?” And then I had literally written, “No, that’s too stupid. That’ll never work.” Then I continued on with the book. So at that moment, it felt dumb. But when I got to that moment in writing the book, I was like, hell yeah. And that was always what that moment was going to be.

The scene that happens in the show may leave viewers who haven’t read the book just as disoriented as Jason1 is upon finding out about his alternate selves. But that disorientation is sort of the point, and it’s something Crouch has been looking forward to since beginning work on the series. “To me, there are two big promises we have to make good on the show. One is alternate realities and making sure they look great in the box and in the corridor,” Crouch says, citing the book and show’s universe-hopping concept. “But the second piece is the idea that just when you think this guy is home, all these other versions of him are also home, and how does he deal with that?”

This moment sets into motion everything that will happen in Dark Matter episodes 8 and 9, but Crouch recalls seeing the big moment for the first time as one of “the coolest viewing experiences” he’s ever had. “I still remember seeing the Director’s Cut of episode eight… They can be great [or] not so great, [but] his one was already at a fantastic level.” As for what’s in store after the discovery of multiple Jasons, Crouch only had this to say: “Shit just gets crazy… I think people can get ready for a lot of mayhem in the last two episodes.”

Dark Matter’s Crazy Twists Are Just An Added Bonus For Matt Tolmach

The Executive Producer Talks Collaborating With Apple & What Drew Him To The Story Of Jason Desson

Originally, Dark Matter was set up at Sony as a film, but executive producer Matt Tolmach was eventually convinced to move the property to Apple as a television series. Tolmach says Apple execs and friends “Jamie [Erlicht] and Zack [Van Amburg] started calling us and messaging us like, “You know this is a TV show, right?” So they were huge fans and then, serendipitously, they went to Apple.”

We also then decided [they were] right. So we moved it to television and then sold it to Apple. It was kind of family, and they were always fans — it made for a real shorthand for us. And creatively, they just had our back the whole time.

As for why Tolmach was drawn to Dark Matter, it wasn’t any of the universe-breaking twists or even the action-heavy elements. “I was just incredibly connected to this everyman character of Jason Desson… The truth is, I hadn’t read the whole thing. I read a partial [but] I was sort of in from the very, very beginning.”

[Jason] faces some existential questions about, [how], at a certain point in your life, you [ask], “Is this it? Am I happy as [I could be]?” It’s that conversation with yourself, and I thought it was so honest. I was just kind of floored by it and the sort of marrying of that to this sci-fi premise. It just seemed kind of brilliant to me. And so it was the concept from the very outset that got me.