When Marvel Studios announced plans to explore alternate realities in the "Multiverse Saga," excitement among fans went through the roof. Things started strong with Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, but ultimately led to an era of storytelling with many ups and downs.
Now, most fans are ready to move on from the Multiverse. The concept has grown a little stale—plenty of other major franchises and movies have explored the idea in recent years—and Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will finally wrap the Saga up.
One of those competing Multiverse stories is Apple TV's Dark Matter. Blake Crouch, the creator of the series and author of the 2016 novel it's based on, recently spoke to Slash Film and made it clear he has no respect for the MCU's approach to parallel worlds.
"Marvel comes along, and they make [multiverses] the plot device of every single movie," he said. "I know why they do it, it's because it's easy, and it's because... I'm sorry, I don't have an extraordinary amount of respect for that kind of storytelling, just for what you said."
"This is literally the antithesis, what we're doing, of that," Crouch continued. "We're using it as a way to explore character, to explore what our characters are capable of."
While the writer acknowledges that he didn't create the idea of a Multiverse, he believes the Dark Matter novel "was one of the first times a story crossed mainstream with the multiverse." Now, he's unhappy that the series is being lumped in with the MCU.
"So, yeah, I mean, it's annoying because a lot of times when we started making the show, when it came out, a lot of people were like, 'Oh, just riding that multiverse trend, aren't you?'" Crouch added. "And I'm like, 'We were here before.'"
Dark Matter is a story about the road not taken. In Season 1, the series followed Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived.
Jennifer Connelly also stars, along with ensemble cast members Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, Oakes Fegley, and Amanda Brugel. Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer alongside executive producers Matt Tolmach, Richard Lederer and Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, who co-wrote every episode of season two with Crouch.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to arrive in theaters on December 18. As for Dark Matter, the finale debuts on October 30.