Bell Media

Review: Did Dark Matter kill off a lead character?

Well, if we didn’t think Two had balls before (personally, I never doubted it) she certainly proved she did by having the Raza play chicken with a nuclear missile. With three episodes until the first season finale, there was no way the Raza would be vaporized, but that was still a pretty stressful several seconds, no?

But Episode 10 was not without casualties as the aforementioned Two became a victim of Wexler’s ego: the leader of the rival mercenary team jettisoned our hero out Raza’s airlock into space. We know Two has that special skill of healing herself, so I’m pretty sure she’ll bounce back from this. That, of course, means the rest of the team will learn the secret she’s not susceptible to injury, adding another layer of distrust amongst thieves.

Ennis Esmer makes the perfect bad guy, especially uttering dialogue written by Paul Mullie. Esmer’s Wexler is arrogant, opinionated and devious, the perfect formula for scene-stealing and out-loud laughs. His rival group of mercenaries—teamed with Raza to steal a device from a rival corporation for Mikke Combine’s Commander Truffault—borrowed from past heist movies for an entertaining hour. Yes, there were seemingly insurmountable odds against the mission succeeding (an extra security measure in a male android and oversized space station security force), but they pulled it off and stored the device behind that big metal door. (Did anyone else recall the vault opening scene in Die Hard when the door opened?)

Anyone who’s seen one of those caper storylines also knows the rival team always turns on the good(ish) guys and that’s exactly what happened. And despite Three offering up the code word to opening the Raza vault, Wexler dumped Two into space. Because he’s a jerkface.

Notes and quotes

  • How perfect was that back and forth between the guys as they decided who would tell Two about their vote? And how fantastic to have Two lifting weights as One arrived to tell her?
  • “Basically, I can get into anything.” Ennis Esmer is really, really good at playing a jerk.
  • “Broken wrist, two fractured ribs and a badly bruised left testicle.” I don’t know what was funnier, the medical description or the way The Android delivered it.
  • “Catch me!” Well, Three sort of did.

Dark Matter

airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on Space.

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