Apple TV Just Dethroned 1 of HBO's Single-Greatest Sci-Fi TV Episodes of the Last Decade

The following contains spoilers from Dark Matter Season 2, Episode 5, “Love and Be Loved,” which debuted September 25, 2026, on Apple TV.

Apple TV’s Dark Matter reached the midway point of its second season with an episode that hearkens back to a monumental installment of HBO’s The Last of Us. Both are highly fantastical sci-fi series, but each has a wildly different premise. What makes “Love and Be Loved” similar to “Long, Long Time” is their focus on emotion over the central plot.

More specifically, The Last of Us and Dark Matter paused their intense, thrilling overarching stories to give viewers an almost self-contained love story. “Long, Long Time” is about a romance that bloomed after the world ended. “Love and Be Loved” is about a mother and son reuniting after each one’s personal ‘world’ came to an ‘end.’ They are what some might call “filler episodes,” but that is reductive and misses an important point about the power of storytelling in the era of Prestige TV.

Dark Matter’s Season 2 Episode Feels Similar To The Last of Us’ Best Love Story

Jason Dessen handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room from Dark Matter

The third episode of The Last of Us Season 1 introduced viewers to a very different Frank and Bill than the game did. An unlikely couple, Bill learns to love Frank after shielding himself from the zombie-infected world in that series.

Despite being surrounded by death and horror, they find beauty and happiness as they build a new life. Of course, loss takes many forms. Suffering from a degenerative disease, Frank chooses to end his life. A despondent Bill chooses to die with him. “Love and Be Loved” is narratively quite different.

Jason Dessen encounters variants of himself from other universes. Yet, the nature of choice in his multiversal adventure created dozens of variants of ‘Jason Prime’ as well. Most of them let Jason Prime and his family flee their original reality, but the others end up lost. One of them travels to a universe where Jason’s mother did not die after a bout with cancer.

She helps him and two other Jason Prime variants find a new life. Where Frank and Bill’s story ended in tragedy, this one ends on a more hopeful note. What makes the two stories similar is their relationship to the larger series. Each one departs from the show’s central focus. These one-off stories highlight how the ‘Big Thing’ that drives the series’ drama touches lives beyond the central characters.

In both cases, they showcase second chances after traumatic experiences, fueled by something as deeply complex and shockingly simple as love. Characters who thought only fear and loneliness lay ahead for them found lives worth living.

Why ‘Love and Be Loved’ Is A More Triumphant Episode Than ‘Long, Long Time’

Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank from The Last of Us

As the third episode of The Last of Us, “Long, Long Time” helped establish just how hopeless the post-apocalyptic world became. Even though it ended with their deaths, Frank’s and Bill’s love story mattered a great deal. It recontextualized the meaning of the “end of the world.”

In Dark Matter, the majority of people (in every reality) are unaware of the tragic consequences of Season 1’s inciting incident. The loss the Jason Prime variants feel is perhaps even more devastating. They can’t truly move on because their very existence creates an unsolvable problem.

Instead of trying to find a new version of his wife and son, the Jason at the center of “Love and Be Loved” seeks out his mother instead. Since her reality’s Jason died years earlier, they are both able to fill a void in each other’s hearts that was supposed to remain empty. She is able to successfully give her ‘new’ Jason a sense of purpose and hope.

Along the way, two other Jason variants show up, and she does the same for them. Instead of competing for the wife and son they lost in their original reality, they become brothers. Because the world of The Last of Us is hopeless, Bill chose to die with Frank. There was no chance for him to find something else to live for.

In Dark Matter, that’s not the case. Two of the Jason variants find love with a new woman, bringing her into the unlikely family. When their mother falls ill and eventually dies, they exist in a reality where there is plenty of life left to be lived. They honor their mother after her passing by continuing to make the most of the second chance she gave them.

‘Love and Be Loved’ Is No ‘Filler Episode’ of Dark Matter Season 2

When a TV series departs from its larger, central narrative, viewers sometimes call those stories “filler episodes.” In an interesting coincidence, both “Long, Long Time” and “Love and Be Loved” are written by their series’ showrunners, TLOU‘s Craig Mazin and DM‘s Blake Crouch and Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry (who are also married).

This highlights the importance of these seemingly standalone chapters, which are ‘important’ enough to warrant the creative attention of the top writers on a given show. Season 2 of Dark Matter elevates the show in many profound ways, and the central drama expands beyond just one man’s quest to get home.

With only 10 episodes, there is simply no room for any “filler.” At the same time, it seems like a strange choice to step away from the big narratives in each character’s reality. What happens next is part of the fun for viewers, but this show has always lived and died by the relationships between the characters.

As Jason Prime and his family struggle to find their place in a new world, other characters like Ryan, Amanda, and Leighton explore the consequences of multiversal travel. “Love and Be Loved” reminds us that, for all the sci-fi action, it’s love, connection, and family that matter most.

This episode isn’t just a touching, beautiful story; it’s what the Jason-variant characters find in this reality, and it’s what the show is all about. It’s not just a candidate for the best episode of Dark Matter Season 2; it’s in the running for one of the greatest hours of television in years.

Dark Matter debuts new episodes Fridays on Apple TV.