Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 3 premiere of Dark Matter. Feel free to catch up first before reading on.
Syfy's space opera Dark Matter ended on a truly explosive cliffhanger last season, and now we finally know what happened to the crew of the Raza. If you'll remember, almost everyone was on the space station EOS-7 to try to keep Ferrous Corp from blowing it sky high. The combined efforts of Two, Three, Five and Six were able to stop the corporate bomb, which was planted in an android, from destroying the station, but, unfortunately for them, their former compatriot, Four, got the bright idea to bomb the station himself, leaving hundreds (if not thousands) of innocent people at risk, including the crew of the Raza. Luckily, the Season 3 opener, "Being Better Is So Much Harder," quickly reveals that our favorite anti-heroes all managed to escape before the station went critical and burst into billions of pieces of space trash. Now, though, Two has tasked the crew with two important jobs: getting their blink drive back and, oh, yeah, finding Four and killing him.
When we last saw the crew on EOS-7, they were separated, and that continues into the Season 3 premiere. Two comes close to be being blown to smithereens, but is found by Six and the duo are able to get to the Marauder and Five is whisked away by Commander Truffault, while Three crash lands on a nearby planet with a member of the Galactic Authority who's still super bitter about Six rejoining the crew of the Raza. Truffault and Five manage to get back to the ship and are greeted by the Android, who's acting odd but doesn't say why.
They don't have long to rest, though, since a Ferrous Corp ship soon appears and attacks them, taking out their FTL drive, weapons and engines and leaving them drifting in space. When a call comes from Two and Six, who are stuck in their shuttle and looking for a pick up, they're forced to leave them until they can deal with Ferrous, which is planning to board the Raza. The Android also reveals to everyone that Nyx died when Four came aboard for the blink drive, and she assumes that he's the one that killed her.
As they wait, Two tells Six that Four, who's now better known as Emperor Ishida Ryo of Zairon, was really the one who blew up the space station. She explains that since he's taken back his rightful position as emperor and Zairon is at war, starting a war between the corporations by blowing EOS-7 would help his cause by distracting the corporate backers of Zairon's enemies. Hearing that Four killed Nyx, whom he clearly had feelings for, is a blow to all of them, and, by the end of the episode, Two decides that the best course of action, since he easily sacrificed the lives of so many innocent people for his own ends, is to get the blink drive out of his possession and rid the universe of him.
Of course, fans of Dark Matter know that Four has never been easy to kill. He's wily and super dangerous in hand to hand combat, whether he's brandishing weapons or not. And, now that the man is emperor, he will be far harder to dispatch of since there will be a serious security detail around him 100 percent of the time. Not to mention that Four knows that the Raza crew knows he has their blink drive, and he'll be on the lookout for them to retrieve it. Also, while the realization that he's now capable of killing a lot of people to reach his goals is startling, the audience knows that he didn't actually kill Nyx; as it was Misaki Han, Four's childhood friend (who totally has a crush on him and was jealous of Nyx) and commander of the royal guard who fought with Nyx and killed her with a strike from her poisoned blade. So, while I get Two's impulse to do away with him, and he's certainly done some horrible shit, I feel like Four's (slightly) softer side will be revealed again before things get to that point.
Well, whatever happens next, I kinda like how we're set up now to see a former Raza crew member as the Big Bad of Season 3. The show keeps us on our toes by moving the main players around and making us wonder if they can really be better people, and it looks like a large part of this new season will come down to that exact question. You can keep up with Dark Matter Fridays on Syfy.
