LOS ANGELES, CA — Season Two of the thrilling drama ‘Dark Matter’ is finally underway, and this season is full of twists, plots, and mind-bending moments that will require viewers to stay connected, as they’ll be surprised by certain characters’ actions, including Dayo Okeniyi‘s portrayal of ‘Leighton Vance’.
Meet Leighton Vance: More Than a Villain
Okeniyi’s character is one of the season’s central power players — the man behind the technology at the heart of the show’s premise.
“Leighton Vance is the character that I play on Dark Matter. He is the CEO of Velocity Industries, and he basically is the money behind the funding for the building of the box that Jason builds. This box allows the characters on our show to traverse the multiverse,” Okeniyi said.
While it might be tempting to slot Leighton into a straightforward villain role, Okeniyi pushed back on that framing, describing a character driven by inherited pressure rather than malice.
“I think he’s a very complex guy. I think it’s very easy to paint him as a villain or somebody with tendencies. But listen, he’s just a brother who wants to return on his investment,” Okeniyi said. “He inherited this company from his grandfather and wants to firmly stay within the 1%. That’s legacy on his shoulders. And this is added weight, being a Black man in America and trying not to squander his generational wealth.“
“I think ultimately he’s somebody who has great intentions, but unfortunately is a little naive to how he can accomplish those things,” he said.
“Dark Matter” boasts a stacked ensemble, and Okeniyi didn’t hold back when describing what it’s like sharing scenes with co-stars Jimmi Simpson, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly and Alice Braga.
“They’re just cool people number one — just as actors, as human beings, they’re incredibly talented actors,” Okeniyi said. “These are guys that when they show up to work, they’re firing on all cylinders. You’ve got an Academy Award-winning actress and Golden Globe nominees, so going to work every day is just a masterclass in what it is that we do.”
But Okeniyi credited the show’s writing — not just the cast’s talent — as the true engine behind the season’s chemistry, pointing to creator Blake Crouch and co-showrunner Jacqueline “Jackie” Benzrick.
“On the chemistry level, I think that just comes from the writing. If you watch the show and you think we’re doing a particularly good job for any reason, it’s the writing,” he said. “It comes down to Blake Crouch and his incredible storytelling and Jackie Benzrick, who’s his writing partner in life and co-showrunner. They just cooked up an incredible season for us, and it’s just showing up. You read the pages, and you go, ‘ Let’s go shoot it!“
Okeniyi added that the writers’ room stays deeply collaborative with the cast, leaving room for actors to further shape their characters.
“They are incredibly researched in terms of all our different lives and where we’re coming from. Also very collaborative on where their knowledge ends and where they would want us to come and collaborate and add things to the story,” he said. “It is a dream job. There’s no other way to put it. It’s just a dream job for sure.”
One of the biggest challenges of season two, Okeniyi explained, was portraying multiple alternate-universe variants of Leighton — each shaped by a different life path. To crack the approach, he turned to co-star Joel Edgerton, who tackled a similar challenge playing multiple versions of Jason Dessen in season one.
“Season one, we had a lot of Jasons running around. When I started reading the scripts for season two, and I’m seeing Leighton in episode two, and episode three, and episode four, I’m like, whoa,” Okeniyi said. “So I had a conversation with Joel about that — how did you go about doing that for season one?“
Edgerton’s answer centered on identifying each character’s defining turning point, or “nexus,” in the story’s multiverse logic in order to better captivate the audience.
“One thing that he mentioned was the nexus point where all the different Jasons are spawned from is whether or not Jason marries Daniela or not,” Okeniyi said. “By the time he gets to that decision in his life, he’s pretty fully formed as an adult. He’s the person that he’s pretty much going to be.“
For Leighton, Okeniyi realized, the defining fork wasn’t a single adult decision — it was who raised him as a child.
“With Leighton, his nexus moment is who raised him, right? His grandfather raises him because his parents died in a car accident in another universe, yet his parents are alive, but they’re like very wealthy, absent parents. So that’s another dimension,” Okeniyi said. “And then another Leighton squanders his generational wealth and goes on a journey and discovers religion, and how to best traverse the human mind. So he is very, very different.“
That distinction became the key to building each version of the character from the ground up rather than replicating Edgerton’s approach.
“Really, it was basically trying to tell me, don’t try and do it the way that I’m doing it,” Okeniyi said. “I think if your nexus point is on who raised you, that truly gives birth to very different versions of Leighton.“
With multiple versions of Leighton Vance now in play alongside the show’s returning ensemble, season two of “Dark Matter” is shaping up to deliver the kind of twist-heavy, emotionally layered storytelling fans have come to expect. With Okeniyi’s nuanced performance and the writing team’s reputation for research-driven, character-first plotting, the new season promises plenty of surprises as it continues its run on Apple TV.
