What Exactly Happened to Mark on 'Raising Dion'? It's Complicated

Raising Dion is one of Netflix's latest original series, and it's an exciting riff on the superhero genre. Based on the 2015 comic book and short film by Dennis Liu, it follows a widowed mother who's working to raise her son on her own as he begins exhibiting supernatural powers following her husband's death. But is her husband Mark actually dead? That's a great question, especially since the show's very premise revolves around him being very much deceased. Let's look at the facts we have. 

No, unfortunately, Mark isn't technically alive. It's revealed early on at the start of Raising Dion that the character died before the show began. 

His wife Nicole (Alisha Wainwright) and young son Dion (Ja'Siah Young) are left behind to mourn his death following a mysterious tragedy – he drowned in a river. Oddly enough, Mark's body was never recovered after drowning. This makes it difficult for Nicole and Dion to start picking up the pieces they need to move on.

Throughout the series, you can feel the pain Nicole and Dion consistently find themselves going through. Dion starts showing that he has special superpowers, while Nicole has no idea how to respond to them or help him learn how to use them. But at the end of the show's first episode, we learn something interesting: Mark may not be alive, but he could very well be a ghost. Perhaps not a ghost per se as we think of one, but something bizarre and supernatural, similar to his son Dion's powers. 

Raising Dion's first season gives us plenty of information about Mark's background, which clues us into one important thing: Mark is "alive" in the form of energy absorbed by his best friend Pat. When Mark and Pat traveled to Northern Iceland in 2010 to observe the Northern Lights, they found themselves in the middle of a life-changing situation. 

While visiting the Northern Lights, Pat and Mark were hit by a rogue solar flare. This caused a wave of radiation to roll over everyone in the area, and as a result everyone in the area developed superpowers. Pat, however, simply became ill instead. As a result, he became the "storm" that ended up consuming the rest of the characters in the show, also known as the "Crooked Man." Unfortunately, it was Mark's fate to be swallowed up by Pat's powers, as doing so made him feel better. 

Because Pat absorbs Mark, he's not actually "dead." Mark is able to escape Pat's "storm" and occasionally communicate with Nicole and Dion. So while he's not technically alive, he's not truly dead, either. Looks like we'll have to wait until a Season 2 of Raising Dion if we want any further answers on that end. 

Hopefully Mark can come back from being absorbed for good, because that would certainly make more than a few characters (and fans) a lot happier in the end.