  Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been considered as potential very high-energy
photon emitters due to the large amount of energy released as well as the
strong magnetic fields involved in their jets. However, the detection of TeV
photons is not expected from bursts beyond a redshift of $z\gtrsim 0.1$ due to
their attenuation with the extragalactic background light (EBL). For these
reasons, the recent observation of photons with energies of 18 and 251 TeV from
GRB 221009A (z=0.151) last October 9th, 2022 has challenged what we know about
the TeV-emission mechanisms and the extragalactic background. In order to
explain the TeV observations, recent works exploring candidates of dark matter
have started to appear. In this paper, we discuss the required conditions and
limitations within the most plausible scenario, synchrotron-self Compton (SSC)
radiation in the GRB afterglow, to interpret the one 18-TeV photon observation
besides the EBL. To avoid the Klein-Nishina effect, we find an improbable value
of the microphysical magnetic parameter below $10^{-6}$ for a circumburst
medium value $> 1{\rm cm^{-3}}$ (expected in the collapsar scenario).
Therefore, we explore possible scenarios in terms of ALPs and dark photon
mechanisms to interpret this highly-energetic photon and we discuss the
implications in the GRB energetics. We find that the ALPs and dark photon
scenarios can explain the 18 TeV photon but not the 251 TeV photon.
