"His Dark Materials," Year Three

Spoilers for the first two series ahead.

It's a relief to come to the end of "His Dark Materials," which was always designed for a run of three series, and has suffered a rash of production troubles in trying to reach its conclusion.  I have never read the Philip Pullman books, and was looking forward to watching how the adaptation would play out without knowing anything about the story in advance.  I have no idea how closely the final season follows the "Amber Spyglass" novel, but it certainly feels like it's following a novel, with its sudden and seemingly arbitrary introduction of information, its embrace of big, conceptually difficult ideals, and its extended, fanciful denouement.

This is the season where we get into the material that made the religious folks so upset with the Pullman books - namely all the characters going to war against a rough stand-in for God.  It's made clear that the evil Metatron (Alex Hassell) is not actually the "Authority," but a usurper who has stolen his power and oppresses everyone who exists across all universes.  However, there's still the fear-and-damnation tactics of the Magisterium and its agents representing religion in general.  A big part of the season revolves around Will and Lyra journeying to the land of the dead to help the souls trapped there, including Roger and Will's father.  Meanwhile, several Angels have gotten involved in the conflict.  Xaphania (Chipo Chung) has allied forces with Asriel, while Balthamos (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) and Baruch (Simon Harrison) help the children.  Mary Malone is off on a side quest in a world populated by sentient elephant-like creatures called mulefas, learning their language and their connection to Dust.  Finally, Mrs.  Coulter, still the most interesting player on the board, does her best to protect Lyra while remaining very dubious in her loyalties.

For a final culmination of all the storylines, with lots of returning characters and familiar faces (Hi Iorek!) this season is often remarkably slow and somber.  We get the big battles and the final confrontations, but these are rarely as exciting as you'd think.  There is a ton of interesting material to work through, and it sometimes feels like the writers are condensing huge amounts of information into very brief throwaway lines, without properly explaining concepts like The Authority and the Metatron and how the realm of the dead functions.  Solutions to problems, and the way things conclude often feel very arbitrary, especially the ending, which suddenly dumps a ton of new rules on us for how the universes are supposed to work.  And that's not unusual with children's books and fairy tales, but at the same time you'd think that the writers would try to spend a little more time setting things up and giving us context.  There always seems to be plenty of time for Asriel and Coulter to talk about Lyra, or for Lyra to talk about Roger, or for Will to talk about his father.  Good job making Mary Malone and the mulefas feel important, though I'm still not entirely clear on why.

While I still think that a serial is the best way of adapting this material, "His Dark Materials" probably should have been streamlined a bit to help keep the momentum up.  It's hard to argue that a story about challenging religious dogmas and remaking the afterlife should be more fun and accessible, but I really can't see many kids having the patience for this.  You can also tell that the show's budget isn't what it was.  The final battles barely involve any real action sequences, and the orchestral score is doing way too much of the heavy lifting.   For those who have been watching since the beginning, we do get several very satisfying payoffs to various storylines.  It's good to have James McAvoy a regular this year, if only to provide Ruth Wilson a consistently strong scene partner, and Asriel and Coulter get the best ending of anyone in the show.

I wish I could be as happy about Will and Lyra.  The two get a finale that frankly feels like it belongs to a different kind of story.  And I confess I looked up the relevant plot points from the book just to make sure it wasn't something that the show's writers had come up with on their own.  Maybe the final turn of events was something that was beyond the young actors, or maybe I was just caught off guard.  However, I'm still very grateful that we made it to the ending at all.  

  

—