After elevating its storytelling, His Dark Materials has a bit of a letdown in the season's penultimate hour
TV Reviews His Dark Materials
The last two episodes of His Dark Materials have been the strongest thus far because they have isolated story components, narrowing the scope of the narrative to the show’s strongest characters and hurtling forward in their respective journeys with a fair deal of momentum. We spent minimal time on the Magisterium and the Witches at different points across the two episodes, which are two storylines that the show has never entirely gotten a handle on. And, as you read over the past two weeks, I can’t pretend that I missed them when they were gone.
And so it’s a bit deflating to settle in for “Malice” and find that it’s operating much as penultimate episodes of serialized dramas often do, converging the various storylines in anticipation for a rollicking climax. The truth is that while His Dark Materials contains many of the component parts of such an action-packed finale, that is not the show’s strength, as these past two episodes have demonstrated. And so while there is nothing in this episode that betrays the show’s improvements in its second season, it’s still not hard to feel like the show is moving further away from what it does best when it ramps up all the pieces of its story to build suspense for whatever is still to come next week.
The episode’s opening scene is foreboding in this sense, as it returns the witches to their place as the story’s expositional crutch. Having traveled into Cittàgazze two episodes previous, we land on the Witches plotting their next move before it is presented to them in the sky: angels, flying overhead. We get some clunky details about how they haven’t made themselves visible in thousands of years, and before you know it Ruta Skadi is flying off to join them at Asriel’s side—because she instinctively knows they’re traveling to join Asriel’s war against the Magisterium—while Serafina and her traveling companions are off to try to find Lyra and Will. The way the witches are positioned relative to the show’s narrative has just never made sense: they have too much agency and yet simultaneously too little, all-knowing forces that register as minor parties once we actually spend any time with them. They’re useful but ultimately uncompelling, and the show needed to square that circle sometime this season if it was supposed to be thrilling to see Lyra and Serafina meet face-to-face in the same way it seemed significant that Coulter interacted with Lee and Mary in previous episodes this season.
To be clear, Serafina’s role in Lyra’s story mostly continues the positive development of her relationship with Will, and with the task at hand. The episode narrows in on the idea of trust, and how Serafina’s desire to protect Lyra by hiding her away complicates her desire to help Will on his quest, which by all accounts does not involve any hiding given that the father he’s searching for is on his way to inform the bearer of the Subtle Knife of the task ahead of them. Lyra trusts the witches implicitly, but Will doesn’t, and so there’s tension around the transitive properties that are necessary for them to chart a path forward. The alethiometer is marching them toward an encounter with Jopari up the mountain, and the presence of Serafina is both a protection—first from the kids in Cittàgazze, then from the magical infection of Will’s wound—and a threat to whatever path is ahead. But whereas there’s a version of this story where we’re equally invested in Serafina in the witches and their place in this, the show struggled to reconcile that, making this an exercise of thematic rumination that delays the inevitable climax for the finale.
The one story that feels like it reaches more of a climax here is Marisa Coulter’s, as she convinces Boreal to waltz into the city with only her resolve as protection from the specters. Last week, the show worked to reframe Coulter’s story as one of the sacrifices she made in order to succeed in a sexist world, and so being able to see her “taming” the specters—this happens off-page in the books—is a crowning achievement of her ability to destroy her own humanity in the search for power. She tells Boreal that the specters simply want to feed on the part of humans that is alive, and so all she needed to do was “shut that off,” which I’m reading as a story about the price of assimilation for marginalized individuals like herself. It’s horrifying to think that Marisa would ever give up her humanity, especially in order to command a group of specters to travel into the jungle to attack those traveling with her daughter, but she has spent her entire life suppressing herself at the behest of the men in charge around her, and so this is old hat by this point. She’s not repressing her humanity to prove something to them: she’s doing it to defeat them, although at the risk of losing her humanity entirely in the end. It’s satisfying to see her reject Boreal’s claim that they are “equals” as she poisons him, but it’s also a reminder that while there is righteous rage in her actions, the directionality is chaotic, and presents a grave danger to Lyra and anyone in her orbit. The image of her “conducting” the Specters is chilling, and Ruth Wilson again whispers and bites her way through another strong performance that keeps the momentum going in her side of the story.
One of the challenges of “Malice” is that stories seem to be moving at different paces: for example, it’s jarring to go from the horror movie urgency of the kids storming Lyra and Will’s abode trying to kill them to the peaceful Mary Malone conferring with the I Ching and running into the same children just looking for an adult to hug them. The action movie urgency of Lee and Jopari’s balloon trip being interrupted by the Magisterium airships brings the episode to an uncertain climax as the balloon hurtles to the ground, but we never return to check on Mary and the kids to see how the ramping up of other stories—the specters attacking one of the witches, Coulter’s assassination of Boreal—is playing out there. When the episode ends, it feels abrupt: as much as I appreciate a show that doesn’t arbitrarily extend episodes to 58 minutes just because it’s possible, this did feel like it was maybe missing a scene for Mary to show us a bit more about what exactly is protecting her from the specters—those sure looked like angels’ wings—and what she decided to do with the kids as they pulled at her heart strings and reminded her of her nieces.
In part for this reason, the episode does feel unfinished, making it hard to gauge its effectiveness until we see the second half (which, as always, I am aware that those of you reading this from the U.K. have already seen). The show doesn’t find as much value in bringing all of the stories into Cittàgazze as it might have, given that the Witches never really registered, and the Magisterium’s interference is mostly just more tiptoeing around the religious allegory that surrounds Lyra’s “other name” and the role she’s set to play in a larger conflict. The show has set up Will and his father’s reunion as a parallel to Lyra’s reunion with Asriel in the first season, but I don’t know if Will’s visions of his father and the path ahead have really added much to make this delay of that reunion register as momentum of any kind. Everything in “Malice” mostly stays the course of the season, but the “moving pieces into place” function of the episode reminds us that not all of those pieces are equal, and this makes an episode privileging journey over destination feel like a bit of a letdown after two strong outings.
Stray observations
- A reminder as always that although I know these reviews originated as being for book readers, I am consciously playing a little dumb with some things that I do understand better, so if you read something and said “Myles, you know what that meant” I probably did.
- Andrew Scott captures the “man somewhat broken by his quest for enlightenment and his inability to return to his family” vibe of Jopari/John Parry, but I appreciate that he’s still got some humor, and so his reveal of the matches was a nice bit of levity in a set of scenes that was mostly “Lee’s concern vs. Jopari’s crypticism.”
- This is explicitly a coming of age story, so I appreciate that they took the time to let Lyra and Will have a conversation about how growing up has shaped their understanding of the world, as in Will’s story about imagining a world with his father as a kid but losing glimpse of it as he aged. A nice little scene that I sort of wish had been the end of the story as opposed to “Bad Smoke Monster vs. Good Smoke Monster who for some reason doesn’t turn into a smoke monster to battle the other Smoke Monster.”
- Whenever Pan appears in a form other than Red Panda Pan, all the other characters should be asking “Where is Red Panda Pan?”
- Another one of those episodes where getting more daemons really makes all the difference: something as big as the snake choking alongside Boreal or as small as the Cardinal’s daemon answering for him as Fra Pavel struggles to spit out what he’s learned about Lyra adds a lot to this world and those scenes. We’ve talked about what changed between seasons, and it is really the “x factor” that’s providing a baseline improvement on the show’s worldbuilding that, unfortunately, did little to help with the witches.
Through The Amber Spyglass (Possible Spoilers for the Entire Series)
The most significant change we see here is that Mary is spending time in Cittàgazze instead of just passing through to her next destination. I like the choice, insofar as it allows her a bit more agency over the next stage of her journey, but I’m curious how they intend to pivot her out of that situation. There’s still this part of me that’s like “What if they invent something for Mary out of whole cloth instead of actually depicting the world she’s meant to occupy?” I try to push it out of my head, but it’s hard not to see that as the biggest challenge of any adaptation of this story.
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Another one of those episodes where getting more daemons really makes all the difference
There’s still this part of me that’s like “What if they invent something for Mary out of whole cloth instead of actually depicting the world she’s meant to occupy?” I try to push it out of my head, but it’s hard not to see that as the biggest challenge of any adaptation of this story.Myles, enjoy your reviews. Re: your Amber Spyglass concerns, perhaps a quote from Joel Collins (production designer) in this article will put you more at ease.Spoilers for non-readers: https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/his-dark-materials-spoilers-season-3-production-begin-release-date/
Until I’m watching an episode, I just don’t know if I can feel the trust, but thank you.
Is there any chance HBO is angling to make the last book stretch into two seasons (as seems to be the trend this decade)? I’m not a book reader, so I don’t know what’s coming for the characters. But if the plot is leading us to the Angels’ revenge upon God and/or Humanity for the Original Sin and our heroes’ involvement within, even like, eleven more episodes seems like a squeeze.
That had actually been the original plan, but they’ve since reportedly abandoned it and are just doing another 8 episodes. I think the happy medium is probably somewhere around 10-12, honestly, so we’ll see what they decide they’re able to afford based on the ratings for Season 2.
Thanks. Even though it may have just been exposition, I feel like I’m missing whatever was supposed to be in the the Asriel-centric episode that never got filmed. It feels present like a missing limb.
Last decade. It was the trend last decade. Time marches on and all that.
The show could have trimmed a lot of fat over these past two seasons by quitting with the repetitive dialogue and pointless scenes of how Lyra is special, how she’s destiny, what great qualities she has that make people fall in love with her. We got it very early on. Now it’s just annoying and an example of lazy writing while doing the laundry or watching a soccer match.
It can be a little clunky, but at least in this episode it was important for Will to hear these things from someone else, outside of his own problems.
Lee’s dialogue, however is another story. (It’s Michael/Walt all over again; At this point, his character can be summed up in one word- Lyra- and I can see the Honest Trailer now.) When he’s talking, I’m wondering who it’s for, because their brief scenes were going in circles with stuff both he and Jopari (and the audience) already know or already established.
I feel like they are constantly trying to give Lee more dialogue without having him say anything of importance and it’s getting grating.
RIP Carlo Boreal. He went to the great private collection in the sky, where he can play with his trinkets and watch supercuts of the sexiest scenes from The Affair all day, and nobody ever tells him he’s irrelevant.
“The sexiest scenes from The Affair”, lol. Indeed.
Underneath the creepy exterior, Boreal was a collector nerd with no game. I may be projecting, but I liked the poor fellow. He was just a squirrel looking for a nut. A little confused how he died, though. I thought the monkey was choking the snake (heh) but I guess he was poisoned?
Marisa was very interested in the vials in the apothecary shop and apparently spiked the bottle of wine she gave Boreal.I noticed that as he died he shed a tear. My husband did the same. Among physiologists there is some speculation as to whether this is an emotional reaction or a physical reflex.
Chekhov’s vial of poison.
Never trust a man who likes The Lighthouse Family. They’re probably Republican/Tory.*shudder*
So… did Will not actually lose those two fingers? He just got a particularly nasty cut? If so, disappointing, but understandable from a production standpoint, I guess.
No, he really did lose them, or parts of them.
Wasted all the CGI money on daemons and now we get this
yeah normally when something is cut off it is a clean cut or not, not a deep cut, unless the fingers were holding a really obscure 45
it’s jarring to go from the horror movie urgency of the kids storming
Lyra and Will’s abode trying to kill them to the peaceful Mary Malone
conferring with the I Ching and running into the same children just
looking for an adult to hug them.
Yea, that was… Let’s just say that’s not where I thought any of that was going. It is kind of interesting to hear children acknowledge that they need to be cared for. In literature, I’m reminded of Wendy Darling; Mary has now found herself in Neverland, about to take care of the Lost Boys.
“Can I hug you, Miss?” No attempt to depict the kids’ pain and loneliness in a dramatic, character way, but just straight-out telling instead of showing. I was taken aback a little. I guess the scene needed to be short so they could get to other things, and so straight to the point and plot effect.
Is anybody else really annoyed at the constant, unnecessary deviations from the source material? I understand that cramming an entire novel into 480 minutes of TV requires trimming or narrative shortcuts, and I’ll even acknowledge that some of the changes have been positive (Mary Malone and Coulter meeting helped reinforce Coulter’s experience with institutional sexism). But last night they:(book spoilers ahead)
-Had Lyra and Serafina meet for the first time, and then start arguing with each other about the correct course of action, when in the books the witches already know Lyra and are totally on board with helping-Turned Scoresby’s heroic escape from the zeppelins into a crash landing caused by a bullet messing up his airship
-Continued to make Mrs Coulter into some kind of superhuman by having her stare down the spectres and take control of them, instead of in the book when they follow her because she can lead them to more prey.
The unnecessary tinkering has been my biggest issue with the entire show so far.Also, I appreciate that the people who cast the show went out of their way to get people who were different from the actors in the movie, but every time I look at the woman playing Serafina I just see Eva Green’s non-union British equivalent.
Is anybody else really annoyed at the constant, unnecessary deviations from the source material? Absolutely! That’s why I stopped watching after 2 or 3 episodes this season, I couldn’t stand it anymore, I was just annoying myself by watching for nor reason at that point. Seeing continued gifs on tumblr / reading here just reinforces my decision, unfortunately.
The woman playing Serafina is beautiful but she just isn’t convincing in the role like Eva was. Sometimes it feels like they just cast people based on how they look instead of auditioning them.
I have to admit that whenever there’s an adaptation of something that I love I tend not to re-read the source material ahead of time. I LOVE these books, even wrote my dissertation on them, but haven’t read them again in 10 or so years so it’s actually really helpful with not noticing the deviations. I really want to have a re-read now, but am concerned that Amber Spyglass will annoy me in that case! That said there’s a change in the next ep that I won’t spoil here that I was happy to see.
I don’t see faithfulness to source material as a virtue. I do like it when I see my favorite moments from the books show up (e.g., Lyra in the cinema), but I am not keeping track of every detail of every scene and measuring it against the books.
Whenever Pan appears in a form other than Red Panda Pan, all the other characters should be asking “Where is Red Panda Pan?”Nope, I want to see more of Wolverine Pan. That’s what Lyra and Will should be asking. Maybe Pan is using the Red Panda look to make himself look less intimidating. And then change to the Wolverine to show how intimidating he really is.
This is the first episode of His Dark Materials where I can honestly say that any criticism on my part would just be picking nits……apart from the fact that it ends practically mid-sentence.As you say, episode six could’ve benefitted tremendously from a handful of additional minutes. I mean, The Subtle Knife may be the Two Towers of the series, but the pace ain’t that brisk.It does make me somewhat concerned about any plan to pack something as dense as The Amber Spyglass into eight – presumably standard length – episodes. And am genuinely hoping the budget is there for at least ten. (And with none of that mid-season break bullshit, either.)
I’m really watching this show at this point because there’s nothing else on. In general it has felt like it has the wrong voice behind it, like you are hearing your favorite book described by some douche in a gym locker room (“hey bro I just got so into Bulgakov, sick!”)…it just seems like there are so many things it does because they “worked” in other series (like making sure nothing at all happens for entire episodes at a time like with GoT and The Sopranos and calling it “tablesetting”)…I really don’t remember the books that well, but I’ve given up on Will. He’s cast way too old which is going to be a BIG problem, he’s always a jerk, and they constantly have him be mistrustful or an asshole just to make it more dramatic…there is zero reason for him not to trust the witches, especially after one saved them from the Mouseketeer Mob, he’s just sullen and boring, I will never ever forget how slow his subplot was in season one.
I know Myles loves red panda, but the header pic should have been Coulter with the spectres. Not only is it perhaps the most striking image of the season, but it is the most important moment of her arc this year.(It also makes the episode reviews easier to identify at a glance- Absolutely vital given AV Club’s search engine)
I am beholden to what the HBO press site has on offer, and nothing with Coulter and the Specters to my chagrin. It would have been the lead image of the review if there had. (Also, Red Panda Pan is the photo associated with the grade box, but it isn’t the featured pic—is there a place where you’re just seeing nothing but Red Panda Pan?)
Oh ok. It’s just the grade box I was looking at, but I was really hoping for the specters. Damn HBO!
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I agree about the shift in tone with the Cittagaze kids, but my heart still broke when the little girl asked Mary for a hug.