His Dark Materials cuts a new window into Coulter's worldview in another standout episode
TV Reviews Recap
“The Scholar” is, from a plot perspective, an important turning point in the journey of our three heroes who seem fated to shape the future of these universes. By the end of the episode, the angels have sent Mary Malone through the window into Citigazze, and Lyra and Will have retrieved the alethiometer from Boreal and are now ready to focus their energy on finding Will’s father, unaware he’s on his way with Lee Scoresby to find them.
But ultimately, this episode of His Dark Materials belongs to Marisa Coulter, and to Ruth Wilson’s portrayal of her. Technically, on paper, this is not a turning point for Marisa: she’s on a quest to “save” Lyra, but she fails, with her daughter slipping out of her fingers thanks to the Subtle Knife’s ability to lock them away in a world of specters. She is in exactly the same place from a plot perspective that she was before, driven by her firmly held belief that she is the only one who can truly keep her daughter safe despite Lyra insisting she wants nothing to do with her. But while she may be no closer to rescuing Lyra, her journey into Will’s Oxford is a transformative moment for the character’s place in this story, as she bears witness to a life she could have led, and the weight she bears for having chosen to play by the rules of the Oxford she was born into.
At this point in the books, we have nowhere near this much insight into Coulter’s character: the show has consistently been giving us more shades of Marisa’s love for Lyra and messy relationship with the Magisterium, but the adjustments here are much more significant. In the books, we see only glimpses of Coulter’s motives in her parlay with Boreal at his mansion, in which she is manipulating him to reveal information. Here, however, she is being invited into his world in a deeply patriarchal gesture, Boreal trying to impress her with his “trinkets” and high-end sound system like a sleazy wall street executive or something. The story becomes about how Coulter pushes beyond his introduction to Will’s Oxford to see something he couldn’t, insisting on meeting with Mary Malone herself when she learns that Lyra met with her. It’s done under the guise of wanting to know what Lyra is up to, but it’s also done with the intention of seeing a “lady scientist” in the flesh.
Boreal tells Marisa that the people of Will’s world “appear to have more freedom,” but that the government is just as corrupt as the magisterium, and that consumerism rules in place of faith. And from a patriarchal point of view, this may well be true, but he cannot grasp how much Marisa feels the impact of seeing women able to hold positions of authority, or balance work and motherhood as when she observes a woman at a coffee shop typing on a laptop and entertaining a baby in a pram. In a scene that hits differently in light of recent discourse in the United States, she instinctively refers to Mary as “Mrs. Malone,” but she is swiftly corrected that it is “Dr. Malone,” and every bit of her interaction with Mary thereafter is shaped by that. It’s a sharply written scene from Francesca Gardiner, as you can read it as Marisa getting caught in her lie: Mary starts asking for specific information about experimental theology, and papers she’s published, and she’s immediately flummoxed and makes a swift exit. But when she returns to Boreal and recounts the visit, it becomes clear that she was reacting to being taken seriously as a scholar by this stranger, who presumed that she would be able to explain her work, and imagined her as the author of papers that she’s forced to have men publish for her in order to get her work into the world. While Marisa ultimately dismisses Malone as impertinent to the task at hand, because no woman who bows to the will of a patriarchal society is entirely immune to dismissing other women, she also describes her as “intelligent” and “free,” and she loses her ability to play coy with Boreal’s sleaze. She starts lamenting that all the stories people tell of her and Asriel make her out to be a damsel and a victim, and while she doesn’t get to finish her story before Lyra arrives, the message is that the world’s underestimation of her is the driving force behind the person she is.
Ruth Wilson is, as always, tremendous throughout these sequences, and what’s most important is that the show is adding depth to her character without outright turning her into a “sympathetic” figure. When Lyra does arrive and Marisa tries to convince her to join forces, the subsequent action scene is framed through two lenses. The first is Lyra effectively testing out her mother’s love for violence as a means to an end, sticking Pan on Coulter’s golden monkey and watching as her mother suffers. Lyra later tells Will that she hated how that felt, the two bonding over their shared difficulty in justifying violence even in situations where that violence is justified. But for Marisa, the scene is about showing how far she is willing to go in order to get what she wants, effectively severing her connection to her daemon so that she can continue to focus on Lyra, abandoning him to Pan’s violence as he watches on in pain. When Boreal questioned how she was separating from her daemon to leave him behind when she visited Mary, she explicitly compared herself to the witches, but she also frames it as a form of self-control, making an implicit argument that the capacity to separate from one’s daemon is not exclusive to the witches but is something that is inherently associated with women and the compartmentalization they’re forced to practice in order to just exist in the world. But as much as who Coulter is has been shaped by the sexism she’s faced, the show isn’t saying this justifies everything she’s done, or everything she’s still going to do. It just makes who she is more strongly enmeshed within the cultures of these worlds, something that is present in the books but gets highlighted here to great effect.
With both the witches and Lee and John’s balloon trip absent this week, the story is more focused, and the episode is better for it. The one scene that deviates from the two main story threads, a check-in at the Magisterium as the new Cardinal uses the witches’ destruction of their defenses at the anomaly to justify jailing the thorn in his political side, does nothing to make that story more interesting, but with only a single scene it leaves breathing space for the other scenes to resonate. In the case of Mary, her journey into Citigazze is definitely rushed, but that’s sort of the point: whereas Lyra and Will are being guided to a higher calling indirectly, as though they are too young to fully grasp what the forces of the universe are imagining for them, as an adult Mary is given absolute clarity. Her time in her own universe is done: it is time for her to go somewhere else and “play the serpent,” and she follows along. That’s always been a bit of a reach as to why she would do so willingly, but I think the show’s done enough to articulate her background—her initial calling to the church, her belief in her research—for us to accept she would pack like she’s going hiking and head off to the Boreal’s window and successfully trick the guard into thinking she’s Marisa.
Things are similarly a bit rushed for Will and Lyra, as Will picks up how to use the knife without just a bit of positive reinforcement from Lyra, but the show is really nailing the dynamic between these two characters and their journey. There’s a light-hearted air to the heist initially, as they cheerfully realize that the world’s overlap somewhat and give them the ability to use the knife to break into the house, but that all goes away once they get inside, and their reflections after the fact struck me as a really valuable bit of messaging. His Dark Materials is at its core a family program, and while some of its messaging is definitely not typical for young adult fare, the idea of Will and Lyra’s independence and their coming of age under such chaotic circumstances is definitely central to that identification. And so I thought it was really striking how Will insisted that Lyra not think about herself relative to her parents, and instead be the person she is, and a person that he’d be proud to be like. The scene does some other work about solidifying Lyra’s relationship to her surrogate parents—Ma Costa, Lee Scoresby—but I was struck by this idea that as teenagers they are charting their own path, and need not compare that to their parents or anyone else. It’s a debrief of sorts from the action that preceded it, reaffirming the work done this season to take their two arcs and successfully merge them into one stronger one.
Heading into the season’s final two episodes, I don’t know if His Dark Materials has followed a traditional narrative path: there’s no real clarity in terms of where the story is heading, and while Lyra and Will and Lee and John are each looking for the other, what precisely will happen if they were to reunite remains a mystery. But what this season has done particularly well is to solidify our relationship to the show’s characters, and to their dynamic with each other, such that the show can largely replicate the books’ approach of suggesting that destiny has plans for everyone involved and letting our interest in them fuel the characters instead of promising a fireworks factory. The rest of the season is likely to solidify the path forward to an extent, but for the moment the show is doing its best work yet letting the characters scramble to find their path in the darkness.
Stray observations
- I noted last week that the show was very nonchalant about Coulter and Boreal walking into Cittàgazze, but we did get some dialogue from Boreal here explaining why they can’t just waltz into the city to get the knife themselves, which would have been nice to see last week? Either way, I think I have a better handle on what the show was doing with the casualness of Coulter’s glimpse of the specter. (I was also reminded in some Wiki reading that Boreal suggested he found a way to skip
Cittàgazze and move directly between the two Oxfords in the books, avoiding the confusion last week presented). - More great direction from Leanne Welham—the shot of Will just before they started the heist was stunning, they really did a fantastic job lighting that section of the Cittàgazze set.
- If anyone is familiar with my relationship with coffee cups on TV shows, Boreal showing up in the car with two take-away cups was truly an emotional rollercoaster, but Wilson in particular handled hers particularly well, so either they were properly full or she truly is a thespian in all things.
- Every time Red Panda Pan shows up, my notes just become “RED PANDA PAN,” FYI.
- In the books, the angels make a big deal about Mary destroying the Cave, but the show chose to have the Cave effectively shut itself down. A curious change, since I liked the idea that there was an existential threat of Boreal or someone else using the technology for ill will if it was left intact.
- Ruth Wilson is a great actress in many ways, and I loved her reading Boreal for filth about how limited his ambitions were upon discovering Will’s Oxford, but her boredom at listening to Boreal’s dumb speakers was maybe her finest work. Just sheer, absolute disinterest.
- Lest we thought Tullio could have survived his encounter with the specters, his sisters found him in the trademark catatonic state, and they’re none too happy about it: the show mostly uses their blaming Lyra and Will as a way to think about their guilt over the violence they render and considering when it is or is not justified, but their threat remains open as the episode comes to an end.
- Does Coulter know how to drive a car? Because when she asked for Boreal’s keys I was very confused about how she intended to drive it, but I guess she made it there okay? Did she have to parallel park? I want to see those scenes, dammit.
Through The Amber Spyglass (Spoilers for, well, The Amber Spyglass)
So, it’s clear at this point that much of what they’re doing in terms of Coulter’s storytelling is effectively revealing details and character shades that eventually become central to the character’s actions later in the story. In the books, Pullman uses the relatively harsher characterization to that point as a threat that gets unraveled a bit as we spend more time with her in the later stages of the books, but here I’m guessing we’ll see a subtly distinct read on those scenes given everything we know. I’m definitely intrigued to see how that plays, particularly if they add in a time jump to help explain the actors’ ages.
The one other thing I’ll say is that now that I have a clearer sense of how they intend to pivot out of the Boreal confrontation, it’s a bit clearer why they had Coulter see the specter in last week’s episode, as the themes of control are strong and about to make their way to Cittàgazze.
52 Comments
Adding a scene where Coulter and Malone interact directly pushes this from a “maybe someday” to “yes I will definitely give it a try.” Made sense in the books, which aren’t from the the adult perspective IMO – even the scenes with them are more about how they’re going to interact with Lyra/Will – but this also makes sense for a TV show.Thanks for the recaps!
They are practicing with the knife, but really have power, and they are playing with it, and it can be intoxicating. Will is so (SO) intense all of the time, it was nice to see him crack a smile for once. I also thought it was weird Coulter asked for the car keys. At the very least I figured Boreal would go with her, seeing as he knows the city better.
I know if would go against everything I stand for, but now I really want sponsored content of Coulter trying to use the onboard navigation in that car to get to Mary’s office.
Yeah I thought the same thing. She sure is a quick study if she knew how to drive a car already.
I mean, there are mentions of anabatic cars and presumably the city layout is more or less the same as in her world, so it doesn’t seem impossible that Coulter could make her way around. Though I suspect she broke a few traffic and parking laws.
His car is also a Tesla, which don’t even have keys. I’d love to see a person from another universe try to take a crack at figuring out how to even operate one of those without any prior instructions.
Just so everyone knows – the Angel that Mary was talking to in the lab was none other than Sophie Okonedo, one of Britain’s finest actresses (yes, I have a bit of a crush on her). If you’re wondering if you’ve seen her before, you have if you’ve watched Doctor Who – she played Liz Ten in The Beast Below. The voice cast for the daemons is getting steadily more fabulous as well (it pays to watch the credits to find out who voiced who) but – and I’ve mentioned this before, I’m sure of it – if you’re a fan of Fleabag, you’d probably be aware that Andrew Scott (aka Hot Priest) plays John Parry and that John’s daemon, Sayan Kotor, is voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge…aka Fleabag!
Andrew Scott (aka Hot Priest) Actually, when he said, “I’ve had a few names in my time,” I couldn’t help but think, “Is Moriarty one of them?”.
I love Sophie Okonedo!! Man, watching her in ‘Hotel Rwanda’ was so heartbreaking. But!!! she was also in that awful ‘Aeon Flux’ with Charlize Theron too! Lol
Great review. Agree with the grade. You’ve articulated really well all the unsaid things playing out in Coulter’s point of view. The show’s material gives Ruth Wilson little snacks to work with one or two per episode, but here it was a full meal and dessert. (Her body language in the last scene suggests she’s ready to utilize teasing Boreal along – as long as she’s the lead adventurer.)Nitpicking seems like a crime here but yeah, one shot of Coulter studying how Boreal operates his car – just 5 seconds. And then a five second payoff of her putting it in gear later (maybe applying the breaks a little too hard – a cliché, sure, but sometimes a predictable payoff is just right at the right moment). And finally I would have liked a bit more of a WTF! from Will upon encountering this freaky monkey that comes out of nowhere. Unless Lyra warned him about Mom’s Monkey (Ozzy?) Will – and who among us wouldn’t? – would have shit his pants at a surprise like that. He was pretty keyed up already, I’ll give him that, but if it had been me I would have fainted. Or screamed, lurched, tried to run, smacked into a glass cabinet, shattered it, and then fainted. And then bled-out while lying within the broken glass on the floor. That would be me.
Man, it was just a monkey, not a gremlin. 🙂 I’m sure Will had seen monkeys before. His non-daemon-accustomed brain would just interpret it as “she owns a trained pet monkey”. (I think that was Boreal’s plan for Coulter too, given that they couldn’t easily fit the monkey into a bag.)
I don’t know, that snub nosed monkey would freak me the hell out! Hell, an average dog would make me jump in a situation where I wasn’t expecting an animal to appear, plus being stressed out, creeping into a space to steal and object from an enemy… and then this comes out of nowhere:
I mean, if i saw a shrieking monkey where I didn’t expect to see a shrieking monkey, even if my regular job were working with shrieking monkeys, I’d probably still be pretty startled.Also, why do some daemons speak and others don’t?
Also, why do some daemons speak and others don’t?It is pretty much just Coulter’s daemon who doesn’t. And that is more a function of she doesn’t allow him to. He probably can. He is a physical manifestation of her soul. Her repressed, self-loathing soul.Related, I like how in the book they mention that daemons are usually the opposite gender of their people, although occasionally they are the same.
They all speak, Mrs. Coulter’s daemon briefly spoke last season. He’s just a silent type (reflecting her deep-seated issues of self-conflict).
He knows Boreal is from Lyra’s world and they have daemons. He’s been spending a lot of time recently cutting windows between worlds with a girl who has a talking, shape-shifting animal. At this point seeing a monkey is just another day for him.
I don’t know if I can put my finger on exactly why the second series has been so much more entertaining then the first. It feels more confident, less eager to please and so, in the end, more pleasing. Every character is their own selves, trying to do their best, by their own lights.
For me it’s a combination of factors.The settings are more fascinating, especially Cittàgazze (which is a true production design feat, given that it’s entirely built from scratch).The daemons are not constantly missing anymore, which prevents general annoyance.The non-Ruth-Wilson actors have come into their own, especially Dafne Keen (of course Ruth Wilson was already ahead of everyone).The story advances at a brisker pace, things get done, places get visited, people collide.There are moments of levity and wonder, not just children getting slaughtered and Lyra worrying about children getting slaughtered.The larger themes have begun to coalesce. It still feels like high fantasy with spells and prophecies, but now you can glimpse the anti-religion stuff underneath.
Yep, it’s finally living up to its potential! Feels great to say that as a fan of the books.
I liked the first season — but yeah, this one’s came out the gate strong and kept running.
I think a lot of the choices that seemed a little wobbly in S1 (like introducing Will instead of waiting until S2) are finally paying off.
Oh and Mary reminds me of Susan Sarandon circa 1994’s The Client.
Me too!
My first thought when Coulter asked for the car keys was not about the operation of the vehicle but ‘roundabouts, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings!?’. There’s definitely a deleted scene there.
Can’t believe this review didn’t mention the most important moment of the episode: Monkey wearing a seatbelt.
I have to say, Ruth Wilson really has impressed me as Marisa Coulter. For an actor I’d best known as The Psycho Killer Who Loves Luther, she’s doing an amazing job playing a smart, ambitious woman in a disgustingly patriarchal society who genuinely loves her smart, determined daughter…even while wanting to stuff her in a closet and chain the door shut most of the time! (I’m sure most parents of smart, determined children feel that way sometimes.) Just watching the nuances of a woman who thought she was comfortable making Deals With the Devil Magisterium, only to be sharply pulled up first by Lee Scorsby, who looks like five miles of bad road after being beaten but still succeeds in shaming her and reminding her that she’s been a victim of their society too, then by Mary Malone by being the kind of woman scientist she yearns to be, she’s nothing short of amazing. (Oh, and the last two weeks are the first time I’ve seen why Lin-Manuel Miranda was a good choice for Scorsby.)
T and I saw the movie version of The Golden Compass , and while it had some interesting scenes (mostly of the Bears), some enjoyable acting from Sir Ian McKellan as the Voice of Iorek Byrnison, and Sam Elliott as Lee Scorsby (though this season, I’m beginning to see why he might not have been the best choice had the other two movies gotten made), overall I was going, “Um — What? Why? Who? Where? Wait! That doesn’t fit!”
Dakota Blue Richards, who played Lyra in the movie, was a nice, sweet young girl, and I never believed for a second she was capable of lying convincingly or having the drive to push forward to find things out. Daniel Craig’s Lord Asriel didn’t have a story arc that I could see, and Nicole Kidman’s Mrs. Coulter looks at Lyra like she’s The Wicked Stepmother to End All Wicked Stepmothers. It was a ponderous mess, when all is said and done….
While we’re on the topic of cast members that are becoming more and more convincing in their roles, I saw Ana yesterday, which was filmed in 2017 (so before any of His Dark Materials), and in that film Dafne Keen is basically doing a better Lyra Silvertongue than she was in season 1, a performance that only this season she was allowed to begin to replicate.
That movie is a mess, but it looked exactly like how I imagined it from the books. I’ve gotten over all of my aesthetic issues with the show because they are doing a great job with it. I have also come around on Miranda as Scoresby, though I’m still not sold on James McAvoy as Asriel. But he hasn’t been in this season, so that’s ok.
Much as The Golden Compass shit the bed, Sam Eliot and Daniel Craig were perfect casting. Especially Craig, he just oozed the kind of sheer force of will and physical presence of Asriel in a way McAvoy has tried admirably to replicate but doesn’t quite get.
Much as The Golden Compass shit the bed, Sam Eliot and Daniel Craig were perfect casting. Especially Craig, he just oozed the kind of sheer force of will and physical presence of Asriel in a way McAvoy has tried admirably to replicate but doesn’t quite get.
I only now realized how many Italian names there are in this story: Carlo, Marisa, Belacqua, Costa, and of course everybody in Cittàgazze. As an Italian, it’s kind of weird.I loved how giddy Boreal was while showing his prized gadgets to Mrs. Coulter. And how genuinely afraid for his favorite little statue. I keep wondering how many years he’s been secretly spending in Will’s world to have been able to accumulate this level of wealth and influence – and starting from nothing, not even a workable identity. I don’t think it really tracks.All that (one-sided) sexual tension between Boreal and Coulter suggested my daemon question of the week: what do the daemons do when their humans are having sex? (I’m not sure I actually wanna know).
(Possible spoiler)It’s pretty heavily implied in the books that the daemons get to boning too.
I do love how easily seduced Boreal is by the little luxuries of our world.
Ok so when Pan finally decides on what animal to permanently become, definitely the wolverine. I mean it’s only fitting cuz Dafne Keen was in ‘Logan’ with a different type of Wolverine. Man, I practically gasped and jumped for joy when Pan became that wolverine and attacked Coulter’s monkey. Payback is a bitch. I was wondering if Coulter might be a witch or descended from them? I was thinking the only other people who can be away from their daemons for long periods of time were witches.
Amongst Boreal’s artifacts, who caught sight of Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson”, stolen from the Isabella Gardiner Museum in Boston decades ago and not seen since? So that’s where it went!
Boreal’s car is a Tesla, and I assume he paid for the self-driving ability. Not that Coulter would know that, unless Boreal showed that feature off to her, which he probably did.
Please, someone give Ruth Wilson a giant pile of acting awards. She is fantastic in this.
Her dismissal of the mom jeans alone should go on her reel.
Does Coulter know how to drive a car? Because when she asked for Boreal’s keys I was very confused about how she intended to drive it, but I guess she made it there okay? Did she have to parallel park? I want to see those scenes, dammit.See, your thing is the Witches.What I can’t let go of is the complete lack of wonder or bewilderment Lyra and Mrs. Coulter express at an Oxford which, technologically speaking, is clearly multiple decades (if not the better part of a century) ahead of their own.Like, what the fuck? The first time I stepped off a plane in Japan it was like arriving in the not-too-distant future and I was gawking at everything like an idiot.
I will agree with your statement. When the books were written is was basically steampunk 1880’s compared to late 1980s, which I guess wouldnt have looked brutally different for a different world, as their weren’t computers in and on everything, but video screens would have been pretty exciting. But ya 1880’s compared to 2020 should be startling. Though your japan anecdote is sorta of strange, they are in general technologically inferiors to the US, they just really like using what they have. I say that as a person who worked for a japanese tech company and now works for american ones and has traveled to japan as well. A lot of japan feels very rural lost in time.
I had the same experience in Japan.Also, shouldn’t everyone be a little less blasé about the fact that they’ve traveled to a different universe, let alone one with fast cars and movies and stereo systems?
Japan it was like arriving in the not-too-distant future
Somewhere in time and space, Nightshift Nurse?Were Mike Nelson and his Robot Pals, engaged in an endless chase…?
Does Coulter know how to drive a car? Because when she asked for Boreal’s keys I was very confused about how she intended to drive it, but I guess she made it there okay? Did she have to parallel park? I want to see those scenes, dammit.In fairness, it was a tesla, so technically it could have self-drove most of the way. However, it would mean she would need to know how to interact with things like a touch screen, which is doubtful.
So are X23 and Lady Mormont gonna fight or what? If making her brother a zombified husk doesn’t get her to throw hands, what will?
I have waited two seasons for that f**king monkey to get what’s coming to him. And you Pan has been, ever since their first encounter. And then for Coulter to slowly throw it off… this is going to be a crazy last pair of episodes.
My family looked to me as soon as that fight happened, as I’ve been muttering both seasons that I want someone to smash than monkey around until it goes limp. Not proud of that, but it was gratifying. Its final failed jump into the slice, bouncing off and falling on the floor, was a bonus that made me yell “Thank you, show! So much better than last year!”
SPOILER ALERT (always wanted to do one of these). Don’t read if you haven’t read The Amber Spyglass and La Belle Sauvage (although if you haven’t, what are you doing with your life?At the risk of becoming a nit-picking book reader, I’m not sure if we saw Mrs. Coulter separate from her daemon in that scene. He was clearly distressed but Pullman is pretty clear that separating from your daemon is the worst thing a human can possibly do, and that is utterly soul-wrenching for the both of them. All the characters who do this are ones who have absolutely no other choice and Pullman’s pretty clear that even a character as cold-hearted as Marisa Coulter wouldn’t have the resilience to do this. I think it’s implied in the first series of this that Mrs. Coulter is already able to distance from her daemon as Lyra questions where the daemon is. I would imagine with the increased focus on Mrs. Coulter (she’s barely present in The Subtle Knife bar the stealing the alethiometer scene that they might have been clearer on this.I’m still rather lukewarm on the series as a whole but enjoying how well the constituent parts are working, and I think having Mrs. Coulter as a Phyllis Schlafly figure who’s allied herself to a misogynistic institution despite it suppressing her rights and coming to that realisation is a good piece of characterisation. I’m also enjoying the re-write of Boreal (who in the books is basically a stuffy old chancer) as a sort of boorish tech magnate (of course he drives a bloody Tesla and has pieces of the Berlin Wall in a cabinet in his cellar).That said, I’m not sure if they’re really selling the trauma of Will as the knife-bearer yet (although there’s still time). The loss of his fingers still seems a little throwaway when the books really emphasise how traumatic and painful this wound is. I think Amir Wilson is doing a pretty good job but I think the show has really failed to show the true depth of the tragedy of his situation, both before and after stepping into Cittagazze.
I think the analogy between Coulter and Schafly is spot-on.
Except I like Ruth Wilson’s Mrs. Coulter a LOT more than I do Schafly.
Well, Schafly was a real person, and a force for ill right up until her death. Coulter is fictional. Furthermore, Schafly fought to keep other women down, whereas Coulter’s motives are less clear, and involve Dust.
True that, alurin — and I’d probably find Marisa Coulton pretty horrible if she were real. I’m so glad she’s not.
Loved this episode. Ruth was outstanding. Also can’t help but think that another aspect of what made it good was that we didn’t have to bother with the witches this ep, who tend to be a drag.