Another week, another His Dark Materials moment I’ve been intensely curious about since the series began. After last week’s harrowing, action-filled trip to Bolvangar, Lyra continues her journey North without the Gyptians. They need to get all the missing children home. She’s now traveling with Lee and Iorek to free her father from bear prison. To do that, Iorek needs to reclaim his throne by fighting and defeating Iofur Raknison. We’re hurtling toward the end of the first book, and Lyra’s journey isn’t going to get any easier from here.
She’s not doing so hot right now either. After falling from Lee’s balloon in last week’s cliff-ghast attack, she wakes up alone in a snowy canyon. She calls out for Iorek and Lee, but a different armored bear finds her. He captures her and takes her to a jail cell inside the bear kingdom. Inside her cell, she meets a scholar who’s clearly been here for a long time. Imprisonment has mentally broken him. He does fill her in on some useful information, though. Lord Asriel was in that same cell, but he talked his way out. His prison is now his laboratory on the highest mountain, where he can conduct his experiments. The bears still won’t let him leave.
Dafne Keen (Credit: Alex Bailey / HBO)
Lyra also learns that Iorek should be king, that Iofur hates him and took the throne after Iorek was disgraced and exiled. Iofur is also obsessed with becoming human. He wants nothing more than to become a daemon. That gives Lyra an idea. She calls for the guards and says she needs to see Iofur. Pan hides in her clothes and she claims to be Iorek’s daemon. She tells Iofur that if he defeats Iorek in one-on-one combat, she will become his. To prove it, she has him ask a question that only a daemon would know. She convinces him to let her go into the other room alone to find out the answer. It’s the only way she can guarantee Iorek doesn’t get killed on his way in. Now she has to hope she didn’t set him up for a fight he can’t win.
Iorek, it turns out, is pleased with Lyra’s trick. He needs to fight Iofur to end his reign. The fight itself looks pretty good, but it’s nowhere near the level of CG action scene we’ve come to expect from HBO. As the two bears fight, it doesn’t look quite as real as I hoped it would. It is a well-choreographed scene with some great sound design. You feel the impact of every hit and bite. When Iorek is all bloodied up beneath Iofur, I was genuinely worried for him even knowing how the fight will end. Lyra runs to Iorek’s side and Iofur realizes she’s been lying to him. Iofur stands up, about to kill them both, when Iorek charges him. Here’s where the fight scene gets really disappointing.
Dafne Keen (Credit: Alex Bailey / HBO)
There’s an image from this scene in the book that has stuck with me ever since I read it as a kid. It’s so striking and disturbing that anyone who’s read it remembers every detail. In the book, this fight ends with Iorek ripping off Iofur’s jaw, leaving his tongue to dangle out down his neck. Now, I didn’t think the series would actually show that. It’s the kind of violence you can get away with in a book aimed at older kids, not a live-action TV show for them. Even HBO has to consider its audience. But to not even hint at it? Even the PG-rated movie showed the jaw flying off from a distance. Here, the camera focuses on Lyra and we hear a crunching sound. It’s not even clear what happened, just that Iofur is dead. I know it’s not necessary for the story, but this feels like a major cop-out when even the bad movie had a better take on this scene.
I guess that’s really the problem of trying to adapt this series. The book is too complex to satisfyingly fit it all in a two-hour movie. A series like this is really the best non-book vehicle for this story. But with a TV show comes a TV budget, and we’ve seen that let the series down all season. They clearly aren’t working with Game of Thrones money here. So we only get daemons when they’re needed for the plot. They never become a natural fact of life, which is what hindered the Bolvangar episode’s horror. And the giant bear fight, the last big action sequence in the book feels so much smaller than it should. The series’ writing is great and the performances are fantastic, but these issues keep holding it back. The scale never feels as grand or epic as the characters keep insisting it is.
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Credit: Alex Bailey / HBO)
I do continue to like the areas in which the series expands on the book. After Iofur dies, we see the ripples it causes in the world, which the book doesn’t give us. The Magisterium is freaking out about the possibility of Lord Asriel’s freedom. They’re appalled he was allowed to continue his research at all, and now he can actually put it into practice. They chew out Mrs. Coulter, who is shockingly calm after her inhuman scream at the beginning of the episode. Now, she’s collected. She knows more about Lord Asriel than The Magesterium ever could, and she knows they need her knowledge.
This episode also gets into the beginning of The Subtle Knife, which I did not expect from this season. I guess if you start telling Will’s story, you’re eventually going to reach the first chapter of that book. Lord Boreal reveals himself to be a bigger scumbag than we thought he was. He corners Will’s mom in her house demanding answers about her husband. She refuses him and he threatens to have her son taken away. She tells him to come back with a warrant if he is a policeman like he claims he is. She says she’s already afraid of so many things, so adding him to the list isn’t a big deal. I love her here. Her illness isn’t a constraint, she’s able to draw from her experiences to stand up to a bully. She doesn’t get this kind of character development in the books, and I’m so glad the series expanded her role this way.
Ruth Wilson (Credit: Alex Bailey / HBO)
After kicking Lord Boreal out of her house, she runs to find Will at school. He can see something’s wrong and takes her home, only to discover that someone has already been there. The place has been ransacked. He takes her to his boxing coach’s home and asks if she can stay. He goes back to the house to look for the letters from his father. While he’s there, the men break into his house again. When one of the men finds him, he fights back and pushes the man over the railing, killing him. Now, he’s on the run. Will walks by his coach’s house to say goodbye to his mother. Book readers know where he goes from here, but he doesn’t just yet. All he can do is run away into the night.
It’s only natural that the first season would dip into the second book now. We have one more episode left, and we’re rapidly running out of The Golden Compass. With one episode left, I’m not holding out hope that the series will overcome its problems next week. It made its daemon-less bed and it’s had to lie in it these last couple episodes. There is still enough good here that I can’t completely write off the series, though. The writing and acting remain high points for the series and there’s enough time between now and Season 2 to fix the other issues. Besides, the episode ends with some chilling foreshadowing.
The last scene with Lord Asriel is the show firing on all cylinders. As Lyra greets her father, he initially screams and sends her away. He says he didn’t send for her and tells her she has to leave. His demeanor changes completely when he sees Roger. Suddenly, he’s sweet and accommodating, asking for the children to be given a bath and a meal. Those who know what happens next are already scared. Even if they don’t, there’s something uneasy about the acting in this scene. It effectively creates a sense of dread that will carry the show into next week’s finale.
His Dark Materials airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
Previously on His Dark Materials:
- His Dark Materials Season 1 Episode 6 Recap
- His Dark Materials Season 1 Episode 5 Recap
- His Dark Materials Season 1 Episode 4 Recap
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