His Dark Materials: Betrayal

Here we go, the final chapter of the first season, which not only completes the first book in the trilogy, but also manages half the first chapter of the second. And what do you know, the show finally finds its groove in its last moments.

What immediately caught my attention was the echo of the Master of Jordan College's words in the "previously on" segment, about how Lyra will suffer a betrayal but that she will be the betrayer. When I read this book for the first time at age thirteen, I assumed (as this show apparently does) that Lyra unwittingly taking Roger to his doom at Lord Asriel's hands was the betrayal the prophecy referred to.

Actually it isn't, as Pullman makes very clear in The Amber Spyglass when Lyra... okay, I won't give it away for those that don't know/have forgotten; suffice to say the betrayal is yet to come, and the eventual reveal never worked for me anyway, simply because I believed the betrayal had already taken place.

And don't say that "leading Roger to his death wasn't a betrayal because it wasn't Lyra's fault", because the real betrayal certainly takes liberties with the meaning of the word as well. But we'll get to that when it actually happens.

James McAvoy's Asriel is a lot more emotional here, which makes sense considering he's an actor and all that, but there's still a degree of obvious affection for Lyra that isn't really present in the book (of course, in saying that, Asriel is appalled when he believes she's the sacrifice he called for, so maybe McAvoy's interpretation isn't that far off. Still... Daniel Craig... *deep sigh*).

In any case, I suspect the softness of Lyra and Asriel's interactions is an attempt to quell the audiences' suspicions about what's going to happen to Roger, and they really slather on the adorable interactions of the two children before the worst happens.

At this point it's a little manipulative, but Roger and his daemon walking into the bathroom backwards to protect Lyra's modesty and his admission that he based their friendship on the fact they were both orphans was very sweet.

Which means that the climactic scene lands very effectively: Lyra racing to get to Roger, Roger's daemon crying "I don't want to leave you", Asriel pushing down the blade, and then the final, frantic look between Lyra and Roger... yeah, I sniffled.

Finally we get the sense of the bond between human and daemon with Roger and his daemon's mutual panic, and the incision is just as cruel and heartless as it should be.

Well, almost. Again, McAvoy can't help but apologize to Roger and justify what he's doing as part of "the greater good". Book!Asriel didn't give a fuck. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what Pullman thinks of Asriel, or what he expects us to think of him. Karma eventually comes calling for him, but he's never really held accountable for Roger's death, Lyra never gets to confront him on the issue, and things did work out the way he said they would. His decision to murder Roger pays off.

I feel that perhaps Pullman does feel, deep down, that the life of one small boy was an acceptable price to pay for Lyra fulfilling her destiny.

Then there's the reunion between Asriel and Mrs Coulter, which also plays out a little differently here than in the book. It's appropriately strange and otherworldly and beyond Lyra's ken, and the image of the daemons embracing each other while the two were kissing was a fun touch, but Mrs Coulter refuses to go with Asriel because she feels she belongs in the same world with her daughter.

That's definitely a change in motivation, though admittedly Pullman is a little vague about it. In the book, it seems to be more a reluctance to leave everything she knows and the power she's accumulated with the Magisterium.

But perhaps that's for the best: both of Lyra's parents are more like forces of nature, deliberately designed to be beyond anyone's clear understanding.

***

And over in Will's subplot, we get Boreal hearing the words "subtle knife" and "tower of angels" for the first time, though it's unclear whether he grasps their full meaning - only that Grumman's son will lead him there. It won't take too much to put the pieces together.

Finally, the interconnecting shots between Will and Lyra were pretty good; from the icy cold of the North, to the autumnal warmth of Oxford, it's only a matter of time before these two cross paths.  

Miscellaneous Observations:

Why did Asriel specifically need a child? Couldn't he have just sacrificed Thorold, or gotten his hands on someone else? And an awful lot of work goes into Asriel creating this window when we've watched Will and Boreal slip in and out of pre-existing windows without any trouble whatsoever.

That single tear on Roger's lifeless cheek... *wah*.

Asriel claims to want to build: "a Republic of Heaven" - hey, that's Lyra's line! Asriel was more interested in sticking it to the Authority than anything else.

We get an odd reveal here in learning that the man Boreal hired to investigate Will and his mother is actually a cop. Okay...

I appreciate that they took the time for a lengthy and exposition-filled conversation between Asriel and Lyra about the nature of Dust and how it fits in to this alternative-world's take on the Adam and Eve story. This was just utterly compelling to me as a young reader (and still is!) so I'm deeply thankful they kept this exchange, especially after the film merrily skipped over it. (Because yeah, of course the BBC is going to tackle subjects that Hollywood shies away from).

Pour one out for Thorold: in the book he wakes up Lyra because he's terrified that Asriel is going to hurt Roger; here he seems totally complicit in the murder and actively tries to prevent Lyra from going after them. Nice to see Gary Lewis again though.

***

So that was the first season (and the first book) of His Dark Materials. Now that we're out from under the shadow of the film, which despite its faults had Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, perhaps things will improve with The Subtle Knife (which also happens to be my favourite book of the trilogy).

I'm praying that Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson have chemistry, because I never really shipped Lyra and Will, and so never felt the sting of their separation as much as I should have. But I'm looking forward to Cittàgazze, and more of Serafina Pekkala, and the mulefa, and the cool Subtle Knife sequences (stealing the alethiometer from Boreal, aw yeah!)

I just dearly hope they manage to infuse a sense of urgency into the proceedings, because that was the main ingredient that was sadly missing from all this.