We're getting there, only one more to go!
The episodes in the latter half of this season have fallen pretty neatly into book chapters: the last dealt with Bolvangar, this is Svalbard, and clearly the finale will focus on Asriel (as that closing scene clearly depicted, but we'll get to that).
So Lyra has miraculously survived her fall from the balloon and finds her way to Svalbard where she's immediately placed in their dungeons. There's an exposition prisoner in there with her (I'll cut them some slack, because he's in the book too, even though I'd completely forgotten about him) and she comes up with a plan to unseat Iofur as King of the Bears.
This is one of the greatest cons in children's literature, in which a little girl convincingly outsmarts a mighty bear by using her aptitude for constructing elaborate lies, her accumulated knowledge of his fatal flaw, and her clever exploitation of a unique aspect of her world (the existence of daemons).
With all this Lyra tricks Iofur into believing that she's the human-formed daemon of Iorek, that she's desperate to instead be his daemon, and that only by killing Iorek in combat can her transfer from one bear to another take place.
As is to be expected, this adaptation carries all this out, but in such a way that sucks all intrigue, cleverness and suspense from the proceedings. It's actually quite impressive how boring they've managed to make "outsmarting an unstable bear king with a detailed and plausible deception by playing on his well-established insecurities to achieve a particular goal that still might not work out in her favour".
The scripts haven't done nearly enough work in establishing Lyra's storytelling abilities, or in Iofur's desperate desire to become a human and have a daemon of his own - and because they didn't bother with the fencing episode either, in which Iorek demonstrates his skill in reading humans when Lyra tries to whack him with a stick, the fact that Iofur has lost this ability in his attempt to be human has to be explained after the battle is finished.
It's even staged a little oddly, with Lyra starting with "I'm his daemon" a statement which would have immediately gotten book!Lyra killed if she hadn't baited the trap with promises of secrets and daemons, and which is quickly followed up with boundless flattery.
Here Lyra's pitch is delivered very ponderously, and Iofur ends up being relentlessly suspicious of her, though book!Lyra knows he'll be putty in her hands after she spots the little doll dressed as Mrs Coulter that he's using as a substitute daemon. Which of course, is completely absent here.
***
Over in the B-plot that's been dragging out for several episodes and naturally doesn't seem all that relevant in comparison to the fighting polar bears over in the A-plot, Will's mother is menaced by Lord Boreal, who has figured out there might be relevant letters in her house.
Despite being characterized as fearful and paranoid, Elaine Parry doesn't lock the front door of her house, and once Boreal barges in she spots his snake daemon, an interesting original detail, but not one I can see being in any way relevant.
(In fact, Boreal is dispatched of in such a low-key way in the books that I have to believe his role will be bumped up in The Subtle Knife as well, since so far he's clocked in more screen-time than Lord Asriel himself).
I was planning to complain that if they were going to spend so much time in Will's plot, they should have at least established Mrs Cooper, the elderly woman that he eventually leaves his mother with. Here, he leaves her with one of his teachers who has offered to help in a past episode, so I'll give them that.
At yet, surely you can see the difference between Will leaving his mother with a doddery old lady with a minimal understanding of what's going on, compared to a grown man who is ALSO an authority figure? Who just breezes past Will's assertion that his house has just been robbed and lets him march off on his own??
And then the men who have already turned over the house while Will and his mother were out come BACK AGAIN? They trashed the house the first time around and Will KNOWS the letters are in the sewing machine, so why is he still there? Why are things being randomly changed into variations that make NO SENSE?
(For the record, everything you've seen of Will in this show so far is taken from SEVEN PAGES in The Subtle Knife, so if you're wondering why so little has actually happened, there's your answer).
***
Finally, we end with Lyra and Roger reaching Lord Asriel's fortress, and the one thing this adaptation has not only done well, but better than in the book, is Roger. He feels more like a three-dimensional person with his own internal life than Pullman ever bothered to give him, and the actor is adorable. His impromptu hug with Lyra outside the door ("is this for you or for me?" "A bit of both") was just darling.
Did James McAvoy overplay his reaction to Lyra's presence, and his quickly-recovered calm when he sees Roger? Little bit, but it's a visual medium and it worked. We know that poor kid is in deep trouble, but have no idea why.
Miscellaneous Observations:
So the nurse did have her daemon removed, which leads me to ask why the procedure was so effective for her, while the kids ended up either catatonic or dead? This nurse is exactly what the Magisterium wanted to achieve: a fully functional adult with a severed daemon who was pliant, responsive and able to complete tasks. That's... the perfected goal, right? So why on earth were they bothering with the kids?
And then Mrs Coulter tries to strangle her, and then changes her mind and apologizes. I don't understand the point of that scene.
I just realized that there's been no exposition on how the armour is the soul of a bear, which probably explained why Iorek and Iofur fought without their armour, a choice that makes absolutely no sense within the logic of this world-building.
It was a good fight though, and I imagine it's where a good chunk of the budget went. But you hold back on showing Iorek tear off Iofur's lower jaw and then eating his heart? C'mon that shit was cool.
The blood trails outside Svalbard were a nice detail.
Iorek says of Lee that he's: "a man with nine lives," because referencing a cat is totally something that a polar bear would do. At least it wasn't as bad as asking Lyra: "are you okay?" Seriously?? An exiled polar bear king uses the word "okay"?? Please, THINK about who your characters are and how they might express themselves.
Lee and Serafina are in this episode, and all they do is talk stilted exposition and wishy-washy nonsense at each other.
One episode to go. Perhaps because it's finally gotten past the shadow of the filmic version, I've heard it's actually pretty good.
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