His Dark Materials: Æsahættr

 That was… not great. And yet, it’s pretty obvious that Covid-19 played its part in why this episode felt incredibly creaky and disjointed (though once again, the writers and directors decide against adding anything that could even remotely be construed as emotionally urgent – the only reasonably affecting thing was Lee Scoresby’s death, and that was entirely down to Lin Manual Miranda).

So I’m inclined to give them a bit of a pass, even though this episode was full of choppy editing and weird pacing. Some of the scenes even had characters standing awkwardly at the required three-feet distance when they should have logically moved closer to one another. Hey, it is what it is.

The gaps were most obvious in Ruta Skadi’s subplot, in which she overhears a number of cliff-ghasts discussing how Lord Asriel will need the Æsahættr, followed by her relating this intel to Serafina after seeing Lord Asriel in the flesh (as the book puts it, she sneaks into his room while he’s readying himself for bed: “Every witch there knew what had happened next, and neither Will nor Lyra dreamed of it. So Ruta Skadi had no need to tell, and she went on…” When I read this for the first time, all those years ago, I was old enough to understand what this referred to, and young enough to feel impressed by my own understanding of it).

This episode keeps the cliff-ghast scene (in which Ruta interacts with nobody) but misses the opportunity to dramatize her meeting with Asriel, which I’m sure would have existed in the Asriel-centric script. Technically Jack Thorpe didn’t leave out anything that the book didn’t already relate in third-person hindsight, but with James McAvoy’s appearance at the very end of the episode, you certainly get the sense that some material is missing here.

And they stumble a little over mystery of the Æsahættr. In the book, this is the first time we’ve heard this word, and a conversation between Ruta and Serafina has them discuss whether it’s a person or an object, with latter floating the possibility that it refers to Lyra. Of course, it’s a bit baffling that they don’t stumble to the possibility that it’s the miraculous cuts-through-anything knife that the very intimidating child with two severed fingers is carting around with him, but in this context it’s even stranger since the show has namedropped this term all the way back in the Tower of Angels, with Giacomo Paradisi.

Granted, the witches weren’t there to hear this, but the audience was, and so their inability to connect the dots becomes even stranger. From a Doylist point-of-view, why bring up the name at that early stage if it wasn’t to be relevant later?

***

The most effective scene was obviously Lee Scoresby’s death, and though the whole thing really should have played out as one extended sequence, ratcheting up the suspense and taking the audience to the edge of their seats, Lin Manual Miranda sold Lee’s escalating fear, determination, and quiet acceptance. And in a show that has so often failed to really sell the bond between human and daemon, the final exchanges between Lee and Hester were genuinely poignant; specifically the way they each tried to comfort the other while blaming themselves.

I was interested that they remembered the Chekhov’s Gun of Serafina’s cloudpine, even if Lee recalls it too late to make a difference. While reading the book I realized that its purpose is to safely remove Serafina from the Spectre attack on the rest of the witches, though since they completely left that out of this episode, the scene in which Serafina discovers Lee’s body (and in fact the existence of the cloudpine in the first place) is rendered a bit pointless.

In fact, it occurred to me for the first time that by having Ruta be the one to mercy kill the witch back at the start of this season (as opposed to Serafina, as in the book) the show has completely avoided the plot-point of Serafina vowing to assassinate Mrs Coulter in vengeance for her fallen sister… only to eventually be forced to break the arrow that she had prepared for this task, on account of her never getting the opportunity to follow through with this plan. Pullman does have a strange habit of setting Serafina up to achieve important-seeming events, and then having her consistently fail to deliver on them.

But it was a very effective death though, and certainly the best scene of the episode. See you in the underworld, Lee!

***

Elsewhere, Mrs Coulter walks into the very building that Will and Lyra were hiding in (mother’s intuition?) and finds her parka, soon to be greeted by the witch sent to warn her of the Spectres. Here’s where the scene plays out that was combined with Boreal’s assassination in the book, and I can grasp why the screenwriters would want to divide these events into two separate incidents.  

But as ever, the death of the witch and the reveal of Lyra’s true name has no real weight to it, and what should have felt like something out of a horror story, concluding with a jaw-dropping gut-punch at the name “Eve”, just feels incredibly perfunctory. The word should have been screamed in agony and despair, not just whimpered in fear.

It was nicely staged, what with the Spectre floating in without the witch noticing, and the positioning of the daemons on the stairwell and Mrs Coulter on the landing, but – as ever – it has none of the power that the book holds.

***

Finally, in the wake of Lee’s death and Will’s ascent to the summit of the mountain (though I couldn’t quite figure out the geography of this region, as it looks like they’re wandering around a series of ravines), John Parry finally comes face to face with his son.

Now look, I definitely expected the show to alter the particulars of this meeting, and have John and Will recognize each other as father and son a little bit before John is killed, and for the most part it worked – at least until Will starts throwing some Daddy Issues around. Really, Jack Thorpe? Really? Will practically defines himself through his hero worship of his father (or at least the romanticised ideal of him) and his mother’s promise that he’ll “take up his mantle.” To suddenly accuse his long-lost dad of not being there for him is not only painfully clichéd but also ludicrous since “accidentally walking through a window into another world during a blizzard” wasn’t exactly something John planned for.

For Will to act with resentment towards John, when he’s been dreaming about him his whole life, is just absurd.

What else did this episode leave out? How about John healing Will’s fingers with the bloodmoss (thereby forging a lasting connection between them), a group of angels surrounding Lyra and Will as they sleep (which Serafina recognizes as pilgrimage), John Parry commanding the Spectres to take out one of the zeppelins (I suppose there wasn’t enough budget, and they did the bird-attack last episode) and the entire last act in which Will returns to the campsite to see the witches eaten by Spectres, angels urging him to come with them, and Lyra missing. Instead they go with Will just wandering off into the sunset.

And of course, John isn’t killed by a witch whose love he spurned, but a random Magisterium agent with a rifle. Uh… okay. And why did he choose to go all Human Shield for Will instead of just flinging them both to the ground?

***

Amidst all this anguish, it’s almost funny that Mary is having a pretty great time of it: making it safely through the city and into the hills, returning the lost children to their campsite, and generally enjoying her adventure. I feel that Covid was the reason behind us not actually seeing the campsite or the children’s safe return, but it was nice to get some closure for these kids (in the book, we never see them again after Serafina saves Will and Lyra from their attack).

Sadly, no glimpse of the mulefa, but was there meant to be some significance to the blue petals that Mary kept picking up? Whatever the case, Simone Kirby has easily been the highpoint of this season, beautifully capturing the character’s wisdom, kindness, curiosity and ability to take things in her stride. I hope they do her story justice next season, as it’s certainly not going to translate easily.

***

And then, in the worst bit of editing of the episode, we’re treated to Lord Asriel’s voiceover as he speaks to a mysterious entity over scenes of the other characters just wandering around rather aimlessly. The context doesn’t really clarify the situation: he’s standing at the base of a smoking canyon and he’s addressing the rebel angels, who appear out of the sky to pledge their allegiance.

Now, you don’t need me to tell you that this feels clumsily grafted on, and was clearly the conclusion of the Asriel-centric episode as opposed to this one. So I don’t want to be too hard on the show for things beyond their control. But it’s still an extremely clunky conclusion to the season, and makes it all the more painful to have missed out on whatever they had planned for the Asriel episode.

Given all my complaining about how certain scenes and passages from the book have been adapted, a subplot that existed completely outside the pages of Pullman’s text would have been fascinating.

And of course the stinger with Roger, which looks like they just took a pre-existing shot of Lewin Lloyd and added some smoke effects and more voiceovers. Oof. Also, better get cracking on season three, because I doubt this kid is going to remain so baby-faced for much longer…

Miscellaneous Observations:

After all the fuss and drama and death that goes into telling Will that he must take the subtle knife to Lord Asriel, it’s very much a source of amusement to me that he never even sees it. In the book Will is told: “You must go to Lord Asriel and tell him that Stanislaus Grumman sent you, and that you have the one weapon he needs above all others. Like it or not, boy, you have a job to do. Ignore everything else, no matter how important it seems, and go and do this.” The reader has it drummed into their heads many times that this task is of crucial importance. Will must do this.

Will… does not do this.

If memory serves, not all of Pullman’s deliberate storytelling subversions work, and I suspect not delivering on this particular plot-point is going to be one of them. (The Amber Spyglass fumbles in a lot of areas, from the tedious journey into the underworld, to the superfluousness of the Gallivespians, to the retcon of what Lyra’s “betrayal” encompasses, to the pushing of Asriel’s war to the outskirts of the action. How they’re going to manage adapting all this will certainly be interesting).

During Mrs Coulter’s monologue in the Tower of Angels – was that Giacomo’s body behind her? I suppose it must have been, as there’s no one around to move it.

My concurrent re-read of the book yielded some surprises, such as the fact that it posits another reason as to how Mrs Coulter can control the Spectres. In her words: “They know I can give them more nourishment if they let me live than if they consume me. I can lead them to all the victims their phantoms hearts desire. As soon as you described them to me I knew I could dominate them, and so it turns out.” I find myself preferring the show’s reasoning (that she simply shuts off the humanity they feed on), and it was a profoundly good idea to dramatize her actually exerting control over them, instead of just asking us to go with it.

Another surprising realization is that Boreal doesn’t die in the book: though Mrs Coulter poisons him, he’s last described as being “slumped unconscious in the canvas chair, and his grey-skinned daemon coiled in the dust.” He never appears again, so it hardly matters either way, but still…

I’m glad they kept in the: “she’s my best friend” exchange between Will and Pan, but it’s ruined a bit when he amends: “not that I’ve had many.” C’mon, how many friends he’s had isn’t the point! Even if he’d had thousands, he would have still counted Lyra as his best.

Turns out that the actress playing Serafina is actually called Ruta, which seems an amazing coincidence. What are the odds? And I’ve just found out she also played Ursula Banadeo in The Borgias. Holy shit!

So we end this season with two parental reunions, one that ends in death and the other in kidnapping. Lyra is currently in a trunk, in a steamer, heading for Mrs Coulter-only-knows-where, and though I’m truly baffled that the story doesn’t end with Will discovering that she’s gone missing, it’s enough of a cliff-hanger to tide us over until the third and final season…

***

And just so we’re clear guys, despite what the time-stamp says I’m not posting this on Christmas Day – it’s Boxing Day over here in New Zealand. I did spend a lovely Christmas with friends and family, gorging myself on chocolate and watching Will Ferrell’s Elf for the first time in years. As suspected, this second season of His Dark Materials was a step-up from the first, though there were times I found writing up these reviews something of a trial. It's a decent adaptation, but it's certainly not taking full advantage of this extraordinary story. Ah well.