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In this second season, His Dark Materials takes story material from the novel’s sequel, The Subtle Knife. The series itself aired in 2020 yesterday via the HBO streaming service.
His Dark Materials still features the previous cast, starting from Dafne Keen (Lyra Belacqua), Ruth Wilson (Mrs Marisa Coulter), James McAvoy (Lord Asriel Belacqua), and Amir Wilson (Will Parry).
On the Rotten Tomatoes website, the series received generally positive reviews from critics, and audiences alike. His Dark Materials Season 2 has an 85% rating based on reviews from 33 critics, and a rating of 7/10, while the audience score for this series gets a rating of 88% from viewers.
Synopsis
At the end of the story in the first season, Lord Asriel sacrificed the life of Roger Parslow, Lyra’s best friend, so that he could open a portal to a parallel world at the poles. After crying over the loss of her best friend, Lyra then walked towards the portal to look for Lord Asriel again.
Meanwhile in another world, Will Parry is hiding from Lord Boreal’s men who want him. There, Will accidentally discovers a mysterious portal that connects him to a foreign world he has never seen before.
Furthermore, after Lyra exited the portal, she was then in a city called Cittagazze. There, too, he met Will Parry, who had arrived a few days earlier. Will is then surprised by Lyra’s daemon, Pan, who can speak human language.
In the world where Will lived, there was no such thing as a daemon, and people had no animal companions who could talk. Lyra and Will then tell each other that their two worlds share the university of Oxford, and several other things in common.
A group of Cittagazze children then meet Lyra and Will, they then tell them that the adults have left the city, and also warn that there is an evil species called Specters that can absorb people’s souls when they reach adulthood.
Elsewhere, the mage clans prepare to start a war against the Magisterium. They then tasked Lee Scoresby, a blimp pilot (aeronaut), to find Stanislaus Grumman, an explorer who is believed to be alive, and not dead.
Inside the submarine, Mrs Coulter interrogates and tortures a captured witch. He forces the wizard to reveal the name of the “child in the prophecy” which is always kept a secret by the wizard clan.
Before the wizard could reveal his name, the queen of the wizard clan, Ruta Skadi, arrived and killed several of the crew, including injuring Cardinal Sturrock. Next, through the portal in Cittagazze, Will invites Lyra to go to his world.
Will then visits his mother, while Lyra goes to Oxford where she meets Charles Latrom aka Lord Boreal. The alethiometer compass then guides Lyra to Mary Malone, an Oxford physicist who researches Dark Matter or Dust in Lyra’s world.
Cardinal Sturrock eventually died, and Father MacPhail was chosen to be his successor. Mrs Coulter then cooperated with him to then carry out a bombing in the area where the wizard clan lived, and the war had already begun.
The Complexity of the Story Is Increasing
In a fictional universe filled with wizards, daemons, armored talking bears, and window portals that open parallel worlds, His Dark Materials is sure to provide a fun fantasy story.
This series since its first season has had interesting story material, and has become one of the fantasy series that is not boring to watch.
In the second season, this series feels much more gripping than the first series. There was a lot of intrigue, especially the war between the wizarding clan and the Magisterium.
In this second season too, the relationship between the characters looks more complex and the conflict is getting more and more dilemmatic. However, it also makes the storyline throughout the 7 episodes feel more alive, and exciting.
Fortunately, the second season of His Dark Materials is quite developed with improved performances from each of the players. Apart from that, the cinematographic visual effects are still amazing.
The concept of parallel worlds, especially in the City of Cittagazze, is described in an elegant and warm way, but on the other hand it holds a dark mystery that can threaten Lyra and Will’s journey.
Then, the story twist that was given was quite surprising. Moreover, in the first season we were told that Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter are actually Lyra’s parents.
While Will’s father, Colonel John Parry alias Dr. Stanislaus Grumman, turns out to be still alive, and he becomes a psychic, trying to find his son as the owner of the “Invisibility Blade.”
The Characters Still Playing Solid
In this second season, Lyra uses Silvertongue after her name after helping the Bear King, Iorek Byrnison, to reclaim his throne as ruler of Svalbard in the Arctic region.
After that, Lyra (Dafne Keen) explores the mysterious city of Cittagazze after leaving her world through a parallel world portal created by her father Lord Asriel (James McAvoy). In the city, he and his daemon, Pantalaimon “Pan”, meet Will Parry (Amir Wilson), both of whom have fled from their own world.
Although they are initially suspicious of each other, Lyra and Will quickly learn to understand each other, and care for each other. The fast-growing bond between the two then became one of the backbones of the story’s strength for the second series of His Dark Materials series.
After the two had separate storytelling in their first season, Dafne and Amir then reunited, and quickly managed to build an improved chemistry between the two characters they played.
But, the most alluring appearance in the series seems to fall back to Ruth Wilson as mistress Marisa Coulter.
