By now, you’ve probably heard that HBO is partnering with the BBC to bring famed author Philip Pullman’s beloved trilogy of fantasy novels — His Dark Materials — to the small screen. The teaser for the show looks promising. Dafne Keen from Logan is playing the scrappy Lyra, which is a perfect match, Lin-Manuel Miranda is Lee Scoresby (not quite as inspired a casting choice as Sam Elliot, but the less said about that 2007 Golden Compass movie, the better), and there are plenty of armored polar bears, which is key.
His Dark Materials follows the adventures of Lyra Belacqua, who lives in a world not unlike our own, except that everyone has an animal familiar called a daemon, which is fun. At the start of the story, someone is kidnapping children and separating them from their daemons. And things get weirder from there.
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It looks like the first season will just cover the first book in the series, The Golden Compass, which makes sense. In the second book, The Subtle Knife, we’re introduced to another protagonist: Will Parry, who’s from a world exactly like our own…because it is our own. He and Lyra will team up to unravel a great mystery that spans dimensions.
HBO has now revealed who will play Will. Meet Amir Wilson:
“One day, you’ll follow in your father’s footsteps. You’re going to be a great man too. You’ll take up his mantle."
— His Dark Materials (@darkmaterials) June 6, 2019
Introducing @Amirrwilsonn as Will Parry.#HisDarkMaterials pic.twitter.com/6lPg1bssmZ
In the books, Will is the only son of explorer John Parry. His mother, Elaine, suffers from mental health issues and he’s had to take care of her from an early age since his father disappeared on an expedition to the Arctic.
Will is the yang to Lyra’s yin. Where she is fiery and impetuous, he’s cool and collected. And while he has a daemon, it doesn’t manifest until later in the story, because Will is from our dimension and we don’t have those here…that I’ve noticed.
So now that the cast is coming together, maybe we’ll get a release for the show soon. Eh, HBO?
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