WiC Watches: His Dark Materials

Image: His Dark Materials/HBO

Episode 8: “The Betrayal”

After a meandering season far too fond of filler, His Dark Materials sticks the landing with “The Betrayal.” The episode succeeds because it doesn’t blink. Lyra gets to the top of that mountain, where her own father has taken her friend Roger to be sacrificed, looks her friend in the eye, and…fails. Lord Asriel severs Roger from his dæmon Salcilia, using the energy released by the intercision to enter a new world where he can continue his crusade to free all mankind. Meanwhile, Lyra’s friend — the one she crossed the world to save — is dead, killed by her father, a man she trusted.

That moment is everything. It gives Lyra a purpose to fulfill, and a frightful enemy. God, could Lord Asriel actually be a worse parent than Mrs. Coulter? Lyra has no luck at all. She’ll have to depend on herself instead.

Still, I like how the show doesn’t turn either of Lyra’s parents into mustache-twirling supervillains, although each could make a good claim to the title. Asriel clearly just isn’t interested in parenting. He’d rather fulfill his epic destiny, and if that means killing his daughter’s friend, so be it. Both he and Mrs. Coulter are selfish creatures, and I think Pullman’s books do a decent job of holding back on immediately concluding that this makes them “evil.” They’re more complicated than that. Their evil is more mundane, and therefore more relatable, and therefore somehow scarier. They’re antagonists who don’t stop being characters.

Image: His Dark Materials/HBO

So the climax is great, and this episode is all about the climax. If “The Betrayal” has a weakness, it’s that the buildup wasn’t as strong as it should have been. The show never really drove home just how horrifying the idea of severing a child from their dæmon was, so we weren’t as afraid for Roger as we needed to be.

I imagine part of that was due to special effects constraints — this show isn’t cheap, and convincingly depicting dozens of characters being inseparable from their computer-generated animal familiars may have threatened to break the bank. Still, I think it ground on the show. Maybe they could have written fewer scenes where Lee Scoresby talks about legal codes and put that money into dæmon rendering? (Oh, and I still think we could do without the adventures of Lord Boreal. This episode mostly stayed focused on Lyra, and it was better for it.)

Sorry, I’m still bitter about the show’s dire middle stretch. This episode looked great, from Iorek’s last appearance for a while (I imagine) to Mrs. Coulter’s artillery barrage to the aurora lighting up the night sky. There were real moments of beauty here.

So what next? Lyra and Will are both walking through windows to other worlds, and according to executive producer Jane Tranter, we’ll see what awaits them next year!

Thanks for watching along with us, everybody! Next season, we put the Subtle Knife to use.

Episode Grade: A-

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