Watch the trailer for His Dark Materials season 2!

Animal familiars! Texans in giant balloons! Knifes that can cut through dimensions! Witches everywhere! It’s time for His Dark Materials season 2 on HBO.

His Dark Materials, HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s classic fantasy trilogy, ran last year, and it was pretty good. As a big fan of the books I had some quibbling nerd-rage issues with how they depicted certain things, but it was good, got better as it went along, and ended very strong.

And things are only looking up, because the second book in Pullman’s series, The Subtle Knife, is a great read, possibly the best in the trilogy. Can they pull it off? Take a look at the brand new trailer and judge for yourself:

Let’s address the elephant in the room first: there are no giant talking polar bears in the trailer. I regret to inform you that Iorek Byrnison and his kind don’t play a big role in The Subtle Knife. I will now pause for mourning.

But it’s okay, because The Subtle Knife has lots of other cool things. We’ve got the returns of Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen, with her dæmon Pantalaimon) and Will Parry (Amir Wilson), who at the end of the first season both left their home dimensions for parts unknown.

As we see in the trailer, they meet up. Where? Readers will recognize the the strange city of Cittàgazze. Everyone else, you’ll find out what the deal is soon enough. It’s weird and fun.

There’s also Lin-Manuel Miranda returning as the Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby and Ruth Wilson as the ever-smoldering Mrs. Coulter. We also see Andrew Scott, aka the Hot Priest from Fleabag, as Will’s dad John, who will play a part in this ongoing dimension-hopping mystery.

And there’s a glimpse of the subtle knife itself, which can “cut between worlds.” Plus witches, religious oppression, and Lyra freaking out a physics professor. Things gonna get crazy!

Unfortunately, we don’t have a release date, but just know that His Dark Materials season 2 is coming “this fall.” In the meantime, you can watch the full cast and crew panel discussion from Comic-Con@Home!

Easily the most interesting tidbit to come out of this panel is that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is voicing the John Parry’s dæmon. Waller-Bridge played Fleabag in Fleabag, and had a compelling relationship with Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest. Here they are, together again.

And there’s one more season to come after this, by the way. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for the whole trilogy to be available.

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