10 things His Dark Materials season 2 needs to get right

Image: His Dark Materials/HBO

The World-Hopping

The first season of His Dark Materials ended with Lord Asriel opening the portal to another world, something that seems pretty magnificent at the time. But The Subtle Knife makes world-hopping a more common activity, with the characters jumping from place to place multiple times throughout the story

Given season 1’s ending, it seems certain this is the direction the show will head in, even if it does make changes here and there. And it’ll have to take care to get this aspect of the story right. After all, the audience is going to require some explanations about how the portals between worlds work and what’s going on in these strange new places.

While we know what’s going on in Lyra’s and Will’s worlds, Cittàgazze — the strange, adult-free place where the two of them first meet — is going to take some work to properly capture and contextualize. What we’ve seen of season 2 shows that the series has the deserted town thing down, but how will the show handle the Specters, mysterious beings that feed on Dust?

Image: His Dark Mateirals/HBO

From the Specters to the pockets between worlds, His Dark Materials has a lot of explaining to do, and will need convincing visuals to convey all of it. Add in the extra world-building and keeping up with all the dimensional jumps, and the series has its work cut out for it. Let’s hope it delivers.