Every sci-fi and fantasy show you should watch in 2022

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Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson in His Dark Materials season 2. Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson in His Dark Materials season 2. Photograph by Courtesy of HBO /

His Dark Materials season 3 — HBO — 2022

The third and final season of His Dark Materials — HBO’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s controversial fantasy trilogy — is on its way this year. The show has mostly flown under the radar, never getting the acclaim and attention of other suitable-for-teenagers fantasy series like Stranger Things, but it’s a nice piece of work.

His Dark Materials tells the story of Lyra and Will, two children from different worlds who get caught up in an interdimensional conspiracy involving witches, airships, talking polar bears, quantum mechanics and literal angels. It’s a heady mix of themes and plot elements, and I don’t think HBO has ever quite made the series as enchanting as the books, but that’s a tall order so I’ll cut them some slack. The performances are good (especially Ruth Wilson as the icy Mrs. Coulter), the effects effective and the intentions pure. And the third and final book in the series, The Amber Spyglass, has some eye-popping climaxes to look forward to.

HBO filmed the first two seasons of His Dark Materials back to back, so they ran the second a mere year after the first. The third season they shot separately, so we’ve had to wait longer for it. We don’t know exactly when it’s coming out but we know it’ll be this year. — Dan