His Dark Materials Season 3 Review: The War On Heaven Reaches Its Conclusion In A Confident And Epic Final Season
"His Dark Materials" has finally come into its own. It took a few stumbles and big swings, but the fantasy series has reached the heights that it was reaching for throughout its first and second seasons — and it only took a little divine intervention.
"His Dark Materials" was always a show that looked before it leapt — perhaps a fitting trait considering its notoriously brash heroine, Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen). It was eager to leave behind the YA trappings of "The Golden Compass" with its first season, to the detriment of the show's pacing and its own protagonist's character arc, with a vast scope and crowded ensemble threatening to overshadow poor Lyra. It was eager to establish itself as an adult fantasy show in the wake of the end of "Game of Thrones," to the detriment of the story's own inimitable qualities. And it was eager to give more screentime to its biggest star James McAvoy, despite Lord Asriel's status as a secondary character and all-around bad dad.
But with its third and final eight-episode season, based on the events of Philip Pullman's "The Amber Spyglass" and penned by Jack Thorne, Francesca Gardiner, and Amelia Spencer, all of the show's high-minded ambitions can pay off in a satisfying and exciting way.
Face god and walk backwards into hell
"The serpent has been summoned, a new Eve emerges, the time for rebellion is coming." So begins an ominous voiceover from a vengeful angel in the premiere episode of "His Dark Materials" season 3, signaling that the show is not shying away from its source material's subversive religious message that got it banned from many a U.S. school. This is the retelling of John Milton's "Paradise Lost," and "His Dark Materials" is going to kill God.
Of course, killing God is a lofty promise, one that "His Dark Materials" didn't seem capable of fulfilling at first with its many tangled storylines and slightly boring villains. But with the epic and exciting season 3, the show manages to pull it off.
It all comes down to Asriel's storyline finally gelling. Where for the first two seasons, his actions were either too mysterious to make sense of or too light on plot, with season 3, Asriel gets to jump into deuteragonist mode, building his army to take down the Authority and his tyrannical Kingdom of Heaven. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's Commander Ogunwe, who hails from a "Star Wars"-like world where rebels wear colorful jumpsuits and fight against an oppressive regime, is the perfect gateway into Asriel's story. When Asriel recruits Ogunwe to fight in this army, he brings the perplexed commander up to speed with his divine quest and the story so far, Akinnuoye-Agbaje facing each increasingly absurd turn of events (angels! Tiny spies! A war for free will itself!) with a dignified grace that feels immediately grounding, especially in the face of Asriel's smug self-righteousness. McAvoy, clearly reveling in getting the spotlight after Asriel's planned solo episode from season 2 was cut, does a lot with smirk — playing up the character's Machiavellian tendencies and moral ambiguities while piling on the charm.
But it's when Asriel and Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson, as slinky and magnetic as ever) join storylines that the show's sometimes frustrating eagerness to expand its scope finally clicks. She's wily and unreadable, he's mercurial and borderline heretical, and together they make for an explosive combination that is hard to look away from. Wilson and McAvoy are the two most charismatic actors on the show, and make so much of a meal out of their meatier subplots that "His Dark Materials" almost falls to "Good Omens" syndrome, where all you want to watch are the two of them in a room together. But "His Dark Materials" just avoids this fate by closely adapting Lyra and Will's story with care.
Free will
After Lyra is kidnapped by Mrs. Coulter, Will Parry (Amir Wilson) begins his long, lonely search for her, until he encounters two angels hoping to recruit him to Asriel's cause. As the wielder of the subtle knife (aka Æsahættr, the "God destroyer"), Will is the only person who can help Asriel fulfill his mission to kill the Authority, but Will only has thoughts for Lyra. Unable to persuade the bullish Will, the angels Balthamos and Baruch (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Simon Harrison, both perfectly cast) begrudgingly agree to help him find Lyra — as long as he agrees to join Asriel's army afterwards. Of course, with Mrs. Coulter involved and the Magisterium (dull as usual, but with a great new villain in the form of Jamie Ward's chilling and deceptively handsome Father Gomez) determined to kill Lyra over the prophecy that she is the new Eve, things quickly go awry.
Keen and Wilson have really grown into their roles over the past three seasons, and hold their own even as the other storylines grow increasingly compelling. While Keen doesn't get much to do in the early episodes because of Lyra's drug-induced sleep, Wilson continues to be a promising performer, finding more notes to play within Will's turmoil and with the variety of characters, new and old and angelic, whom Will is forced to play nice with.
And what of the depiction of the angels? As described in Pullman's book, the angels seemed like they'd be impossible to depict well onscreen but the show makes the smart choice of making them take "human" form most of the time, ie bald men and women in robes with eerily pale eyes. It's just uncanny enough an appearance that it works, though the familiar translucent shimmery form shows up on several key occasions. The design of the miniature Gallivespians is also inspired — with Sian Clifford and Jonathan Aris' characters Salmakia and Roke sporting insect-like black eyes and sleek futuristic outfits. And of course, there's the mulefa, the wise and friend-shaped creatures that Mary Malone (Simone Kirby) befriends, in a storyline that manages to streamline one of the weirder aspects of the book. That streamlining sometimes comes at a cost —the industrial wasteland-esque design of the Land of the Dead is striking, but somewhat samey — but it's clear that HBO has spared no expense on making this final season look as grand and dazzling as possible.
The dust settles
With "His Dark Materials" season 3, it feels like the pieces that the show had been somewhat haphazardly assembling these past few years have finally fallen into place.
The sprawling storylines can come together, Keen and Wilson can give fully realized performances as Lyra and Will march toward their destinies, and the story's most imaginative elements can finally come to life onscreen. And this time, McAvoy's Lord Asriel knows he's a bad dad, and is having fun with it.
Did the show sometimes forget what made the original books so powerful and try to mold itself to fit the trends of genre TV? Yes. Did its concessions to the limits of TV adaptations make "His Dark Materials" veer dangerously into generic fantasy territory? Sometimes. But despite its stumbles and missed swings, "His Dark Materials" is still an immaculately performed, visually stunning show about killing God and coming of age.
"His Dark Materials" season 3 premieres on HBO on December 5, 2022.