His Dark Materials

The third and final season of His Dark Materials—corresponding to The Amber Spyglass, the last book in the original Phillip Pullman trilogy—has quite the ...

He is one half of the The first few chapters of The Amber Spyglass are where Pullman first gives his iconic villain any sort of depth, and that depth mostly comes from her burgeoning maternal feelings for the unconscious Lyra, whom she is holding hostage. He serves as an audience surrogate for introducing Lord Asriel’s rebel encampment—the Republic of Heaven—and also as a foil for Asriel’s parental neglect: fighting to make the world safe for his one remaining daughter while Asriel ignores Lyra to wage war on God. Freeing Ogunwe from this narrative is a relief, and something of a surprise given how Perhaps, given that the anti-Catholic aspect of the final novel is one of the weaker distractions from what makes the series so beloved, this may even, ultimately, be a good thing. Similarly, the introduction of a queer, angelic couple in Balthamos and his partner, Baruch (Simon Harrison), is immediately followed by Baruch’s murder, resulting in yet another instantiation of the tired and terrible “bury your gays” trope. Not only must it bring a satisfying end to a multiversal story of war in the cosmos, but it must do so while tackling what I feel is the weakest book in the series. In the novel, Pullman has this revelation given to Will by the rebel angel, Balthamos (played in the show by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) when the whole cosmic order and its secret truths are revealed. I have fond memories of some of its pivotal moments and it sticks its emotional gut-punch of a landing in a way that is incredibly impressive. Now, it may well be that this is part of a larger retooling of Pullman’s message, with invective leveled at a different aspect of Christian dogma later in the show. The major revelation in question is that the Authority, the God worshiped by the Magisterium and countless other Christian and Christian-adjacent religions across the multiverse, isn’t the creator of the universe—he was just the first being to awaken and subsequently lied about his role in order to consolidate power. Unfortunately, this voiceover makes the baffling choice to deliver Pullman’s anti-theistic coup de grace as leaden exposition–so leaden that Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) repeats it in a later scene.