Lyra and her daemon Pan cross the portal and land in a transit-dimensions city called Cittagazze, where she meets the teenage boy Will from Earth. The city only hosts children, since whenever someone grows up, their souls are consumed by the strange ghostly spectres. Lyra and Will go to a tower where Giacomo gives them the Subtle Knife that is able both to cut any material and to cut portals through to other dimensions. They go to Earth, to Oxford, to inquire about the Dust, aka the Dark Mater, by scholar Mary. In the meantime, the Magisterium finds out from the witches that Lyra is the second Eve that will cause another fall, so they want to kill her once they find her. However, her mother, Mrs. Coulter, poisons Carlo from the Magisterium, and hides Lyra away.
The second season that corresponds with the second book from Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy of novels is again well made, and yet it suffers from the same flaws of such high-level TV productions: formally it did everything right, and yet its high production values dwell into such obsessive planning and micromanaging that the whole story becomes mechanical, lifeless and grey, without some spontaneous energy that would make it more human and charming. The whole story just seems so caged in at times that one wishes it would break the mold more often. Its biggest asset is again its daring, unflinching approach towards the dark themes of its source material, including critical thinking and requestioning of an ideology, which were not softened, and thus feels remarkably independent despite its big budget. The Magisterium panicking while trying to suppress people finding out about parallel worlds is an allegory for the 17th century Church trying to censor Copernicus and Galilei dismantling the geocentric system. A good example is episode 4, in the portal city of Cittagazze, where Will battles a punk who tried to steal the magical “Subtle knife”—even though Will wins, at one point the punk swings the knife and cuts two fingers away from Will’s hand. And surprisingly, the owner of the knife, the old Giacomo, reveals to Will that he himself has the exact same two cut fingers on his right hand, identical as Will. There is also a fascinating little episode including Oxford scholar Mary, a woman who abandoned being a nun since she lost her faith, but who finds a way to communicate with the Dark mater, and gets a response from it on her computer, telling her they are angels: a super chilly ending to an episode. Sadly, the rest of the season is unable to repeat that level, due to several omissions, such as the character of Scoresby who has no purpose—if his only role was to find Parry, couldn’t they have just simply made it that Parry appears all by himself? An intricate, complicated web of a storyline which still needs to be connected, and has its moments.
Grade:++
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