HIS DARK MATERIALS
Series 2 of HIS DARK MATERIALS promises grander scale, scope and spectacle — plus A-list new cast members to boot
The epic BBC fantasy series returns — and this time it’s also a mini-fleabag reunion, as Phoebe Waller-bridge voices Andrew Scott’s daemon.
AS ENDINGS GO, it was a stunner. His Dark Materials Series 1 concluded with the same spine-tingling image as Philip Pullman’s original novel Northern Lights: Dafne Keen’s Lyra Belacqua (aka Lyra Silvertongue) walking through a shimmering rift in the Arctic sky, leaving her world — similar but not identical to our own — behind, and going… where, exactly?
The answer is Cittàgazze, a mysterious Mediterranean-style city, beyond Lyra’s reality in a parallel world where all the adults have vanished, and youth gangs roam the streets. And she’s not the city’s only new arrival — there, too, is Will Parry (Amir Wilson), the teen carer from our world, who fled through a hole in the sky in the Series 1 finale after inadvertently killing an intruder in his house. Finally our two protagonists, from two different worlds, are about to meet in a third.
“Cittàgazze is the ‘city of magpies’, built on greed,” explains Jack Thorne, the adaptation’s lead writer and showrunner. “What Philip does beautifully is put these two very pure-hearted children in the middle of it, and allow them to wrestle with what their destiny should be. One of them has learned not to trust thanks to the events of Series 1, and the other has learned not to trust because of the events of his life. They’re brought together in this explosive combination.”
While Series 1 introduced the many-worlds concept earlier than Pullman’s books, The Subtle Knife ramps up the scope and spectacle of the His Dark Materials story — in Series 2, expect world-hopping exploits, conversations with experimental particles, witch-politics and, eventually, a blade far sharper than your average bread knife. On the horizon, too, is Andrew Scott, waiting in the wings as John Parry, Will’s long-lost father, glimpsed briefly in photo form in Series 1. “He’s coming!” teases Thorne. “But where and how is really important, and what he’s coming to do is really important.”
Best of all, Scott will be joined in a surprising Fleabag reunion by Phoebe Waller-bridge. She’s voicing Sayan Kötör, John’s osprey daemon, the animal-form manifestation of his soul. “I’ve known Phoebe for 15, 20 years. This will be the fourth thing I’ve done with her,” says Thorne,
who concedes the casting wasn’t his idea. “I’ve been thinking about how to get Phoebs in the show for a while. I never considered this. I love it, it’s brilliant.”
Series 2 is no mere middle-book bridging point — but beyond it lies a tantalising endgame for Will and Lyra. “This is a coming-of-age story for both of them,” Thorne says. “Series 1 was about Lyra looking for a path. Now she needs to know what person she’s going to be on that path. And in Series 3 you see what she’s going to do with that path.” They’ll have to tread carefully: the path is filled with all kind of new worlds, gods, and monsters.