![]() So when the dust is settled and she tells Scoresby that the future of the world lies in Lyra’s hands - and the fate of the girl lies in his hands - you’re inclined to believe her.īut “The Daemon-Cages” still has one left trick to play. Moving like Quicksilver from the X-Men movies, she slaughters half a dozen Bovlangar guards and staffers in seconds, ending the battle almost single-handedly. ![]() Still, all might be lost if not for the intervention of Serafina Pekkala, the Gyptians’ witch ally. Even Ma Costa, the woman who lost a son to these creeps, gets in on the action by snapping a scientist’s neck with her bare hands. They’re met by the combined forces of the Gyptians, aeronaut Lee Scoresby, and armored bear Iorek Byrnisson, who have a savage battle with the base’s guards. Lyra and Roger lead a jailbreak of both the normal children and the poor wretches who’ve been subjected to the Bolvangar procedure. If you had to boil the whole show down to one moment of raw conflict between the old and cynical and the young and innocent, this would be it.īut there’s much more to come. As the insectoid thing buzzes and shrieks, Lyra makes a break for it, then destroys the controls for the door so that Mom can’t follow her.Īn extraordinary moment follows: Coulter screams through the door in anger and frustration, while Lyra roars back in rage and betrayal. Then the child surprises her by unleashing one of the buzzing “spy-flies” sent to find her weeks ago. Lyra even agrees to show her mother the alethiometer she was given by the Master of Jordan College back at Oxford, which Coulter suspects he did so that the girl would give it to her father, Lord Asriel. continues to whitewash what she’s doing, her daughter starts acting like she’s glad that the truth of her parentage is finally out in the open. And it’s here where you see what they have in common: They’re both accomplished liars.Īs Mrs. Coulter against the childlike confidence and clarity of Dafne Keen’s Lyra. At this point the show boils down to an acting showcase, pitting Ruth Wilson’s maddeningly duplicitous Mrs. Coulter can do is talk about sacrifice, and how Lyra will eventually see all her mother has done to make a better world for her to live in. “If it was so good,” the ever-insightful Lyra retorts, “you should have let them do it. She explains that Dust condemns adults to a life of “sin, guilt, and regret.” Once puberty sets in, the once-delightful daemons “bring in all sorts of troublesome thoughts and feelings, and that’s what lets dust in.” So the intercision process is a good thing. Coulter immediately puts a halt to the procedure and whisks Lyra away. Coulter, who’s visiting the facility, is her mother. Lyra herself is on the verge of being cut away from her companion Pan when she starts screaming that Mrs. What they’re doing, to be clear, is severing children from their daemons using a gigantic guillotine. The booze is required to convince themselves otherwise. ![]() It’s clear that they know what they’re doing is wrong. While she reunites with her old kidnapped friend Roger and begins to scout the place, the scientists in charge can be found drinking when they’re not on duty. Most of this conflict of conscience is seen through the eyes of Lyra, who’s posing as just another kid named Lizzie Brooks now that she’s been imprisoned. ![]() It’s also unflinching in showing us the excuses adults will cling to - sin, science, the need to follow orders - in order to justify their cruelty. It’s all very heavy stuff to wrestle with, and this episode is uncompromising in its depiction of the traumatized, zombified children left in the wake of the villains’ grand experiment. ![]() But what if you don’t buy into the notion that there’s something corrupt in the human heart, which only church and state can destroy? Then you can see Bolvangar for what it is: a facility for the torture of innocents. In this fantasy world, of course, the concept is equated with an actual physical substance called Dust, which in turn is associated with human souls in animal form, known as daemons. The answer depends on whether you believe in the concept of sin to begin with. Coulter and the sinister agents of the Magisterium do.Īfter all, if you truly believe that the planet is suffering under the boot-heel of original sin, is there anything you wouldn’t do to “free” it? Isn’t a sacrifice of the few for the many, as Mrs. If there’s one phrase that sticks in the head after tonight’s episode of His Dark Materials, (“The Daemon-Cages”), it’s “the tyranny of sin.” Uttered by one of the scientists who oversees the cruel, child-abusing “intercision” technique in the cold Northern prison known as Bolvangar, it explains nearly everything we’ve seen Mrs. ![]()
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