His Dark Materials Season 2: The City of Magpies aired last night on BBC in the U.K. though not till the 16th in the U.S. I am therefore going to be discussing spoilers for this episode. If you don’t care about spoilers, carry on. If you do and just want to know what I thought of His Dark Materials Season 2: The City of Magpies, here you go.
The City of Magpies was a great start to Season 2. The chemistry between Will and Lyra was exactly how I imagined. Mrs. Coulter was her usual terrifying self and once again Ruth Wilson hits it out the park. In some ways the first episode is a tease of what’s to come, but His Dark Materials is never a story to explain things to the reader that can be discovered later down the line. Fans of the book will be pleased I think and non-book readers will likely still be as confused about where this story is going, exactly as they should be.
No it’s time to get into things a little more.
His Dark Materials Season 2: The City of Magpies SPOILERS Lie Beyond
After the events at the climax of Season 1, both Lyra and Will find themselves in a new world, alien to them both. The City of Magpies in the title is really the City of Cittigazze, an important world in this newly discovered Multiverse. Cittigazze is called the City of Magpies because there is a little bit of everything in the City. Items from Will’s world (ours) and Lyra’s along with others not yet visited can be seen for the eagle eyed fans. Cittigazze was built as a full set in Wales and for that reason it feels like a real town. Cittigazze is dominated by a central tower called the Tower of Angels. You can see this tower in the image above. This episode hints that the Tower of Angels is important in some way, but I won’t get into book spoilers here.
There are three main story threads to follow in The Subtle Knife, the book upon which Season 2 is based. There is Will and Lyra, the main story thread, along with two sub-plots. The search for Lyra by both Lee Scorseby and Mrs. Coulter is happening back in Lyra’s own world. The three story threads will weave in and out of one another until the collide in the climax of book 2 and presumably Season 2. All three of these main threads are present in The City of Magpies, though less of Lee than the other two. To be honest that’s fine by me, because the focus should be on Will and Lyra as much as possible this season.
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Like Season 1 I am impressed by Dafne Keen as Lyra, but finally we get to see how Keen and Amir Khan work together. There were so many little touches I appreciated about Will and Lyra’s relationship this early on. For a start I loved the way Will naturally falls into a pattern of tidying up after people, especially Lyra. Not to mention Lyra’s sudden thoughts on taking showers and her trusting Will due to him being a murderer. The relationship between Lyra and Will is essential to making this story work, so it was smart to spend most of the first episode with them both.
COULTER!
It seems like last season I couldn’t seem to go a single episode without praising Ruth Wilson’s Mrs. Coulter. Well guess what, this season is no different. Mrs. Coulter is at her crazy, manipulative best as she once again twists the Magisterium round her finger. Coulters torture of a Witch (not graphic) was an especial highlight of mine. That cold, uncaring, yet compelling magnetism Wilson has is on fire. Coulter wants to find Lyra, and she will turn the whole Multiverse and the Magisterium on its head to make that happen. I love it.
There is a small cross-over between Coulter and Lee’s threads when Witch Queen Ruta Skadi shows up. Skadi wants war with the Magisterium and risks much to kill her Witch sister and Coulter’s torture victim. Though, not before the Witch has told Coulter that there is a prophecy concerning her daughter Lyra. Luckily Skadi kills her before she can reveal the details of this prophecy. Perhaps my only criticism of The City of Magpies was Jade Anouka’s performance as Skadi, which was a little overly theatrical to me. That being said, Skadi was not a major focus of the episode, and won’t get the screen time of Serafina Pekkala played by Ruta (IKR?) Gedmintas, who was excellent.
Overall, very little of the overall plot jumps forward in Episode 1, but that’s fine. We need time to establish Will and Lyra’s relationship whilst the chess board pieces elsewhere move into place. The City of Magpies takes it’s time, but I’m guessing things will pick up next week. The pace of this story is going to begin to speed up as Season 2 progresses. However, it may still take time before the non-book readers start to work out where this story is going.
Grade: A –
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