As the witches seek to protect Lyra and Will and unite the latter with his father, dark forces are moving against them.

I have been fairly open about the issues I’ve had with His Dark Materials generally, especially with this second season which has felt awkwardly paced as time has gone on. But this episode really does feel like the most inconsistent one of all, with an awful lot of stuff thrown in, a new McGuffin mentioned (the titular Æsahættr) and a whole bunch of what it feels like the writers want us to feel are emotional resolutions that feel rushed and (for me) felt as if they hadn’t anywhere near earned the resonance the show clearly wanted the audience to feel from them.

Lyra, Will and the Witches escorting them are in somewhat of a bind. Will wants to go and find his father and believes that the Witches are a hindrance, not least because they are susceptible to the attentions of the Spectres. Lyra, on the other hand, trusts the Witches and feels that they should stay with them. This has the potential to be an interesting conflict, but it never really gets explored as the episode pans out and can’t help but feel as if it’s there to just tick off a box.

Similarly, Mary’s quest to reunite the children of Cittagazze with their grown-ups feels like a damp squib. There isn’t an awful lot that happens at all, and given that the world is full of Spectres and we have no indication as to why these wouldn’t be a hindrance to Mary, it just all feels a little underdone.

Lee Scoresby and Grumman continue their combined quest to find the Knife Bearer/escape from the attentions of their pursuers, which provides the high points of the episode both in terms of the action and the actual narrative. But the issue again here is that ultimately everything feels rather rote, like the writers know the scripted events of the books and are ticking off each one because they have to, without any real feeling of investment.

And that’s really the overall impression I was left with as the thing barrelled along towards the end credits. Lots of things happened. None of them felt as if they had been given an appropriate amount of build-up or investment such that I could feel properly invested in them. I just reached the end credits feeling slightly cold, the characters all having been fairly perfunctorily shifted into their respective positions ready to start the next season.

Verdict: A disappointing conclusion to what has been a mostly uneven series. I can’t help but feel that missing episode took a lot more away from things than even the writers realised. 4/10

Greg D. Smith