His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 30, 2021

It might have been cheekily hilarious of HBO to have started the second season of this series with one of those portentous narrators intoning, "Previously. . .on His Dark Materials", at which point the once and future home of actual movies could have just played The Golden Compass instead of recapping the actual initial season. As is discussed in our His Dark Materials: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review, the first year of this "new and improved" enterprise culled from a trilogy of so-called "young adult" novels by Philip Pullman was in fact comprised of material that the feature film offered, albeit in a highly condensed and refracted form in the big screen version. What that means is, for fans who may have come away from the feature film feeling a bit (or maybe more than merely a bit) let down, and who were willing to give the material a second chance with the series version, even if it meant slogging through acres of exposition that had already been covered by the feature film, this second season finally starts to get into that "new" part of "new and improved". While there's finally plotting that was left largely or even completely unexplored in The Golden Compass, there may still be just the slightest whiff of a "sophomore slump" in His Dark Materials' second at bat, but it's still an often riveting viewing experience aided and abetted by a very distinctive production design which is often brought stunningly to life in this high definition presentation.

For those wanting a written recap of at least some of what occurred in the series' first year, His Dark Materials: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review provides some information.

Things have been rent asunder on several levels, and potentially in several worlds, as His Dark Materials opens its second season. Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen), AKA Lyra Silvertongue, is on the run with her daemon Pan, a kind of ferret-like creature who is by default Lyra's sounding board and "go to" character for advice. Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson), meanwhile, is somewhere looking imperious and quite possibly malevolent, while a gaggle of witches take to the sky on some initially unknown task. There's a feeling of chaos and discombobulation in the opening scenes which only kind of comically (given this franchise's "issues" with being deemed anti-religious) calms down once things move into deliberations between the members of the Magisterium, the organization in His Dark Materials which seems to be awfully, well, Catholic in its hierarchy (rings will be kissed), if not its metaphysics.

The first sequence offering the "inner circle" of the Magisterium trying to come to terms with the "rip in the sky" supposedly opened by Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) at least reveals that Mrs. Coulter is there with them, rather strangely aboard a submarine, where a witch has been taken prisoner and where Mrs. Coulter insists that she has the best "approach" to extract information from the captive. That leads to some potentially disturbing moments where Mrs. Coulter becomes a torturing inquisitor, all of course in service of Coulter's quest to figure out who (or what) Lyra may be, and more importantly, where she is.

Lyra, meanwhile, manages to get to the so-called "City in the Sky", a location prophesied by her father and which is officially known as Cittàgazze. It's a decidedly European looking place, almost medieval and/or perhaps baroque in appearance, but it also seems to be abandoned, with signs that whoever did live there left in a big hurry. Probably unsurprisingly, other characters soon start popping up in the city, including this season's major new additional character, Will Parry (Amir Wilson). While Will has arrived in Cittàgazze from a world other than Lyra's, one which seems to be "ours", the two young people have more than a bit in common, including both being on the hunt for a missing father.

Interestingly, Will's "portal" offering passage between his (our?) world and Cittàgazze is easily found, and he and Lyra go to visit Will's version of Oxford, where Lyra is understandably confounded by differences, but where she is able to meet scientist Mary Malone (Simone Kirby), whose investigations of "dark matter" seem to align more or less perfectly with Lyra's attempts to get more information about Dust. This particular "meet cute" is just one potentially overly convenient plot element, in a season that tends to rely on coincidences and what can at times feel like manufactured threats, especially with regard to Lyra and Will and the device named by the feature film adaptation.

Where His Dark Materials continues to shine, however, is in its at times provocative desconstruction of what might be termed the age old dialectic between science and religion. This visceral content is undeniably buoyed by the likes of the nicely nuanced Ruth Wilson, who once again brings an almost sociopathic variety of emotions and motivations to her character's choices. The series' production design continues to be nicely evocative as well, and this is the rare outing where the CGI is both generally impressively rendered but also organically woven into the story so that it's almost subliminal at times.

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO and Warner Brothers Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1 (a departure from the first season's 1.78:1 aspect ratio). Interestingly, in the interim between the first and second seasons having data points added to the IMDb, my suspicion voiced in my His Dark Materials: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review that the DI was finished at 4K turns out to be correct, at least if the data supplied by the IMDb is accurate. This is another pretty stunning looking season for the year, and if there's an intentionally hazy, almost Maxfield Parrish-like, quality to some of the CGI of outdoor environments, especially wide vistas with sometimes bleak skies, a lot of the other CGI is amazingly sharp and well detailed, including the many daemons. Fine detail is also impressive across the board on practical items like props and costumes. The palette is an interesting combo platter of approaches, with sometimes cool blues and greens suddenly enlivened by pops of red, as in some of Mrs. Coulter's outfits.

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the video side of things, His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season continues with excellence with this set's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. This is another very nicely expressive track, and it can impress not just in bombastic effects sequences, but in rather subtle ways as well, as in the very opening moments before any real imagery is shown in this season with a spacious array of birdsong and ambient environmental effects. The outdoor environments of Cittàgazze provide some good opportunities for both discrete placement of individual effects with an overall feeling of cavernous emptiness, with, for example, an almost echo laden quality as Will and Lyra chase two other children they find. I'm a bit less fond of Lorne Balfe's score for this season, but it's rendered flawlessly with an appealingly wide soundstage a lot of the time. Dialogue is also presented cleanly and clearly throughout. Subtitles in a wide variety of languages are available.

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Noble Rogue: The Legend of Lee Scoresby (HD; 12:43) offers an overview of the character while also offering good interview opportunities for Lin-Manuel Miranda and a host of others involved with the project.


• Exploring His Dark Materials: Daemons (HD; 7:54) is a fun look at both the concept of daemons as well as their realization for the production.


• Exploring His Dark Materials: Panserbjørne (HD; 7:49) takes a look at everyone's favorite mutant bear like creature.


• Exploring His Dark Materials: Portals & the Multiverse (HD; 9:15) gets into some of the more metaphysical aspects of the show, along with the entire subtext that has been deemed "anti-religious" by some critics of the franchise, in terms of "reality" suddenly providing the supposed "experts" at the Magisterium evidence that they know (and control) nothing.


• Exploring His Dark Materials: Witches (HD; 8:37) has more good interviews with cast and crew that details both the entire "species" of witches as well as some of the plot elements involving them.


• Exploring His Dark Materials: Bringing Daemons and Bears to Life (HD; 5:30) was for my money the most interesting featurette offered in the bonus material, a too brief look at some of the VFX magic utilized to bring various computer animated characters to life. This features VFX Supervisor Russell Dodgson, among others.


• His Dark Materials: Exploring Cittagazze (HD; 3:35) is a brief piece featuring Production Designer (and Executive Producer) Joel Collins.


• His Dark Materials: Worlds Collide (HD; 2:40) is a companion piece to the Portals & Multiverse featurette listed above, but focusing on the differences between the worlds of Will and Lyra.


• The Powerful Mrs. Coulter (HD; 5:32) has some fun (and funny) comments on the character from Ruth Wilson and Lin-Manuel Miranda, among others.


• Lyra (HD; 3:07) offers Dafne Keen and others discussing the character.


• The Subtle Knife (HD; 3:21) deals with both the "item" and the franchise's second novel which bears this title, and might be a tad spoiler laden, for those who want to get into this piece of the puzzle organically as it's revealed throughout the season.

Note: All of the above supplements are on the second disc of this two disc set. Also, there's a Play All option for the content listed above.

His Dark Materials: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If this second season of His Dark Materials may not be overly subtle in offering convenient coincidences and an underlying feeling of all the places being set in motion for the "big wrap up", it's still often surprisingly thought provoking and almost always visually and aurally alluring. Once again, Ruth Wilson is an absolutely standout in an appealingly competent cast. Technical merits are first rate, and the supplements very enjoyable. Recommended.