Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Series 2 Episode 2 - The Cave

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Things are heating up between the Magisterium and the witches while Lyra finds a scholar and Will finds his family.   LINKS MENTIONED   Dr. Sam Henry - https://twitter.com/g7vdj   Dr. Henry's blog - https://particlegadgeteering.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/dark-matter-detectors-and-philip-pullmans-his-dark-materials/   ------ Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro: Waltz Of The Skeleton Keys by WombatNoisesAudio | https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061

🎵 Hello, and welcome to Girls Got Game. Girls Watch His Dark Materials, Series 2, Episode 2, The Cave. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts eliana we're coming off of a really big argument it's it's it's actually a discussion not a discussion no not a discussion and we're trying to figure out if we should be changing our intro to us singing the intro an acapella version, if you will.

An acapella version. Is it good? Is it an arrangement? It's an arrangement. Debatable. Lauren, weigh in. We would love to hear. A vocal.

A vocal. We would love to hear. Arrangement. So, you never know. You might be listening to this with the vocal arrangement and stylings of Girls Gone Candid. Or, by the time of its release, this episode's release, you may still have the old intro music but

you never know. I mean, this is one of those things, right, that splits into two different worlds and there will be one dimension, one world, where we made the choice to do the vocal arrangement and another where we kept it and you know let's see

what what world this one is yeah i mean asriel's probably messed all these worlds up already so what what harm could we really do what harm could our hijinks truly do catch me at the tory d'angely you know what i'm saying uh it's good to be back. Last week, if you listened in to our first episode coverage, we were so happy to have our friend Lo on. They were an excellent addition, an excellent voice to the paneling. But this week, it's back to us. This week, it's just us. It's just us.

We've got our feet up. And maybe our vocal arrangements. And maybe our vocal arrangements. Just our voices. This isn't the only thing you're going to hear from us this week, though. If you're listening to this in the United States, you might

be very thankful for a couple other episodes coming your way. It's Thanksgiving this week. That was the joke. Wow. Get it? But we do have another episode this week. You'll be hearing La Belle Sauvage, episode 3, chapters 6 through 8. La Belle Sauvage is, of course, the companion trilogy to the episode this week you'll be hearing labelle sauvage episode three chapter six through eight labelle sauvage is of course the companion trilogy to the main trilogy of his dark materials written

by philip pullman and this episode is uh coming inspired by his dark materials via the show it is and so you know in in labelle sauvage we are following a time that lara is still a baby following a boy named malcolm polstead and that should be coming to you probably friday of this week yes and then next week we'll return with another davos episode yes davos in a song of ice and fire the other series that we're following and if you're a patron of ours over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon you get special patron episodes if you're in the stranger tier and above the five dollar tier and above this month's special patreon episode will be about a song of ice and fire on the lysine spring from fire and blood

and next month we will be having a his dark materials themed episode so stay tuned for that reveal yes we have something i think pretty exciting planned for our december episode but yes this one's the lysine spring in winter the middle of autumn well we did get a really great email from our friend John, the Prince of Sunsphere. He sent us an email saying, A couple of things that I thought about during this episode. The books were written pre-smartphone, and it's a really nice symmetry to the alethiometer. I look forward to seeing how they integrate it into the show.

Yes, totally agree on that. I am excited about that. I actually spent a lot of time staring at the phone interactions and seeing what will was doing and some of them had meaning i was very very surprised i like mrs coulter's interpretation of dark sansa stark cosplay from game of thrones john said i love that it's uh mrs coulter's feather outfit right that we see her in at the magisterium and then it is really good outfit it's a beading i love the beading it's very pretty iconic very good very iconic john comments that thorall's demon is a jack russell and as we know loyal

servants have dog demons jack russells are known for hunting foxes and otters and he comments that if you're a harry potter fan ron weasley's Patronus is a Jack Russell and Hermione's Patronus is an otter. The Magisterium airships use incendiary bombs. Contrary to Michael Bay, not all bombs have fiery explosions. They chose to burn the witches with fire. Yeah, that's an interesting tie-in to of course i'm sure people have associations with uh you know people do it burning witches or women alleged to be witches in the past so interesting way that they brought that in to this episode yeah i know that i was kind of capturing or

screenshotting during the summer when we had some of the trailers what the bombs were uh trying to connect trying to figure out so it's crazy to see that brought into this episode so early on in the series there's a lot of really new stuff happening and i i i'm not gonna say i love a bombing that's awful holy shit i love this adaptation though this is it's good we had thought of course that it was going to be right the the warring that would happen towards the end of this book with lee scoresby and john perry but i'm glad that there are things that you know that are in the trailers and things that are still surprising i'm excited for that i'm

surprised every week and i i know there are surprises tonight i'm at the point where i'm tuning out of the extra content. I feel like there's a lot of extra content. I was just talking to the Dark Materials podcast about this. Ian and Amy over there, we were discussing about how there's so much extra stuff that there's too much and I'm not seeing things. We have a friend in our Discord over on Patreon that is bringing in a bunch of those little extras every week, posting, here's a behind-the-scenes this and bless cassidy our friend for that because i can't even keep up they're releasing so much extra stuff uh but i yeah it's stuff i'm kind of at the point i don't

want to keep up with it i i like that i somehow they're outsmarting me and surprising me and i am into it every week it feels good yeah i Yeah, I mean, I like speculating, right, on what might happen, but I don't want to know until it happens. And I think we've discussed that, you know, that I'm kind of personally a little spoiler-averse. Yes. So that plays into it. And yeah, speaking of spoilers,

sorry if any of you have tuned in and were surprised by some of the things that are going to happen in that perhaps you haven't read these books, right? And with that, we are going to dive into the episode soon. And the material that we will discuss from his dark materials will cover anything from the three main books. We may touch on some stuff from the side stories, the novellas, and or very, very briefly right on things from the book of dust but i think that's pretty unlikely in this episode uh so just just be forewarned that we are going to discuss things from northern light slash the golden compass the subtle knife and the amber spyglass yes and i will add we will be discussing serpentine because the show spoiled it true

so i don't have to yeah it's it's whatever it's a you've watched this episode and it's it's a 28 page novella so i'm not really it's not that big of a spoiler all right we did this last week i like this this is fun for me what is your favorite part i want to know eliana your favorite part and i'm talking it does not have to be some deep like momentous oh lee scores be this or it can be the stupidest littlest thing in the world what is your favorite part go well lee scores be wasn't here. I know. Chloe was personally affronted by the lack of Hester in this episode.

I'm torn between two parts. And yeah, same vibes as last week. One might be where Mary Malone goes, oh, I'm sorry, this cookie thing is stale, sets it down, and Lyra you can see is kind of like, she still kind of wants to eat it but it's trying to pretend to be normal and sets it down

i'm like no poor lyra i'm like i would have kept eating it i would have been like is this this is totally fine this is fine uh the other one might be you know as low loved all the red panda scenes last episode, and, like, Pan is a red panda at the beginning of this episode, helping Lyra pick out outfits, and the excitement behind, like, yes! That's it! That's the one! And she comes out and she has this cape, and

is so proud of herself, and Pan's proud of her. That's a good moment, too. It was so good. I enjoyed that. I, okay okay I think I have two I do think I have two I was gonna only go one but I'm going big or going home right so yeah yeah

this one has become a common line last week it was the hmm the very casual hmm this week I think my favorite favorite common line in the household because we just say it and pretend our cats are saying it when Pan says unbelievable

when he gets shoved in the bag oh I lose my mind unbelievable it is the funniest crap in the world I think that is probably my favorite whenever the cats are mad at us for like you know I don't know,

not letting them go in a room or something and like shutting them out. One of us will just yell. Unbelievable. He's so offended. That one was, that one was good. That's a good one from the start. That was good.

And then my other favorite is when Lyra holds the alethiometer, like an FBI badge, right? When she's just holding it up like, freeze FBI. That one is my lesser favorite, but it is a favorite just because we saw that from the summer. We saw stills come out from production of that moment. And I'm really excited to see how it was incorporated

and that it was at Mary Malone. Yeah, I mean, honestly, the confidence that Lyra has to open it in such a way and not think she's going to drop it because i would have dropped it like on my foot yeah i've been like i'm gonna look really cool right now and doing this and then totally totally fuck it up but she nails it yeah this was a good episode i'm i'm excited about getting into this with you because it was just a a full episode every single scene contained some sort of nugget of information to propel the story forward and i wasn't bored in most of these

so let's start off in oxford with lyra and will visiting will's oxford will is teaching her to blend in and he does not approve of her poncho nor her giant hat, which Eliana did not spoil yet. The giant hat, Eliana, tell us about it. The giant hat was a great touch, especially because again, Pan's just egging her on, is super excited about everything, and is like, yes, that's it, with the key. And it really hammers

home, yes, Pan is her. And, I don't know, I'm just like, yeah, that would be me. And we discussed this in the trailer right but as a reminder when we were first watching this in that trailer it looked like

this might be a little more significant not that it's not significant, again one of my favorite parts of the episode but the cape that Lyra picks it is multicolored and it's got those stripes and we're going to see those lines, use of visual lines and stripes throughout this entire episode. But it reminds me

of how in the opening credits those worlds are kind of layered together and they look like those stripes, lines, and striations especially as we zoom out and we'll see kind of something like that repeated with the cave later on. But also our friend Cand candid59 on twitter

pointed out in response to that episode uh that we did on girls gone canon that these multicolored stripes on lyra's cape actually will's demon later on that we meet in book three kerjava that name kerjava means multicolored in Finnish everything means Will and Lyra everything I know it does gosh no that that's I was really impressed with the use of these lines and these stripes throughout that tree motif like we discussed last episode and with here with the poncho even and then later. And I figured that's what it was. But it blew my mind seeing the lines on the cave and going, oh my god. Those are the freaking lines from the intro. It was a very mind blowing like, wow.

This episode was very like, I love being a His Dark Materials fan. That's how I felt about this episode. I mean, a lot of people have said that they think this might be the strongest episode so far. I mean, who knows? By the time that this hour episode and review of episode two comes out, episode three of series two will have already been out. And that could blow us out of the water, too. That could actually be the best episode.

I don't know. I hope so. I hope so. I hope each one is better than the last yep that is my dream well will says that he has to see his mom's lawyers and he's on his phone his phone device right and he has 10 battery it says he has 10 battery there in chitigatse oh no the follow-up now is i've rewatched it a billion times and later on when he's checking her knee he has a bag that he has like his phone he takes something out of it and plugs his phone all up and he has like two chargers coming out of his phone which you think would be normal like one would be your earbuds and the other would be your charger and i'm guessing

he had an energy bank but it was really weird because it looked like he had two chargers plugged into his phone of different size chargers i don't know he could be like trying different ones seeing seeing what worked i don't know i uh i would like the prop department to weigh in on this yes how is will charging his phones well it looked like he had just bought one of them, right? Yeah. When they were on that thing, because he was taking out of a plastic bag in case maybe one of them pooped out and he can't, like, stay anywhere long enough to get it charged. That's what I was guessing, too, his battery. I mean, introducing phones is very complicated, as John mentioned. Now it kind of changes all of it for Will. He's got to keep up and

as we'll keep going we'll see other things like his missed call screen etc so I actually like how that's playing into this and yeah and the missed calls I guess you know obviously signal doesn't probably work in Chittagazza that's what I was thinking was signal doesn't work

it's dead because it's looking for a freaking sort of satellite well so what he should do this is way too much thought yeah he should put it in airplane mode and turn off the wi-fi it's still i guess putting it in airplane mode would do that automatically and that helps save battery yeah chita got say mode yep or he could actually technically probably turn it off most of the time into Jigatse, except, you know, Will's trying to take pictures for his gram as we saw last episode.

Yeah, do it for the vine, Will. Do it for the vine. R.I.P. Vine walked so that TikTok could run. Will says, though, what's not exciting for some characters is that Pan has to hide inside this backpack. Unbelievable.

Pan's just like, Lyra's going to get me out of this, right? And Lyra's like, sorry. Can't do shit, Pan. This is it. This is it for you, buddy. She, like, rushes through the window and she gets herself lightly hit by a car. Unbelievable. Pan's just in the bag like he's the closest

thing getting hit by the car besides Lyra. And like Will yells at her. He's like you have to be careful and blend in. Don't you know the word wait? And Pan's like thanks. Thanks for checking in on me. I'm fine. Yeah he literally says that. It's a fantastic small moment.

He's like what about me everyone in the bag she fell on me hello unbelievable as we're walking away we see that Lord Boreal is still in this car and it shows him through the window three different versions through the window they are killing

me with these windows this episode specifically is just like window glass window door window window we get it you read the source material guys oh my god the will i'm proud of i'm proud of that part of you um there's great cinematics though so they as they walk by and they're saying they need to blend in, the camera angles in onto the car mirror first to show someone in it, which you already know, you're like, oh, it's got to be Boreal. And the window comes down on the car, gets rolled down, and of course it reveals Boreal through another window, through another world. Yes, and of course he's on the right side of the car,

because that is how cars work in the UK. I'm, again, very bad at driving on that side of the car. And there's a lot of symmetrical framing in this episode as well, besides the windows, and we'll see some of it in the Magisterium scenes, of course, like the funeral, everyone looking like, I don't know, the fucking madeline school girls but here as lyra and will are leaving that street island it looks like those two roads converging right around that island as lyra and will's roads have converged and you know coming back to lord boreal though i'm just like how long has he been waiting here his car is just so dirty i mean it works because all the other cars are like a little dusty too. Not that kind of dusty, like literally just nobody's cleaning their cars here.

Look, I'm going to be honest with you. He's probably just left his car there for three to five months. If you remember his introduction to the last one, I think that's supposed to show passage of time too. That's the other thing. This is a way to show passage of time from being in different worlds. Oh, yeah. Because he's walked back absolutely after this. We see him back at the Magisterium.

So I'm guessing it's supposed to show time, because when we first meet him, you get the boot on the car. That's what we see from. We see an angle of a boot on a car showing that it's been locked up because it's been there for too long. Oh, right. Like a towing boot you know yeah yeah so also as somebody who has left their car outside for about three to five months now in one spot and it doesn't move right now either i'm guessing his cars probably just stay in there you know he got the one good parking spot free

parking spot yeah he has windows to go through you know that's honestly the smart thing to do on his part just leave it take that spot and i mean maybe he just stops by every now and then right like i think hanging out there in his car on his smartphone which smartphones are pretty cool uh is probably way more fun than sitting in on magisterium meetings. Holy shit, yeah. I'm surprised. You know, if they all had smartphones, I bet some of them would be on it during those meetings. Lord Boreal definitely would be. Absolutely.

He'd be sending... Lord Boreal would be on Tinder. Oh my god. Oh, maybe. Wow. Truly. Oh my god. He'd be out there trying to swipe on the Oxford hotties, you know what I mean? Yeah, they'd all be swiping on him. He'dphail if your platform is for better wi-fi i'm into it i mean it's a good thing to campaign on so we're back at oxford and it's bustling it's busy it's full of people food things to see new things to seera's like, what the fuck is all of this? And she's

really disoriented. She sees a building that looks like what her Jordan is near, and she runs toward it, causing kind of a ruckus on the way. And she finds it is not the same building at all. It is a construction site, which according to some friends of the Herd Art Materials podcast, this is now a COVID testing area in real life. Yes. And I like the scene where Lyra running into these places, she just crashes into some workers and then she like squats down and puts her hand up. She's like, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. Then just turns around and keeps running and it's just perfect.

Classic Lyra is total classic Lyra. That brings us to the Magisterium with the Cardinal's funeral. Again, Miss Clavel vibes, but dark, goth. Father MacPhail gives a speech about the wild witch who killed the Cardinal and has a line of,

The authority has blessed me with a clarity of purpose which cuts through my grief like a knife. But it's so dramatic, right? It's the most dramatic speech honestly something is not any speech given there with those acoustics is going to be dramatic this is a great spot uh but he does kill it will keen does a great job here but the way it's pronounced it's like through my grief like a knife and it like resounds it's like echo echo and it's crazy it's very sharp like a knife like the the actual tonality of the speech is very focused and obviously also the emphasis is on

knife because we know the subtle knife is coming we know that soon lots of build-up lots of foreshadowing and he dedicates himself to the great task of cleansing the witches. Interesting. They're dusty. And then, yeah, they are. That's what he's saying. Not laden with anything else at all. And then he leans in.

Throughout this, you know, we've noticed, of course, that the Magisterium is using the term the authority, really leaning into that, which I think makes sense you know you can't just go out there and tell everyone this is a show about killing god because they are in fact trying to get the show produced um unlike all the hubbub that surrounded the golden compass movie and you know but but leaning into that term right it also of course plays into the very authoritarian nature of this regime but it's really great to see it like this to see it revealed and not stripped down to bare bones like in the golden compass and actually like this is the intention behind all of it if anything it's it's the opposite of stripped down right they've really fleshed it out done a lot and it's a great way that they're just making that really have more weight and importance and they're doing a really good job building yeah i know that some people i'm sure some people aren't like super jazz but again chloe and i have been traumatized we've had a hard life shows on hbo that are adaptations of fantasy novels don't always happen in a positive manner.

And sometimes they are trash. And sometimes you end up with a movie that gets execs walking in at the last second saying, cut this, cut this, cut this. We're not ready for a God-hating movie yet. And sometimes you get people that are blessedly talented to adapt the script and not only adapt it in a meaningful

and honest adaptation but also like add in some really great creations utilizing the source material and having it mean something toward the end of the story yeah incorporating things that are like themes you know again yeah

8th grade book reports and fan service that's actually meaningful yeah so you know Eighth grade book reports. And fan service that's actually meaningful. Yeah. So, you know, if we seem too complimentary, just remember, we've all been burned before. And not quite like Father McPhail, but maybe a little.

Will and Lyra, though. Been burnt there, too, with Will and Lyra. Just saying. Thanks, Paul. And we're gonna relive that hurt this episode they're really just getting us ready to feel that hurt i uh i was spoiled and saw the bench beforehand like i i waited a couple hours before i got to actually see the episode and the bench of course had made its rounds and had been kind of like teased which is the ultimate for shadow tease fan service and they know they knew what they

were doing first of all and in this scene they get the first mention of the botanical gardens will and lyra will is cleaning her up while they talk about the botanical gardens and that was the first moment where i was like shut up i hate you guys so much shut up uh hurtful lyra's like what do you keep looking at which is his cell phone explains, oh, my cell phone gets really good service anywhere, and it told me that you're a murderer, by the way. And then Will, yeah. I'm just saying, does the alethiometer have

fleet? No, not alethiometer. Recently rolled out on Twitter. I'm not using it, but people are excited about it. I'm more of a, I'm loyal to my Instagram stories, so. Do it for the gram.

Do it for the gram, just as Will does. And, you know, Will is upset, though, about the things that Lyra saw on her Alethiometer newsfeed about him being a murderer. And,

I mean, obviously so, understandably so. He does, of course, though, have that new phone battery charger that we were discussing that he bought. And as Chloe pointed out earlier, it's a little confusing with the two charging ports.

But, you know, we're going to go with it. Yes, Will's phone is going off and he tells Lyra he has to go meet his mom or see his mom, not meet her. And he says, let's meet back at the botanical gardens at 5 p.m turns out the alethiometer cannot set alarms as we learn but some of the texts on will's phone since i'm a loser and i paused it and i was like let me pause it and see what they say i believe these texts say can you at least let me know you're okay when are you coming back will please let me know when you're coming back i love you mom where are you and he has i can't tell if it's four or six missed calls

but it does say there's 18 more notifications and the missed calls you can see say they're from mr hanway who is the gym teacher so if you recall he's in this episode as well very briefly must be him so i thought that was neat that the phone actually, if you zoom in, is not just like mumbo jumbo. It is related. Good job. Very detailed. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, it's all just suddenly coming in at once, right?

Because as we said, no signal into the godse. But yes, signal everywhere for the alethiometer. And I couldn't really read the screen. So I'm glad that you grabbed these. Mine was too blurry. I make you do all the screen so I'm glad that you grabbed these mine was too blurry I make you do all the math ones but I got these little details so after that Will leaves and he's obviously a little a little I guess Pan warns Lyra yeah Pan is like shouldn't have called him a murderer I just want to call out that will is like walking backwards when he's like okay meet me at 5 p.m and he has no eyes on the road so he's just walking backwards

into a street he could be hit by a car and yet he just had the audacity to yell at lyra about rushing to get hit by a car the audacity the audacity unbelievable yeah i you know teenagers they all think that they'll be fine and i guess part of it is like you know at least he knows what a car sounds like and to look out for it whereas lyra is just like i don't know what's going on yeah i'll live my life lyra then finds some other things though that are closer to her oxford maybe her jordan college she passes a bunch of different things that absolutely embody her world her jordan some of the posters are the magical operas of mozart such as the clemency of titus the magic flute and don giovanni them. The next one is Elizabethan Lute Songs by Candlelight, and it actually specifies I Saw My Lady Weep.

And I Saw My Lady Weep is a lute song from the second book of songs by Renaissance lutenist and composer John Dowland. John Dowland heavily used chromaticism, which is not the album by Lady Gaga. It is a musical device, not chromatica, like a chromaticism which is not the album by lady gaga it is a musical device not chromatica like a chromatic scale it's a heavy form of dissonance basically sometimes it's called the other sound to diatonacism's male sound which is like basically it intersperses primary diatonic pitches and chords with the pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism elaborates or

substitutes only uses music from outside of its key, so it's kind of a harsh sound. So I saw my lady weep, back to the actual song. The song itself is part of the Elizabethan melancholy, romanticized, basically the woman's beauty is somehow excessive in her crying, and more than her being a beautiful dainty lady and the end of the song is kind of ironic because it reasons love conquering over reason it's said to be directly connected with the next song and the album flow my tears dowland's most famous and kind of his signature song that follows it it begins with a falling tear motif that starts on an a and actually descends down to E by the end.

Not in the way of it's a two-part song necessarily, but the way that the chromatic scale and dissonance builds in I Saw My Lady Weep, it actually doesn't give you resolution, so you're almost teetering on the edge when you get through I Saw My Lady Weep. When you listen to both of them together, Flow My Tears actually has resolution, and it resolves instead of leaving you hanging with that dissonance so the modern english lyrics for i saw my lady weep mostly because i don't know that i could pronounce faithfully all of the old english lyrics i saw my lady weep and sorrow proud to be advanced so in those fair eyes where all perfections keep her face was full of woe but such a woe believe me as wins more

hearts than mirth can do with her enticing charms sorrow was there made fair and passion wise tears a delightful thing silence beyond all speech a wisdom rare she made her size to sing and all things with so sweet a sadness move as made my heart at once both grieve and love oh fairer than odd else the world can show leave off in time to grieve enough enough your joyful look excels tear kills the heart believe oh strive not to be excellent in woe which only breathes your beauty's overthrow so with that poem when you put that song against Flow My Tears, which these are probably my favorite verses. learn to contemn light. Happy, happy, they that in hell feel not the world's despite.

It feels very much like Will and Lyra foreshadowing is kind of what I'm saying to you all. That's all. That's how it felt that she found that song of all things. Like, especially in the last verse there of Flow My Tears, the heart you shadows that in darkness dwell learn to contemn light. Happy, happy, they that in hell feel not the world's despite.

Yeah, I think that's a great poem. And I mean, it could very well be, you know, we know that Pullman loves his poetry. And yeah, not only does it feel like that love between Will and Myra, but also the happy that they in hell feel not the world's despite. Some of what we're going to see in the Amber Spyglass with hell feel not the world's despite some of what we're gonna see in the amber spyglass with the land of the dead another thing that we have here that Lyra runs past

is a bunch of posters with bears on it you know good murderers and with the title story of the north of early life in the arctic yes there's story of the North of Early Life in the Arctic. Yes, there's Story of the North, Saving the Arctic, and another Saving the Arctic.

There's a couple variations. So the first one with the Story of the North is a bit odd, right? There's one that kind of shows an odd dress on the bottom. And there's also a couple other ones. One that kind of has a sled on it that kind of looks like what she was taken on and kidnapped in the Northern Lights, right? On the way to Bullvanger. They definitely reminded me of Bullvanger. The other two Saving the Arctic posters had a lovely Arctic bear holding melted ice. And another one with bears with melted waters in front of them and ice caps.

Which is in fact happening, of course, in our real world. It really is, though. And it's quite sad. You know, when Lyra snags one of these sort of the North Flyers you were talking about, how this is like reminiscent of Lyra's time in Bolvanger,

she goes inside the Pitt Rivers Museum, and it's reminiscent of her own world and the Arctic Institute. She pretends to examine things while secretly using the alethiometer at a display, but one of the displays behind her has some of the northern clothing. And in the book, Lyra finds that it like the same clothes and even a photograph right of the Tartars who kidnapped her and including also her own clothing it doesn't seem to be that here I re-watched that episode of when Lyra gets kidnapped and their clothing's a little different

maybe the hats are kind of similar but so I think it's more of the posters that you were talking about Chloe that's supposed to be the way that that's interpreted for this show. Yeah, I definitely thought the posters outside looked a lot similar, at least. But inside, the clothing was a little different, which is to be expected, right? A different world. Yeah, and maybe even like that, that might be the real exhibit there, right? And you can't just make the whole museum change it out. I mean, maybe you can. I don't know how production works. Yeah.

So, then Laura asks the lithiometer where she can find a scholar to help her with dust, and it shows her keys, which, she asks Pan, which saint held keys, and he says St. Peter.eter yeah so they come up with saint peter's college uh and specifically something that they might not remember or notice as we

know they were notorious for pulling shenanigans during class not paying attention these are the keys to heaven not just any keys uh the keys of heaven are the keys of saint peter they're seen as a symbol of papal authority which combines really well with the episode today as far as we go on magisterium and they're seen on the papal coats of arms in the gospel of matthew 1619 jesus says to peter i will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This, of course, reminds me of some crazy things about to happen in his dark materials, right? A little bit of the specters that we've already met, but also of the war on the kingdom of heaven that

we are yet to see. I also thought it was notable that the crest for St. Peter's College not only has the golden keys crossed over the kingdom of heaven on a field of green, but it's paired with birds, usually referred to as sea pies or oyster catchers or Cornish shows with a red cross crowned on white. And there's just a lot of bird stuff happening around mary malone in this chapter so that was very exciting to me because of her bird demon i just thought that these little birds on the crest were kind of cute little pudgy white birds real round and i just like that and the alethiometer also tells her to find the door with the mountain, and most importantly, not to lie to the scholar, and to help the boy find his father.

So as she leaves, these odd wooden toys that she walks past suddenly make a ringing noise, and their eyes glow yellow, and they all turn to follow her with their eyes. I also felt like this was foreshadowing for the land of the dead in a way I think so, with them just following her with those deadly lies and familiarizing us to some of the things we'll see this episode in terms of just seeing things that react to dust items I'm telling you

just like we said last week, I'm waiting for the Doctor Who crossover, I'm waiting for the angels to come to life, because they're saying that things can just get dust and move around and do shit, and have matter be alive around them. That explains the Weeping Angels, Aliana. You don't get it yet, but you will someday.

Someday. I know that it's scary, and I've seen gifs of this scary thing and looks like a lot a lot of feelings to feel oh yeah there are a lot well more feelings here let's start here we'll work to dr who first we get lyra in the museum with boreal and they chit chat he introduces himself as a guy in Charles Latrum and it seems that she does not remember him from the party and she introduces herself of course as Lizzie they talk about trepanning he ends up offering his card to her in case she

wants to learn more he tells her that he donates items to the museum which immediately I was like oh so you steal them from other worlds and even the way they kind of spoke to each other was interesting lyra and i'll say this later but she embodies mrs coulter a lot in this episode in just a few different ways of just her mannerisms and i i just found that so interesting and really good just the acting was great in general daphne did an awesome job but she almost regards him just like Coulter regards him that's interesting yeah with that sort of guardedness and I mean even when he's like so did you learn trepanning in school and she's like no it's like on the card here yeah total like no you idiot it's like Lyra wasn't paying attention in school

as we just said she did not pay attention. I just love that Lord Boreal's in this hilarious, normal-ass zip-up sweater. I don't know why I find that so funny. And then, of course, Lizzie is the name that she used when she was up north. Lizzie Brooks in Bullvanger. And we hinted at this before in the trailer episodes that we did, but Boreal, right, in his introduction to Lyra, again, with that framing and those windows, he's coming out from behind these glass cases, which kind of ends up acting as a sort of window in a way before he reveals himself to Lyra. himself to lyra yes and uh in the books he's watching her from above right like he's upstairs watching her over a rail is how it's presented to us and i was kind of looking for that thinking it would be that way but i actually like this better it was very sudden she felt very like caught like oh i'm so sorry she didn't expect anyone else was there she thought she was very alone and he looks

like a normal ass dude yeah he looks very normal. The zip-up sweater, like you mentioned, he's very downplayed here. He doesn't look in his crisp magisterium suit. He is just chillin'. He's wearing loungewear. I like it. It's a good look on you, Lord Boreal. And I do want to circle back to the skulls and the

trepanning. We did see in the preview for episode 3 that Joe Pari does have a scar on his head up in the upper top of his forehead, similar to what we're seeing here on these skulls with the trepanning holes. So I am glad to see they did give him a little trepanning scar. Yeah. Then we go to Will's journey in Oxford. He's checking in on his mom. Mom, though, if you are English.

Will is checking in on his mom at Mr. Hanway's house. And while he watches her from around the yard, he is texting her saying that he's safe. And we see her telling Mr. Hanway that Will will be in touch soon, looking very relieved. Yeah, which is good. And first of all, of course, like Will is looking at his mother through a window. So that feels significant, especially with a couple of the other foreshadowing elements we're going to get this episode. But also I just want to call out the heater looking thing, the many pipes thing at this teacher's house. I assume it's a heater and it just looks cool that's it you know you said it and i didn't even notice it so now i have to go back and notice it i'd like the idea of like i mean maybe many houses have that sort of heating apparatus but i'm just

like very stylish into it also stylish is the home of will's shitty grandparents but we're not there yet will's first gonna jog off to learn about them. And before we get there, we're gonna stop in with some of our other family members, Ruta and Seraphina. Seraphina says that we can't get drawn into all these little revenge schemes, and says that she sent Martin Lancelius to clean up this mess. Ruta argues though that, I mean, for all of what you're saying i protected the prophecy and that we need to unite the nine witch clans against the magisterium and the way that this world is changing seraphine is very concerned because she can't reach to find

the child baby yoda but and that liar seems to be beyond the veil interesting because we talked with lo last episode and we weren't really quite sure how far their telepathy reaches. So it seems that Seraphina can also regard Lyra. I'm guessing if they try, they can try to reach people they know. I don't know.

Yeah, it might just be like a concentration thing. You know, can you call them? Maybe this is another smartphone and signal sort of reference thing. I don't think I'm really just be like a concentration thing yeah you know can you call them maybe this is another another smartphone and signal sort of reference thing i don't think i'm really even joking and saying no it might be yeah well and that's the other worlds absolutely i think that is the comparison she's beyond avail she's in another realm and there's something else kind of interesting that's being

adapted here so in the actual book the subtle knife seraphina has a crazy whirlwind chapter and this is all her alone she goes she deals with freeing the witch from the magisterium she kills cardinal stirach herself she then flies off to chit chat with martin lancellius who is like turns out that could have been bad what you did the war is brewing the magisterium has an army and then seraphina flies off to thorold asriel's servant to learn where lyra may have gone so they end up splitting this up bruda gets the first part lansalius goes to the magisterium and coulter ends up going to get thorold most of this works i have my complaints about thorold which we'll get to but most of this works so i think it's a really

bang up job good call i agree with you i'm interested to hear what you say about the thorold areas yeah some of what's going on here i i also like that they've you know in terms of splitting things up that they've given ruda again more of a role and i like that they are giving her the role of being the one to call for the witches to unite as opposed to seraphina it it it brings in some of this conflict there that can be resolved soon uh based on what happens in this episode and you can kind of start to see how the attack at the this episode will play out in a couple of ways i also like that in this exchange here right we have this imagery again of trees but a little differently the trees are long and thin and they're in this world of

they're in this place right of of this forest in which the trees create that again visual motif of those stripes and those lines that are reminiscent of those worlds side by side but also of some of the graphics that you'll see later when lyra's commuting with us or Mary Malone's commuting with us. But just play it off, of course, a little differently, a little digitally as opposed to naturally. The only thing we didn't really get to cover yet here is that the actual vapors that are rising and the fog that's rising. I'm wondering if that's going to be increasing in the next episode because they were present. The fog was present, but it wasn't the actual problem the fog in the very first couple of chapters of the subtle knife is an ever-pressing

problem so i'm wondering right and obviously it gets likened to the specters as well so i'm wondering how that's going to come up slash be resolved but we'll see i have faith yeah i have faith unlike oliver pain you know ye of little faith that was a good moment we'll get to that but before we get to oliver pain we're gonna meet his colleague it's lyra and mary entering saint peter's college there's amazing use of glass windows here lyra literally gets lost on the way in because of the reflections and the glass and all of the light she ends up going down a hall finding mary's door and she's like i won't lie to him i won't lie to the scholar pan settle down because he was warning her not to so i thought that was fun to call out that of

course lyra thought it was a boy scholar but no we get mary malone's entrance and she is of course playing with birds much like our friend Cassidy over at our Discord on Patreon. Mary Malone is playing with wrens. They come back every year she says cyclically. I love that. It's not an alpine chew but it's close and it's some really cute

foreshadowing towards her demon. Wrens are small and inconspicuous and in old high German their name often meant king. So, Miriam alone and birds. A perfect way to open Mary's art. That's a great connection. Yeah.

I just liked Lyra coming into the college. I don't know if it was that she was getting lost there, but she was just like, so I can just walk it? Just walking in, and maybe she was like, like wow there's a lot of glass here fancy and she's like interesting kind of funny we do end up cutting out the scene right where Lyra has to lie to the receptionist to get in but I think this is

fine she's just like whatever this is fine and Lyra asks for a physicist once she enters the office and Mary's like will I do? And again, as you were saying, Mary is a female scholar. And Lyra's like, wow, amazing. Imagine if she had only looked to Hannah Ralph instead of Mrs. Coulter.

We never would have been in this mess meeting Mary Malone. Yes, but she was entranced by the golden monkey instead of the adorable hilarious little jesper face little marmoset but our hannah ralph right now in the flesh is mary malone and this is such a cool we got mary malone i know and she was fantastic entrance i think everyone that I've seen so far is just so, so enraptured by Simone Kirby's performance. She's done a great job. And I know that other people, they thought this was really obvious. I'm not someone who picked up on it reading. They're like, yes, of course she's Irish.

It makes perfect sense. And that they had actually always, some of them had actually always envisioned her as being Irish and reading the books. And because of that last name alone and her background background as a nun and that, as people have talked about, the really strong ties with Catholicism in Irish culture. Our friends Warren and Shadow Fox also brought up their associations with Mary Malone as perhaps being inspired by her name, perhaps being inspired by the song Molly Malone. This is a song

it's like something in the city and i'm not gonna sing it i thought about singing it and then i forgot the tune yes the dubliners do it uh in dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty i first set my eyes on sweet molly malone yeah it makes sense it's a it's a cool call out for them good for them i'm happy for them i am lyra asks mary malone can you please explain dust and mary malone's like uh what and it takes a little bit of conversing for them to get on the same page because of course you know lyra tries to tell a limited version of her story while telling no lies this is really really difficult for lyra perhaps almost as difficult as putting down the cookie later and then finally lyra says i need you to tell me about the particles that you study please yes just the entire poor lyra

first of all she's so tired right like someone let that girl eat her steel ass cookie and take a nap oh my god but she tells her story kind of like in these limited clips that don't make sense. And she's like, no, no, I'm telling it all wrong. And you could just tell she's so tired. And the way that she does tell the story and explain to her, I lost my friend. You need to help me. It does have a little bit of, again, not in a bad way, but it has that Coulter manipulation vibe to it that she does with people at the Magisterium.

But here it's being used for good as a weapon by Lyra. She's wielding it for good. She kind of just looks at her and says, please, the emphasis she puts on please is killer. We can also really see Lyra's desperation here. As you said, she's just bowling through all this information at once and i think that's very classic right that's a thing that's consistent in her character if we'll remember you know in the first season where she just suddenly comes to far decorum and tells her him all the things that are going on here about doric and everything and far decorum's like oh my god please chill out what what that was a lot of information at once and yeah i that desperation

i know that there are people who feel that daphne keen played this a little differently than i think we imagine lyra being presented to do this in the books but i think that the tone is very different too for a number of reasons, such as that emphasis on Roger and his loss and how we're keeping that thread in this version. And I also think it makes sense because Daphne Keene's a little older than the Lyra that we're used to. I just think it's harder to play that sort of precocious role when you are a little older than at around 11 or 12 years old. You're still kind of cute then.

So I think that all makes sense to me. But regarding Roger, it's something that I'm really glad that we've kept it in the last episode and this one that needs to have weight in this story. And I think that the show has given it more weight than there is in the books and the way that really works and it's caused me to like rethink right the way that it plays in lyra's story and her motivations especially in the third book and the decisions she makes because i think it gives some insight into like why philip pullman sees lyra leaving pan as the great prophecy betrayal when all of us are like, why the fuck would you say that? It was literally there in the first book.

We all read it. We all saw it. And it's because Lyra feels so much guilt over betraying Roger. And that's what ends up leading to her betraying herself. Both of those really are connected. Yeah, they're keeping it really prominent. And it's very important the way that they're keeping it prominent i'm really glad about that because and i don't even think it's uh better done than the book so much as just it's a better translation when they do it on screen we get it through lira's poe and it doesn't feel as important

the asides to pan don't seem as important but the way she's anchoring it to the people and saying i did this and what we'll get into with will later i mean that was heart-wrenching right to watch her say like i betrayed someone will i can't do that to you too um yeah this episode got me this episode got me you know did i cry yes yeah she's growing up she's learning that there are consequences for people right and unfortunately she learned that in the worst way possible. Most of us don't have our best friend die from accidentally

delivering them to our parent that we think is trustworthy. So now we go to one of those parents, not the one that killed our best friend, but the other one that killed another kid that we knew. A lot of other kids that we knew actually a different parent so back to the magisterium back to business back to politics marisa and boreal are discussing the current situation of cardinal and boreal kind of gets some information on her motives marisa says mcphail's

only competition is father graves graves has been on a crusade arresting half the North, and she thinks that people like his bold actions. Boreal says he thinks Coulter would be a better cardinal than either of them, and mentions they're holding Asriel's manservant in the dungeons. He asks if she's had news of Asriel or of her daughter.

He then asks if her daughter's demon has settled yet, and Coulter tells him that is absolutely none of his business none of his business at all what a skeezy question that's like asking if your daughter's had her first period that's literally what that is like that's it's a malcomposted kind of movie no wonder she is piercing him with her eyes uh at this exact moment and there's a lot going on here i think there's some setup even right there the way that he says you'd be a better cardinal than either of

them shows that he kind of has this loyalty to Marisa he's ensnared by her charms and I think that right there is the very beginning of watching his downfall yeah that's interesting he's ensnared by her but also that's his way of trying to cozy up to her he's doing

a couple of things he's nagging her with this dot with her daughter and also flattering her and honestly fantastic acting on both their parts right um ruth's acting the way her eyes pierce boreal is just incredibly done right she when he asks how her daughter is, the look on her face, her expression does not change at all. Nothing actually moves. Yet somehow you can see that shift in her demeanor and maybe her eyes. Somehow it shifts from kind of like amusement and we're like having a playful banter and it hardens into that displeasure and almost content for him. And i think that's something that we've seen ruth do as mrs coulter even in the first season and she's just fantastic at conveying again those small shifts

which really work for a character like mrs coulter who has done a lot to mask her emotions she's the lady heady of this show yes she's the lady heady of this show i mean it's for real and even as you mentioned that it sets up also the blackmail possibility later he knows where her daughter is he's playing a game he knows all this and that becomes kind of a blackmail to her like do you want to see your daughter i know where she is which i'm sure we are going to get more elaboration on in episode three and that will come to play but it also highlights that blackmail that she then lays down on Cardinal Macphail later. Hmm.

Yes, it does. All comes around. Everyone's fucking over each other, but Dr. Lancelius especially is fucked over right now. He comes here to the Magisterium as a peace envoy. Yes, he shows

up and he tries to explain ruda acted alone but mcphail calls him a spy claiming the witches sent him as a spy lancelius argues this is untrue that he was sent to broker peace and father graves asks to question him father graves is permitted he asks lancelius to explain his position as the witch's counsel lancelius explains he grew up in the lakes amongst the witches until his demon settled and then he left home as his mother was trying to spare him from undertaking the separation ritual. Father Graves calls this unnatural, saying, what sort of woman would send her child away?

Is this not all a perversion of all that is natural? As the camera focuses on Mrs. Coulter. Yeah, I want to point out, you know, Dr. Lanselius here saying, you know, you're not going to find any evidence of this conspiracy because there is none. Nothing happened between, like,

me and Ruta, and if I don't if that isn't a message for these days here in the United States, I don't know what is. Things are going great. But, you know, coming back to this idea of what sort of mother would send her child away, and that focus on Mrs. Coulter, they're doing quite a bit of that, right? This episode, likening Mrs. Coulter to the witches, or at least how the Magisterium seems

to perceive witches. And at the start of the episode, during that funeral for the Cardinal, as they're condemning the witch who stabbed and killed the Cardinal, as we know, yes, Ruta Scotti actually stabbed him. But the person who really delivered the killing blow is Mrs. Coulter, as we see when she's conspiring. There's evidence for that, you know, conspiring with Father MacPhail. So in fact, that speech and that voiceover is very much her. It's zoomed in on her face. She's the quote-unquote witch there. And then here, we're reminded of mothers sending their children away. And of course, yes, yes, Mrs. Coulter, the parallels are quite clear. And then there's the connection that chloe you've been bringing up right in the previous episodes of how mrs coulter seems to be able to separate from her demon

or go much further from her demon than others as the witches as we see do and then there are a lot of those dangers that father graves talks about when it comes to witches right that they're very seductive and all these things that actually we've seen Mrs. Coulter do using her powers of seduction. She wields her sexuality in a way that plays on men's desires. We saw that sort of weird scene in the first episode of this season. And we've also discussed previously how Father MacPhail, right, never seems to fall for Mrs. Coulter's sorts of charms or seduction. But I think it's because back then she never actually offered anything that he desired. Because he doesn't desire women's

attention, he didn't lust after her. What he actually coveted, turns out, this whole time was to be cardinal, that sort of power. And it's only when that opportunity opens that Mrs. Coulter is finally able to jump on that and find and offer what he desires in order to control him. And then as she does in this episode, get what she wants. Yes, I really like what you're saying about Mrs. Coulter. And I don't have anything I can chat with you about it until you finish the secret commonwealth. And then maybe we can have a grown up discussion.

But I'm also curious where the collectors might fit into all of this. That's my next thought, because it sounded like you were trying to convince me of something for a minute there and i was like yes go on eliana what else are you trying to say about this but you just didn't go where i thought you were so close it's because i'm too i know someday when you're dustier i'm too i'm too clean undusty okay well hopefully you fucking fallen snow virgin will get there. Pure as the fallen snow, Eliana. Something you did say that made me think about this in a little different of a way is Father Graves. He asks if he can question Lancelius and Lancelius and him go back and forth. But then you see later as we get through it, Macphail is calling with the gavel and trying to hold order.

So we see Graves step up and use his words, which Marisa Head, of course, says to Macphail, use your actions. You know, he's a big man of big words. And he uses his words to impress all these men in the chamber that have to vote that evening. And Macphail realizes, this guy's going to beat me if I don't do something. So this is kind of what leads him to kind of give in and follow and sin as we learned but i i didn't really think about the way that graves steps up here and just tries to take the floor from him

in his own area yeah and i like you know speaking people's acting mr daphne keen's father does a great job yeah here um and he he does like a thing right when when when father graves is like going off on his thing he kind of it's kind of like a rolling of the eyes but he like looks off in a way and you can see that the disdain of he's like oh my fucking god who hasn't done like why is this happening right now like this is so annoying so graves goes on and he calls the separation ritual unnatural and lancelius disagrees calling it beautiful and then he explains it there is a land far north where only the witches can go and to become a witch a girl must cross it alone it allows

separation without breaking the soul so as i mentioned up top we will spoil a little bit of serpentine only because the show already did this is kind of an interesting add to lore if you haven't read the new novella serpentine that pullman just published you might not necessarily be familiar with this in serpentine lancelius explains to lyra every witch has to go through it or not live a full witch life. There are some who can't or who won't and their sisters pity them, though those who can't do it pity themselves more. Their lives are not happy. Lancelius explains that witches have to go to a deserted place that I won't spoil where it is and the demons are prepared for this. While it's scary and awful, witches demons live their whole life knowing this day would come which is why for lyra and pan there might be an

effect that's a little different since they didn't know this would ever happen to them i thought it was spectacular they chose to wove this in through the man we hear it from in serpentine no less and it's a pretty decent sized reveal about the witches how they live how they love serpentine tells us if a witch doesn't complete the ritual she only lives a normal lifespan something i found a little bit different in the presentation here is how he described his younger life and leaving i find it really well done with that inner cutting of coulter into the scene no pun intended inner cutting uh there there are only female witches in this world as we've discussed and the males can't become witches semi-explained in this world so it makes sense

lansalius becomes the witch's console he was very well versed in this world and he can navigate witches without having quite the same powers as them but it also kind of foreshadows especially here in this scene in this episode for the amber spyglass plot right so it's a really good double hitter of giving some lesser known his dark materials knowledge delivered in a not canon but a really well adapted scene yeah that's a great point that it's it's setting us up for that possibility in the third season slash amber spyglass so father graves is like the witches have been hiding this ritual in secrecy for ages, and Lancelius is like, it's not. Everyone knows it.

You can look it up, go to a library if you've ever been to one. No, he doesn't say that, but he kind of maybe feels it. He tries to explain that anyone can see them be done, and Graves goes on to then call the witches the enemy of men, and that they use deceitful ways to seduce them and steal men's seed really describing them as succubus but like your semen's not that cool alright just saying that and then abandon their

offspring and then Salias says that witches see the world and its beauties in ways that men cannot and then everyone there is like really offended by this they're like but hashtag not all men graves begins to call it blasphemy and screams it and then mcphail is like oh my god so done with this and he's just banging his gavel oh my god how dare how dare you say i a man can't see something i can see everything i'm a man made by god of course everyone wants my semen how dare you say

they don't want my semen uh white men uh mick fail stands up and thanks father graves and condemns the blasphemy lancellius speaks ordering him to eight years of hard labor and demon captivity our friend lo who joined us last week speaks a a lot of the Sami and the suffering they've been put through as a people, as many other indigenous peoples, especially in the North. And this episode, quite obviously, had a lot about oppression in it. And I think the writers did their due diligence on this. The magisterium sentencing a peace envoy to labor camps really reinforces some of the World War II parallels with the Sami. The Sami people never formed borders of their own. They didn't want to be an independent nation. They were a peaceful people

that happened to live near Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and they had resources and land people could steal. The idea of fighting over land and borders was probably foreign at first to the Sami because they literally did not have a country of their own. It wasn't uncommon in the war to have groups of Sami actually fighting each other for different sides, like Sami on the Russian side and Sami on the Finnish sides. Eventually, many of the Sami were evacuated from the war, and they were put into prison camps for the German. Later, the Finnish troops invade the German-occupied areas of Finland, and they attempt to force them out, but the German declare war, and then they scorch the entire earth, burning every building except for a few in the outlying districts and laying mines as well to deter the people.

Again, I think they did their homework. As we get toward the end of the episode, we'll take a closer look at the magisterium with the witches. Setting up Lancelius as a captive is going to be a strong plot point i think for a few things i think this was kind of a smart way to use his character seraphina sent him as a peace envoy so now she probably has to get him saved which means we'll see some more witch versus magisterium standoff soon and this pushes her hand in the war as we knew she would have to be pushed a little bit she was set up as that centrist but this is gonna push her hand and if this doesn't as we see

their lands being blown up does yeah and as you were saying earlier about father graves right and he used to arrest a bunch of witches father mcphail is like i'll do you one better i'll kill them Father MacPhail is like, I'll do you one better. I'll kill them. Essentially. He doesn't say that, but bombing, I mean, bombing sends a very clear message. Yeah, a little bit. Just a bit.

Just a bit. Less clear is the sort of messages that Will gets when he goes to the family lawyer. I don't know. I thought it was pretty clear. Okay. No, you're right. I just made really bad seconds. I just wanted to call you out on that. I really tried.

I just wanted to... You know, Eliana, I think it's pretty clear what messages the lawyer gives. And the lawyer's like, you're still poor and I can't help you. No, I'm just kidding. The lawyer actually tells Will when he visits his family lawyer, the lawyer's like, yeah, actually, you do have money. You're a trust fund baby, but I can't give you any because you're a minor and your grandparents hate your mom the lawyer doesn't say that but i'm saying that yes maybe that's the

less clear message again i just wanted thought i could nail this segue and i did not to hit or miss every episode this scene though and we're gonna that throughout this episode, as we did in the previous seasons, and throughout Will's characterization in general, plays up his whole parentified child aspect, as Will attempts to do... It's a very adult thing that he's trying to do, right? He's here, he's visiting the lawyer, but

he's literally not able to because he's a minor. It's like, what are you doing, Will? That's what adults probably think, and it's quite sad. Especially when, you know, he finds out that his grandparents are here in Oxford. He's like, what? And the lawyer does give him the grandparents' address. We go back to Mary and Lyra, who are asking questions about matter to each other. And Mary explains dark matter to her, the matter in between everything.

Yes. dark matter to her the matter in between everything yes so we were talking a bit earlier about that lyra channeling mrs coulter in this episode but i think we start to see a little bit of her and mary right because mary is another sort of mother figure to lyra and we see that mirroring of their characters in the wardrobe in the first season we saw that Mrs. Coulter kind of tried to fit Lyra into this mold of who Mrs. Coulter wanted her to be in these dresses, these blue dresses especially, that matched Mrs. Coulter's own. But here now, Lyra's

in a sort of blazer. She just coincidentally actually happened to find this blazer. It's quite nice. She's finding some pretty nice clothes in this place where she and Bill are squatting. And she's got this blue blazer in the way that mary malone also has a blue blazer it's kind of fun also i think mary malone is wearing they look like converse her trainers they are the converse her trainers yes did you like that i love

that detail some other people i know some people i was kind of offended my best friend once was like yeah but this thing had converses and I don't wear converses. And I was like, what do you got against converses as a converse person? We had a whole homecoming themed group where we wore converse. Did you even live, you know? Did you ever live? I was a big converse person. So I was like, what are you trying to say?

What are you saying? God. What did you think of me all these years? Back to Mary and lyra mary explains what shadow particles are to lyra and that they have a detector in the cave that will amplify these particles and we get to see some of mary's testing as she explains it to lyra she says that man-made items provided more particles than non-man-made items i thought that was a great note we see a notebook that has some formulas and on the other side it explains the human workmanship theories so some of those formulas that are in the notebook again i hit up my friends who are physicists to

help me understand this because again i'm not a physicist which is why i'm going to tell you that so the formulas that are on there some of it you can actually see in the title at the top where it says polarization tensor. That is what the formula, especially I think on the left side is. And then some of the other formulas are about like electric fields and dielectrics. Thank you to our friends. And like, that's all I'm going to really tell you about that because I could try to explain to you what this means, but I would just be copying words from the internet and you're better off Googling it yourself because I don't know what it means.

You gave it a good run, though. You know, Eliana, I feel like I learned something new. God. Yes. Learned something new about, I guess, me and that. Interesting. Yeah, I didn't feel like it was very detailed as far as the formulas went on the polarization tensor. So that's interesting, though.

Electric fields, I guess, you know, it makes sense, the sensing of the consciousness, right? Yeah, parameters. Especially we've discussed in previous episodes, you know, waves and particles and what consciousness might be. We get some other things that we've talked about, actually, like the Yijing box. Oh my gosh, I was so excited that they showed that immediately. Yeah. It's just very exciting

that they're adapting something so honestly. And more than just the Yijing box, the first thing Mary is testing on is an apple. I was like, oh, the fruit of the garden. Is that what you're testing on there, Mary? I was freaking out at this scene. This scene was so cool.

And she actually- Great symbolism. Such great symbolism. She actually then looks through a piece of amber when she first gets her first view of dust. She looked through a piece of amber. A piece of amber. The amber spyglass. Oh my god.

We see the screen making contact. It looks like the lines of dust from the intro, like we mentioned. They're moving. And then she explains to Lyra, you can't see them unless you put your mind into the right state. She compares it to Keats' negative capability. She says that holding your mind in a state of expectation without impatience and then the particles flock to your thoughts like words. Yes. Yeah, I loved that she was holding that little piece of Electrum.

She was pondering in that moment. And yes, so we talked a lot about negative capability in Keats during her coverage of the Subtle Knife in chapters three through four. during her coverage of the subtle knife in chapters three through four and keats describes it as capable of being in uncertainties mysteries doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason and that quote literally more or less that line is what keats has and it was kind of like an artistic philosophy about this openness to ideas in the same letter where keats describes negative capability, he also contrasts Shakespeare and the poet Samuel Coleridge. Of course, he himself also a poet. John Keats felt that Coleridge was interested more in like these single philosophical truths

and that his work would argue towards that, whereas he felt that Shakespeare was different, contrasted, that Shakespeare was more interested in many different kinds of philosophies and would explore a lot of that, would bring those different arguments and truths in different voices, and wouldn't exactly say that one was right or that the other was. And I think that it seems like, as we've discussed back then, it seems like this concept of exploring different ideas and that exploration of course makes a lot of sense in this story right that is really interested in explorers like asriel or stanislaus grumman hoops and other later scholars have interpreted this line about naked negative capability as about perhaps like breaking against hierarchy which again you know kind of works in the story

that's maybe like about killing god but i don't know i don't know if keats was actually about like that breaking of hierarchy or not but clearly you know pullman seems to be quite quite so between this and his twitter account i i actually really like that about keats that a lot of the reason why he so thoroughly discussed negative capability and fulfilled the topic of it and made it such a big deal is because he critiqued the other work of these genres and you know if you haven't taken the time to read it pullman has actually done a really beautiful introduction to paradise lost uh completely kind of not i wouldn't say it doesn't relate to his dark materials obviously since it's part of what inspired his dark materials but it uh it's a really refreshing piece where he has this line

many poems are interrogated until they confess and what they confess is usually worthless as the results of torture always are broken little scraps of information platitudes banalities negative capability to me plays a lot on that on that negative polarity of the poet and he who holds the pen or the quill it's been elaborated through history as you mentioned for centuries to come if you're looking for a modern keats take by the way me and eliana were discussing this before i recommend bob dylan because he is keats with the guitar as many call him. Bringing it all back home in Blonde on Blonde are probably my favorite albums.

If you're looking for a couple songs, you might be into try I Want You, Visions of Johanna, It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding. Those are some really beautiful poetic songs. But we're not here to chat Bob Dylan as much as I want to be. We're here to talk about the 20th century British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bayen. He had some very interesting thoughts that work specifically in some of the framework of this episode. Bayen felt that the ability to tolerate pain and confusion of not knowing, rather than imposing ready-made or omnipotent certainties upon a situation or challenge was negative capability. I think this comes up a lot in the Magisterium's reading and refusal to read of magic and the world around them,

even as we saw in the last episode, right, of where the blasphemy was being declared about different worlds, but you could look out the window and see it. I also do think it's visible in, for example, tarot reading. If you're getting a tarot reading and you're projecting what you want to read on it or someone who writes a character falling in love with another character and then the other characters all suddenly agree it's a good idea even though some of the characters naturally would have objections to it it's unnatural ethically to display that and not have that path of the story be told but then to lie at the end and say that was the story the whole time it's a little cheap right but i digress i'm not talking about malcolm polstead fly rough this is letting it i was like is that is this what i think it is this is letting it be right when poetry is made it flows and it

comes to a natural progression uh you're not forcing it you're not stopping it from getting there earlier we spoke about elizabethan flute songs. Dowland's I Saw My Lady Weep has an unnatural conclusion, not just from its musical tone, but also from its writing. It concludes love conquers reason. But when we have Lyra reading the alethiometer, as we later have her saying to Will,

it tells her the truth, good or bad. As Lyra is about to explain to Mary, that's what dust is. I think that's a great connection that uh it's neither good nor bad it's just the truth it's just what's being held there and yes it's a it's a state of just being is what it seems to be uh that that state of mind and then you know mary asks wait lyra how do you know about my work? Because it's unpublished. Lyra reveals that she's been the federal investigation of Dust Bureau in one of, of course, Chloe's favorite scenes in this episode.

Mary thinks that the alethiometer must be a game. And Lyra's like, excuse me? Lyra's like, it's not a game. Ask me anything. You think this not a game. Ask me anything. You think this is a game? Ask me anything, Mary Malone. And Mary's like, fine, tell me what I did before I became a scientist. The alethiometer answers.

She was a nun, but stopped believing when she left. Lyra comments, they would never let you do that in my world. And she explains the magisterium and her world want to destroy dust or matter. They see it as original sin mary is astonished and says well i left being a nun to get away from that kind of thing she says people hate what they don't understand and dark matter is honestly beautiful lyra asks to see the cave so someone that i saw you I just stumbled across this person on Twitter who elaborates on some of the challenges that Miriam Malone might have with that funding aspect, which is of course going to play a role in the plot and the chapters and probably episodes to follow when it comes to Oliver. But I've never really thought that deeply about like, oh, it's so hard to get funding for scientists,

because I just kind of take that as assumed. I'm like, yeah, of course it's hard to get funding for scientists, just in general, for a lot of things, which I'm so sorry, scientists. And again, I think of the academic who made a joke in the first season, he says, I know this is a fantasy show because Lord Asriel just got all of that funding and backing immediately and it would never go that fast but on Twitter Dr. Sam Henry

whose Twitter account is G7VDJ I don't know if that means anything sorry if I'm doxing you but he has his name right there and he has his name right there. And he puts his blog. So Dr. Sam Henry actually, in our very real world, builds particle detectors at the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, which is pretty cool.

And he's also a big fan of this book series. And he talks about it on his blog. And I'm going to just read aloud some of his passages where he wrote about his dark materials in one of his blogs when the book of dust uh book one was coming out when labelle sauvage was coming out and he was i guess excited about it and he quotes this from dr mir malone of shadows are particles of consciousness you ever heard anything so stupid? No wonder we can't get our grant renewed. And here goes the crazy part. You can't see them unless you expect to. Unless you put your mind in a certain state. And so Dr. Henry explains, I am starting to see why Dr. Malone is having trouble with her

funding agency. Her description is actually more familiar to particle physicists than you might think. It's a well-established issue that when analyzing your data, it's easy to bias yourself to get the answer you want. You just keep breaking the threshold of your muon veto and adjusting your analysis parameters until you see a dark matter signal and then, eureka! This way, you fool yourself into thinking you have something when it's actually just the background from other particles. The way we deal with this is what we call a blind analysis protocol. You fix the parameters in your analysis before you look at the data, then you unblind it, run the code, and publish the result of whatever it shows. history of dark matter research has seen enough false positives that any claim of discovery which was not in a blind analysis would be treated with extreme skepticism and if you can't see your dark

matter particles unless you expect to it would indeed be difficult to get that through peer review so we're going to link this blog post in our post description but i i think it's a great explanation right like dr malone struggling to get our funding because the way that she's describing what these particles are relies on something that people would be like no this is just confirmation bias this isn't really here and you tweaked it like so that you would see what you wanted to see intentionally and it does kind of sound unscientific probably because it's a fantasy series but whatever i would like to add that dr sam henry's icon on twitter actually has him with two my little pony caricatures with uh rainbow dash was my favorite my little pony and twilight sparkle yes uh and i feel like that

might be the only reason why eliana is quoting dr sam henry no i'm just kidding eliana that was very very interesting but that was more interesting to me, and I'm so sorry. I didn't even notice that. And not only that, the little figurines that he has are probably later. They're later ones because we have Alicorn version of Twilight Sparkle. I don't know what that means. That's the one

where she has both her unicorn horn and her pegasus wings when she becomes an alicorn. Later season stuff. is into the lore and i like that i'm down with sam he likes his dart he likes ponies we're in dr henry you know who i don't like who do you not like the grand parries the grand parries grand pair they suck they literally suck uh we they we open the scene and we see photos on the nightstand there's only one that will is in it's john perry holding baby will and the breasts seem

to be of the grandparents and john perry's childhood no elaine to be seen on this mantle they give will the usual when your dad went missing we were all upset and said thoughtless things but hey willie boy you're here now and he asks for help with his trust interesting lyra's asking for help with dust he's asking for help with trust uh the grandfather graham perry goes off and he walks away because he's like ah he's asking for money and he's being a dick and he immediately gets on his phone to call D.I. Walters from series one he's still a character still has a name I was

amazed I was like wow detective Walters I forgot he had a name but yes thank you for reminding us of his name Chloe yes he is in this and that's probably going to come to play. That's probably why they brought him in the previously on Dark Materials stuff at the beginning.

Yeah. Well, I was right. The grandparents sold him out to the Magisterium. Wah, wah. Saw that coming. Yep. You did. You did call that.

And the grandmother offers for Will to stay with them, and Will asks, well, can his mother stay too and then the grand parries are like i don't know if i like that with their body language and thinks you know the grandmother thinks well you know she she might not be fine then is that the case will and then will starts getting super nervous and he starts noticing that things are off especially because they just start talking about the police he like pretends to suddenly spill his tea with his foot and then she goes to clean it up right away because she's i guess more concerned about the carpet and i think that's supposed to be the what that's signifying not just that but the stain on the carpet he's the stain on their white carpet that's what that was the tea spill not only was it his distraction to get out of there like he did it on purpose because he knew she would care about it and he could get up and run

but it was also the metaphorical stain on the white carpet yes of their perfect little home that this is like a stain in their family history that what happened to john and what happened with him and elaine and he he can tell that, right? We see that Will's perceptive and he takes this moment to run away because he realizes that there's no hope here. So sad. He was excited for a moment too, he was like, oh my god, I have grandparents here. So sad. And of course, as we've discussed, this is something that's adapted and brought into this from the lantern slides. Interestingly, you know, when Will is coming to the house, it's another moment, right, where we see him through a window.

His grandmother sees him through that window, more of that framing. And I will say that along with, you know, Lyra's looking for dust, Will's looking about this trust. It's a contrast between their two scenes because when will's meeting up with his grandparents right um lyra is being told by the alethiometer that she needs to trust this absolute stranger and be very truthful with this person she doesn't know anything about just met and then will here is with family and family supposed to be people that you can trust uh a trust of course and ends up having to be really guarded and lied to them yeah it was uh it went pretty much what you'd expect from that scene to go honestly and i'm glad they did it i mean i think it's a good filler scene for will to give

us more background on him and also something that i think this is gonna have a lot of payoff for is you know the end of the season when he meets his dad. And briefly, that is interrupted. Like, as you and I discussed in the book for The Subtle Knife, I just feel like it's so abrupt and that we don't get any time to really understand a lot of the information that we're shoved into in the past books. So I think this is a great way to bring some of that family dissonance up to the front. Yes. Well, now we go back to the cave, which is a badass scene. This is like a little happier.

This is a little more exciting. The music is amazing. I want you to know that the music right here, I have listened to this song that plays in the background during this scene 80 times in a row now because it's just like a banger it's really like you're sitting there you feel like you have the electrodes on your uh temples but lyra's the one that's getting hooked up to the cave which we see a wall that has formulas all over it a see-through window that she's looking through

to look at the actual computer and she gets hooked up to the cave with electrodes you know people love writing formulas on windows is what i'm learning in this show and it's a cool aesthetic i get it great choices and as mary malone goes to hook up electrodes to lyra she actually flinches at first and you can really see i think that great holdover in terms of keeping that character consistency of the trauma that she experienced in bullulfanger when they would hook kids up and then measure them with all of these different instruments. So it makes sense. But Lyra's like, you know, I'll give it a go. Then, you know, she's amazing at it and brings up all these images on the computer.

Yeah, the first try she does is really minor, right? She's managing to move the dust around, so it's just flowing. And Mary is amazed. Lyra had asked if it was dust, and she goes, I think this means yes, Mary. Mary's astonished, so Lyra does it again. She thinks how she does with the alethiometer. This one's the ticket. The entire screen implodes with waves of dusty color, and then it begins to form into images,

and the music gets faster and some of the images are actually from the alethiometer uh the first image is the alpha and the omega symbol from the alethiometer but it's overlaid then we get the sun we get the angel we get a different one which is yin yang then we get the knife and then we get lyra offering us this dialogue and she says it says you're important which this kid just keeps walking around telling people that they're important if this little girl came up to you and she's like I think everybody's special yeah shut up Lyra oh my god uh but no Mary Malone is important and Lyra says you have something important to do you have to make the connection

yourself the Chinese box you have upstairs you'll need it where you're going and the last image is the hourglass which reminds lyra oh shit i can't set alarms on my android alethiometer so off she runs promising to come back the next day honestly like i said i i don't know i would like an alethiometer but at the same time smartphones are pretty great so interestingly, interestingly right, the cave doesn't speak to Lyra solely in that vocabulary of those 36 images that are on the alethiometer,

as you said, and uses those other symbols, such as that of the Yijing box, the lines around the yin-yang, and even the subtle knife makes an appearance. And, you you know the alethiometer actually does have a symbol for sword but that's not we're shown here because we see that knife that has that twist that we all know is a subtle knife because we have trailers and again a lot of that um bonus

content around the show and it's also in the opening credits so we've all seen it we all know because how can you not watch the opening credits it's amazing every time and i find this very interesting from a linguistic aspect which again i'm not a linguist but we've discussed in previous episodes especially in our coverage of northern lights and the golden compass that the alethiometer actually has its own language and these are and it has these chains of language as you go down the ladders of meaning there are these semantic neighborhoods it refers to ideas like semantic neighborhoods and those associations and lyra herself even describes it as communing with dust like she calls it a language the language of pictures and versus

verbal language which is the words that she says that Mary Malone can make this do. And in this way, Lyra is actually acting, I would say, in the role of a translator. And we also don't know anything about the actual syntax structure or the conjugation or anything that happens with the language of the alethiometer. It mostly seems to, I don't know, this is a guess, maybe have like adjectives and nouns because she's like, this means this thing. And the rest is just sort of intimated in terms of, you know, maybe how it works. But we find that in the cave, as Lyra gets up and realizes that she's late, it's because,

again, of that hourglass, which is a pretty obvious symbol for time. I think we all kind of know it and associate it with that and how she's late. And then again, that hourglass which is a pretty obvious symbol for time i think we all kind of know it uh and associate it with that and how she's late and then again that subtle knife which comes to represent will through a literary device called metonymy and that's the replacement of an object or thing with something closely related to it rather than explicitly calling it that so for example it's like using the word suits, right? To mean businessmen, or perhaps for this crowd, when people would say like the iron throne,

instead of saying like, oh, the actual power and claim over all of the seven kingdoms and the monarchy, or even maybe even using words like the authority to refer to God or this hierarchical structure, his rules and his will. So it's very interesting for Lyra to know that this knife, the specific knife means will and how closely associated that they are when we

actually even haven't been introduced to the knife yet. Yeah, that's great. And I found the overlaid ones the most interesting, like the alpha and the omega as one. And then that it's mirrored with the yin yang to explain to them like almost like it's saying this is what i'm trying to tell you yin yang like i'm trying to speak to you in terms you guys might understand uh i just like the idea of it communicating and i like the way they showed it yeah i like that they brought in other images because like why not

you know we have a whole computer here we don't have to only do that and it's also there for speaking to the audience not just lyra and the branding is the other thing i wanted to comment on with the alethiometer symbols like that like you said that the sword looks like the knife but obviously the slight twist to it even back to those flyers that she was pulling all of the branding is very streamlined and similar like it's just very neatly done all of the different marketing stuff they've done for the show and the fonts they're using and the colors. It's very cleanly cut, and I really like that. Consistent.

I know people have probably talked about this already, but it all comes together, right? They're creating a visual language within the show, and what we see on the cave screen, it's a lot of the same lines. And I think everyone was like, whoa! I was like, whoa! It's a thing from the opening sequence!

From the opening credits when it showed up and then all the lines and how they have it plucking. The rest of the lines and the stripes throughout the opening credits. There's a lot of love. I think you can tell that there's a lot of love in this show yeah it reminds me of windows media player back in the 90s and in the early 2000s you used to be able to put it onto the music mode where the the beat would yeah the different things crest and fall on the screen the visual mode that's what it reminds me

of i spent a lot of time watching that for no reason. I'm glad. I was like, what else am I going to do? I don't know. Be angsty in teenage whatever. Here, Lyra's a little less angsty. Will's the one who's angsty. But as she realizes she's late, she runs from St. Peter's College and she's running across this green. And it's not her Oxford and it's not her oxford right it's not her jordan but that very imagery kind of really reminded me of the opening scenes of this series um in in

season one those first few episodes where she's running across the jordan green with roger and they're playing and being kids or running after asriel and made me sad yeah it was perfect because of course it's paralleled with will waiting for her and the conversation they're about to have yep but first we stop with coulter and father mcphail they walk after the proceedings and she pushes him telling him he needs to go further and act before the trials are terminated she says graves is a man of big words mcPhail must be a man of big actions. She tells him to show strength if he wants the cardinalship. And then we get to...

The bench. The bench. Will is upset with Lyra, who's teeming with dust talk from Mary. Of course she's late. He thought she had been caught. He explains that he waited for her even though police and bad people are looking for him and she needs to be careful and mind him yes and you know lyra has a hard time thinking about will's needs in general which is why she

steals his bed in the first episode and makes him an omelet with with eggs in it. But Will's been through a lot, but besides Lyra's cooking. Last season, Jack Thorne on Twitter did a great job of pointing out, again, Will as this parentified child who has had to care for his mother, as opposed to his mother being the one who can really care for him.

And all of this episode, I think we really see how that manifests in Will's characterization and the way that he worries about Lyra and cares, like, for example, for her knee when she gets hurt and tends to her wounds. And I think there's an aspect of this behavior, right, that's just really ingrained in him. And a way that I don't know is actually very healthy. It's very reflexive because that's what he's just been taught to do. And I think that comes through here in the way that he also blows up at Lyra for being late.

That's the other side of the parentified child coin. Because Wilch has just undergone a lot of very triggering moments that would recall his past trauma. From A, finding out that all the adults around him are untrustworthy. And having to lie to protect his mother. To the anxiety about this information that's in his household and how his house got broken into because of all of that along with of course the police being called on him and again those authority figures that are supposed to protect him being untrustworthy so there ends up being an aspect in Will scolding Lyra where he plainly states that he himself is also in danger from the police and his desire to hide, which he told Lyra at the very beginning of this episode and Lyra didn't really pay much mind to.

But at least we got her to not wear the cape. think very much an aspect of will's anxiety and reaction to lyra and him blowing up at her which i think is also a reflex from his mother sometimes either showing up to places unexpectedly or ending up late due to the compulsions that she would feel because of her mental illness so we also have like their his constant fear of his own mother being caught people finding out about her condition and then taking her away from him. That is playing out here in the way that he blows up Lyra. And I believe that's a really big part of it. He's reliving that same fear and scenario that he's grown up with when it comes to dealing with his mother's illness and having to just be responsible for her.

Yeah, and we'll get it in the next dialogue we get from him. Especially that's heart-wrenching because it's absolutely tied to like he's afraid he's this is just the next person he's gonna lose the next person that's gonna be taken away from him and lyra's just gone through that herself as we know she's just a couple steps ahead of him in the whole recovery process you know um absolutely he's upset lyra is you know she's kind of like hey don't blow up on me you need me dude and he's like why do i need your help and she's explaining she's like to find your father so here lyra's kind of playing the ma costa role right just like in series one when my pasta says she's your mother lyra and lyra here's saying you have to find your dad will idiot she tells him she knows from the alethiometer and

will's like i don't know what you're talking about because my dad left us and he's dead she asks can i show you and so she does they go to sit on a bench in the botanical gardens and they have an alethiometer moment discussing what happened to the man will murdered she then asks the alethiometer whether his mom's okay and pan crawls on the bench behind them his mom's safe mr handway will take care of him lyra tells will he can trust her she tells him she's betrayed someone before and she hates herself for it and she'd never let that happen to will and then will tells her yes this is this is why i'm afraid lyra he says i'm gonna have to leave her aren't i just like my dad did i don't want to lyra i'll put her in danger if i stay further foreshadowing it's so sad you can see it's not

just about his mom it's about Lyra on the fucking bench in the fucking botanical garden. Yeah, I get it. I fucking get it. And I'm gonna sue Jack Thorne. I already told him this on Twitter, but I'm suing him. Suing him for emotional damages. For emotional damage. Emotional damages.

God. Oh, this hurts. Like, this is exactly it. Just like you said, he's's afraid he's gonna have to lose his mom and then eventually lyra too yeah and and in the amber spyglass right his big fear around that he losing people he loves being alone he's had to be alone so long and he's learning to trust again and that it's good i'll be god eliana's covering her face with her ponytail right now but I thought I saw a tear form it didn't leave but it formed

anyway not yet maybe one day we've got a few episodes you know to go something here that you know something else here that's also kind of sad but and emotional but in a different way, not as heart-wrenching as this one, is the way that it ties thematically to a couple of other aspects in this episode, this line and all these things about John Perry. Because it's not just about mothers leaving their children in order to keep them safe, but I think we can kind of put that on John Perry too, right? keep them safe but we i think we can kind of put that on john perry too right fathers who have to leave to keep the people in their lives safe um but also just kind of getting lost because you

couldn't find the window but anyways um it's it's for the witches right like well it's more about a custom than it is in this world like you know because as we've discussed the books say that men cannot be witches but i think that the show plays that protection aspect up more when it comes to dr lincelis because they're stressing that his mother sent him away so that he would not have to undergo the pain of the ritual and so we're seeing a lot of that idea of parents and protection and an absence and how it can be i think different and nuanced even though, Mrs. Coulter, it was a little more, it was less wholesome, maybe, but... Yeah.

I think that's a really great look at it, because this episode did feel very strongly about that whole maternal-paternal thing going on, like Coulter with Lyra, and I think the parallels are only going to get stronger as we see Coulter kind of go out on her own to forge her own journey now from the Magisterium after this episode.

She's going to wear khaki. Oh my god. Yes, while wearing khaki. No, she is though. She's striking out on her own and Will meeting his dad at the end of this season is going to be kind of parallel to Coulter hoping to find

Lyra and protect her in her sick, twisted way. Because we learn. I can't wait for that. Well, we close the scene with Lyra telling Will that his father might be connected to Chidagatse as well, like the alethiometer told her Will is. Then she tells him that she likes it here in the botanical gardens, and he says he does too.

Yeah, the subtle knife turns out is actually the one that's being stabbed into our hearts and repeatedly twisted yeah yep with all these scenes who wrote this subtle knife who jane tranter jack thorne i'm calling all of you yeah philip pullman i'm calling all of you to a table right now in front of a jury that is me my cats and eliana and we're gonna have a talk we are gonna have a talk but before we have that talk mary malone and oliver payne have a talk and they discuss how even though this magical little girl rode on through they still don't have enough funding to keep their research afloat over a beer. They talk a little bit about faith in a way that's kind of fun.

Kind of subversive. She tells Oliver to have faith. She's like, come on, have faith! And he's like, Pfft. Science, Mary! Science! He doesn't say that, but that's the idea. Mm-hmm.

What is the real science? Well, then we get to the big one right mcphail decides to take care of the witches mcphail's room is really cool but despite all the you know blowing people up thing uh his room's awesome it has a window in the very center that's like a very small vertical slit of light that comes in, like a crack in his world. And then leads up to that magisterium symbol up top. And yeah, I think that slit that's there takes on a lot of meaning in this show. And it's on one hand, as you said, a crack in the world. But also feels a little bit like that separation or splitting of the veil and the arc of the covenant when jesus died and they're like what is this and how the

worlds are now connected or the way has been opened but i think that line also starts to take on its own symbol symbolic meaning creates its own visual language within the series we see it in that very first moment right in the opening credits where the two sides they meet one another feels dusty and we also recognize it again right in those graphics in the cave and here we see once more that glowing line of light and it becomes both of those both of those lines and it also starts to take on that symbolic meaning I think of the divine or communing with the divine

as we see it repeated throughout this episode and I think there's a sense of irony here because we see that Father MacPhail seems to probably be acting of his own accord and rather than maybe listening to divine voices is actually acting on the

temptations of the devil in his ear Mrs. Coulter and what he's proposed as opposed to the kind of connection that Lyra has, right? Father Garrett? All these people got names they got that D.I.s with a name

whose name I forgot even though we said it earlier I confused Father Grace and Father Garrett for a good six episodes I had to look it up to make sure this time putting that out there like I said last episode all eight of the white guys that wear the black robes Father Garrett

is Death that's his name he's the one with the pence fly as a demon ah yeah I mean it's hard especially because like they had some images where they just shot them, had their silhouettes in the white outline. How am I supposed to know? All of them look the same with their faces shrouded. And

Father Gerrit is pretty shrouded here when he brings the paperwork for Macphail to sign. Yep. And says that the witches must be cleansed. Then he prays for Father Macphail's success this evening. Father Macphail. Then he prays for Father Macphail's success this evening. Father Macphail, most of all, prays for it. Yes, Macphail goes to pray and he tells his demon it will be worth it.

It has to be done and they will repent for it. He repeats it all had to be done. His demon agrees and calls it a necessary sin, but still a sin, she says. She tells him to put his hand out over the fire and he does lowering it slowly and accepting the flames again with that treatment we see in uh characters with more evil dispositions hurting themselves their demon their toxic demon relationships just like with mrs coulter and, again, he's doing a great job. I'm really amazed.

Again, this is Daphne's in-real-life dad. So it's kind of... Mr. Daphne Keaton's father. Mr. Daphne Keaton's dad. No, it's hysterical. He's killing this. He's doing like a really good job. I'm actually amazed.

I'm not saying I didn't expect him to. It's just like he's really getting it. He's got the acting down. He's kind of like this crazy guy that's an idiot at the same time getting played by colter yeah it he must be a really good actor because i cannot imagine this man as daphne keen's father i i feel like he must be so warm so warm behind the scenes yeah hysterical so different hysterical be careful Mrs. Coulter visits Thorold in prison she tells him that she gave him every chance

to escape and that she thinks that Lyra might be in danger and she asks if Asriel had any clues about Lyra's whereabouts and Thorold's like yeah I mean she came to see him I literally saw her a moment before you showed up and that actually Asriel was ready in that moment.

He was like, getting ready to cut her because of, he thought he had to. Doesn't mention the prophecy. But then, thankfully for, I guess, Asriel, but not thankfully for everyone else, Roger, the kitchen boy, was there instead. And he's the one who gets severed. Yeah, Coulter puts all this together and goes, Lyra followed Asriel and she's in another world!

I'm of two minds here. Two things. One, it's the weakest part of the episode. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. There has to be a weak link, okay? Not everything's gonna be gold. But it was silver or bronze at worst, so it's still good.

It's not a bad part, it's just it was the weakest part. It works, it connects, but it just feels so weak, and it felt like, hey, let's get Lancelius's actor and Thorold's actor and make sure we fulfill the contract this week, you know? It just felt like they needed to fill their quota for their contract for this series uh i just think i don't know i guess where would have thorold gone but at the same time it just felt like a weak way to get this knowledge that oh yeah thorold's here by the way that being said

it is going to move coulter's plot along right uh and not only that but it shows that she has motives for lyra not just for magisterium power necessarily and as we are about to learn with her and mcphail she also wants to go travel the worlds but she also is searching for lyra it seems yeah yeah i i'd agree with you i mean i'm like meh on this scene i was just like why is he here it's also, I guess, yeah, I guess he's also there, so you don't have to spend a lot of time for Mrs. Coulter finding Thorold to find this out, and it's like an easy way to, you know, move the plot along. And it is the Seraphina and Thorold scene.

That is what it is. Like, that's what they're adapting. They need that information. Yeah. I just think they could have gotten it in a different way. No offense, Thorold. Yeah, I think it works well to have it be Mrs. Coulter as opposed to Seraphina

makes sense especially as we build Mrs. Coulter's storyline along with the Magisterium which is now having a sort of semi-ethnic cleansing campaign and by that we mean bombing the witches and their homeland

it's not great the scene is all intercut with the men are voting for the new cardinal and they're placing their ballots into a bowl where it burns up and it's showing bombs being unrolled at the same time off of Magisterium Zeppelin down to the lakes

it goes back and forth and it's pretty it's something I think you know, I see what they were going for and I think they're working on tying these different ideas and scenes together

really tying it together and I think it works better than you know, what the scene we just came from right, because of that interspersing those intercut scenes with the voting you have the flames of the votes right from how they're sort of adapting the papal voting system how the the pope gets chosen in the catholic church as we've discussed in the trailer episodes and they're bringing it together and echoing it with the fire and smoke imagery that's burning

up the witches lakes and homes so you have the fire there and this one and it's all going up in flames yeah the power of the magisterium is consuming in both operations obviously we have men kissing mcphail's ring as he washes the flaming voting bowl with wide eyes and then we flip back to the lakes which are being lit up and the witches watching with their demons as their homes are destroyed and then mcphail is back to the lakes, which are being lit up, and the witches watching with their demons as their homes are destroyed. And then Macphail is back to gazing at the fire in his bowl. You know, he should have been Stannis. That's who should have been Stannis.

Daphne Keen's dad would have been a great Stannis. He actually, I think, really would have, like, with the hair and or lack thereof. Yeah, no, I know. He'd be a great Stannis. I don't know Davos. Wow. Wow. So I spoke a bit earlier about how the ethnic cleansing happening here of the witches is

kind of significant and similar to the bombing of indigenous lands and people by the Germans in World War II. But I live in a city that has actually experienced its government bombing part of it. In May 1985, the city of Philadelphia dropped a satchel bomb, a demolition device that's usually used in combat laced with Tovex and C4 explosives on a Black liberation organization called MOVE. MOVE was a political and religious organization who advocated for anti-government technology and anti-corporation ideals, and they were a little different than the

witches, but not really that different in the grand scheme of things. They lived in West Philadelphia, a row home that was known to be occupied by men, women, and children, and the bombing ended up killing 11 people, five who were children, the leader of the MOVE organization, and it ended up destroying 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless. If you haven't been following any of the Western news, I salute you because it's exhausting and depressing. But this is the same side of my city that authorities relentlessly tear gas and intimidated all summer to get them back into their households during ongoing protests against racial inequality, human rights, and police brutality.

And in the time leading up to the full-out microcosm of a mini-war on this side of the city in 1985, the city continually antagonized the area for weeks, pumping tear gas into the neighborhoods, forcefully evacuating people. MOVE didn't have a perfect record. Some of their confrontations in the city ended up being disruptive. Some people were allied to them. Some people didn't really like them. But the biggest thing that happened from all of this is that all groups that advocate for rights in the city of Philadelphia at the time stood up and protected people involved, stood up and condemned the act of the city. Because just as Ruta was trying to explain to Seraphina Pecola before all of this happened, if they can do it to one of us, they can do it to any of us

and all of us. Situations like this where it's not just one witch who behaved badly, it doesn't matter the race or creed because as we saw with Lancelius, they locked him up as a peace envoy. The Magiserium don't care who they hurt or take down. This leads us to the height of the episode because one thing is now certain seraphina's hand has been pushed she has to act if they can do it to one they can do it to all and they can strip free will from any of us yes and we see that they've been willing to do it right to children you were pointing out the the the way children ended up as collateral in all of this and absolutely and i think you're really seeing

the stakes here. And there, as you said, there are real world examples of, they can do it to one of us, they can do it to all of us. There is no fairness when it comes to these sorts of authoritarian regimes, right? The morality gets lost. And, you know, we were speculating, actually, and you know in it we were speculating actually in the first episode of this season what is it that's going to force seraphina to pick a side and i think we had obviously thought it would come later in the episode and not be this yeah which again glad there are twists and surprises for us in in this series and this does make sense, especially also for it to happen here so we can start moving that witch storyline along. I do, you know, I kind of wonder,

like, are we going to see Serafina at first blaming Ruta and then, and Ruta's attack and saying that's what led to this attack on the witches, even though it's not, right? We saw that it was just a sort of big power trip on the part of father mcphail um before that like maybe seraphina agrees to join forces or is it going to be like seraphina still refuses to take action even though i don't think that seraphina would be like that i

mean i'm just speculating different ways that this can all go but like or will like you know she refuses to take action but the rest of the witches in her clan are like no we can't stand aside because as you said if they can do it to one of us they can do it to all of us and they move to unite and force seraphina to do so or is it going to go straight to just seraphina agreeing and being like you were right ruda we have to take action now the time is now and you know i think that there are a lot of other things that are playing off on another in this episode, I think that there are a lot of other things that are playing off one another in this episode. I do think that there's something in how the witch's scenes

where Ruta and Serafina are discussing what sort of action should we take, how should we unite in power in this episode at the beginning. It contrasts with the power struggle that we're seeing within the Magisterium between Father Macphail and Father Graves, where, you know, the priests, they refuse to discuss the different issues that are in front of them. They turned it into the bad power struggle, it becomes this competition, whereas the witches, they're having that open discourse with one another. There's a respect between both of those leaders as they're trying to figure out like, what should we do with this power should be in terms of the just sharing it and uniting yeah i think we're gonna have to see some resolution on lancelius as we mentioned earlier and yeah i don't know that paired with i think some of the stuff you mentioned

last week on the specters versus the witches coming back into play uh we've seen kind of a shot of coulter in chitigatse and i'm wondering if we're going to get any aspect like you said of coulter training the specters uh maybe it'll become more of a coulter training the specters and attacking the witches with the specters yeah and she kind of like does that in the books but it'll be interesting if it's more direct yeah yeah that's kind of what's happening right like we're seeing a lot of these kind of background events being made more front ground more foreground events being made into real just like scenes which is really interesting and i know there's a little

bit of made up coming to us in the next episode as well but not not too much that's out of like the suspension of disbelief it all seems to be in the realm of what did happen or could happen in the background during these events yeah it works within the context of the story and as opposed to maybe taking anything away from what's in the books it really strengthens the themes and messages of Pullman's story yeah well as we get to the very final scene we have Coulter visiting father mcphail now cardinal mcphail's room to congratulate him but when we say congratulate it's not so much congratulations it's more like congratulations you were played sucker yes she says to him you know

you were both the spider and the fly in this web that I've made, sort of that he's both an instrument for her work and also the prey. And then she's given him a death sentence as the cardinal and being like, well, you know, I know what you did, so I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. And what I want to do is roam the myriad of universes oh the spider and the fly father graves's demon is a spider and we see it in the last scene father garrett who comes to and asks him to sign the stuff for cleansing the witches his is the fly she's made him both the spider and the fly he's between both of those men she's played them all against each other yes that's that's a great that's a great i didn't think about it i didn't think about it until i just

realized i'm like oh shit father garrett fly demon yeah and they're all there you know mrs coulter also a poet is she's actually quite accomplished and so in this scene uh he says to her he's like you forget yourself and she like gives this huh i forget myself and the demon her monkey demon grunts he's like yes and me too i was sitting here going oh forget myself huh okay i'll show you forget myself i'll show you forget myself cardinal i love that emphasis you know we've seen a lot, especially described in the books, that her demon, right,

just has such presence that people shy away from it. Like their own demons are like, oh, I cannot take that. And you know what? The little lizard cannot take this monkey. What's it going to do? Like tear the lizard in two?

Which I do like the lizard's voice, though. The lizard and the monkey are both cute. And that has, again again nothing to do with this but anyway Mrs. Coulter says you know what I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want you're gonna turn your other cheek and then

she leaves and she's like he thinks that she's gonna go look for Asriel and she's like no not everything is about dick alright she's gonna look look for Asriel, and she's like, no, not everything is about Dick, alright? She's gonna look for something way more valuable. And then she calls him Hugh. She says, goodbye, Hugh.

Hugh McPhail! He's a Hugh McPhail! Hilarious. It's the funniest shit in the whole fucking world. I was screaming laughing. What a power move everything she did in that moment truly ruth ruth iconic she leaves she's free at last with the magisterium to go search for other worlds and her daughter before the magisterium finds her first and i think this is totally some of the setup for father McPhail to end up being the Father Gomez in the story.

I'm guessing he's going to be Father Gomez. I think he's going to be heading the bomb for Lyra and he'll fail, as we know. He'll probably be scorned and pushed out and Father Graves will be instituted. And I'm guessing Father Gomez, Father, not Father Gomez now, but Father McPhail will go off to hunt Lyra, which is A. Hysterical because it's Lyra's dad, right, in real life. And then B. No real spoilers, but I just never realized the Father Gomez and Bonneville parallels till right this

moment. Oh, interesting. Scorned by the mother. Yeah, no, absolutely. Stalking Lyra to kill her because they're upset at their failure in the hands of Mrs. Coulter. Yeah, they've got that going on there. Yes. It will be funny. Both of Lyra's parents,

you know, both fictional and real, will be searching for her. Slash Daphne. What an episode. What an episode. Not as real. Not in this season. The other dad. Not Yorick either. Not Lee either. The the other dad not yorick either not lee either the other other dad

well what an episode and we are so ready for episode three eliana what do you expect to see in episode three i know we've had a few spoiled things just from trailers i haven't seen that many of the trailers partially because i like haven't looked too hard for them, and also I couldn't find them because I didn't try very hard, obviously. I was like, I don't know where it is, and that seems like way more work than I want to put into it, and they'll just go into it blind. As we all know, I was like, maybe we'll see Joe Pari this episode, and clearly we did not. So I think we're going to finally see Joe Pari. We have to bring back Lee Scoresby because we didn't have him at all this episode, so I think we have gonna finally see joe parry we have to bring back lee scoresby because we didn't have him at all this episode so i think we have to bring him back because you know contracts yeah i'm kind of surprised like that because we you know his i think they're cutting

his journey down a lot um and maybe maybe they're making the journey with him and joe parry longer and having the beginning the track to the journey but he's gonna go to Nova Zembla I saw a frame from Nova Zembla that you actually can see the bar he actually is going to go to Samirskis and go to Nova Zembla but I'm guessing we're gonna get that done this episode and he's gonna get to the Shaman this episode

yeah and I think we're gonna get you know Mrs. Coulter entering Chittagatse actually we might not. That would be interesting if we didn't and built that suspense for what she's going to do first in this episode. And I think we're also going to see, we have to see a follow-up to The Witches and stuff.

What do you think, Chloe? What do you think we're going to get this episode? I think we're going to get this weird new scene of Coulter and Lee, as we've seen from that trailer clip. There's a really tiny trailer clip. So we have a made up scene that's new. I'm interested to see how that works. And we're going to go from there

and I guess I think we're going to get some Will and Lyra spending time together which is nice. Is Lyra going to lose the alethiometer this episode? That's what I'm wondering but it feels too early. Does it? Because then it's episode four, and then we only

have three episodes left, so maybe. Or she could lose it, but it will be at the end of the episode. That's what I'm thinking. I think we'll close maybe on that, so lose it at the end, because I think they go back to Oxford, so. Yeah, she has to because she told Mary Malone that she's going to come back the next day.

So they come back, and I think we're going see some exploits i think we get the movie theater scene i think they go on a date i'm pretty sure we get their first date okay that's important to me because i just really you know lyra's had omelets she was gonna have this cookie and i don't know why but i just really want lyra to try a burger it's just like really important to me and i want to see her react to that i had a burger the other night it was great i might have a burger for lyra holy shit i hope she gets a burger i think that's uh i hope that and i hope we get some more pan sass that's what i want oh yorick i hope we get a yorick i hear we might see yorick he was in the trailer i i've been wondering i don't know how but i want it so yes

same maybe he rescues lee or something because they could also be in love that could be cool i'd be fine with that i'm open i'm open i'm an open book so i hope you surprise me tonight his dark materials negative capability yeah i mean lee and york is a better ship than some potentially canon some potentially canon things that we are getting in uh some of these other stories so oh my god well thank you so much for listening into our recap of his dark materials series two episode two the cave it was a blast if you have enjoyed listening to this, please feel free to subscribe to us on many other places that you can hear us, like iTunes, Apple Podcasts, if you're on

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special episode on his dark materials that is again patreon.com slash girls gone canon yes and of course this week later this week look forward to a la belle sauvage episode following the book of dust book one yes as always i have been one of your hosts chloe and i've been another one of your hosts Eliana see you next week goodbye oh shit