The chapters in The Amber Spyglass that chronicle the swan song of Lyra’s parents read more like the end of a classic Hollywood romance than the end of a children’s book. I suppose that was the point: Marisa Coulter and Asriel Belacqua are certainly star-crossed lovers, though they do a lot of that crossing of their own volition, a great, if absolutely terrible, romance for the ages. By this point in the story, like so many tragic heroes, they’ve both pursued their selfish goals so ferociously that they’ve ruined their souls in the process, much less their chance at a happy ending, to the point where their only redemption lies in a violent death.
But much like a 1940s noir starring a swooning femme fatale, there are elements of these passages that have aged … poorly. Chief among them: Mrs. Coulter’s seduction of God’s Regent, Metatron. In the text, she titillates and beguiles the angel like she’s done every human man before him, offering to end his millennia-long estrangement from mortal flesh and be his consort. It’s not like he makes it hard or anything; Metatron is kind of an idiot, even with all his angelic powers of insight, offering up his lust for her before she even has a chance to direct their conversation that way. This, too, feels like a choice on Philip Pullman’s part, to drive home just how unremarkable the so-called deities who would subjugate the multiverse truly are. But the choice loses its edge the moment she returns to Asriel in tears — feeling to him “as soft and light in his arms as she had when Lyra was conceived†(barf) — to tell him about how she’s bested the angel. In making a point about the weakness of men, Pullman hurts his most powerful woman. It’s a classic disappointment.
Lucky for us, this episode has been adapted by the same writer credited for the Coulter powerhouse episode “The Scholar†last season.
Of course, it features a few odd choices and irregularities throughout, but that’s par for the course at this point. The series seems perpetually confused by its own lore, particularly when it comes to Dust and its role in the biblical narrative. Metatron offers to make Marisa an angel, claiming that such immortality has not been offered “for millennia, not since the fall of man.†Was the “fall of man†when Eve heeded the Serpent and shared the fruit, a.k.a. Dust, with Adam? If so, it’s either an oversight or an inexplicable lie since Metatron himself was born as the human man Enoch, a direct descendant of Adam by not one or two but six full generations. (To say nothing of last episode’s bizarre prologue claiming Dust was a gift humans were “given†rather than something they were tempted to take without permission.)
Even if you sweep the biblical nonsense under the rug — an extremely forgiving read might interpret it as intentional confusion to demonstrate the conflicting hypocrisy of religion and power — there’s the fact that Marisa’s curious influence over the Specters now includes destroying them with … evil mind powers? If this new magic was introduced to solve the problem the Specters pose to the army, it doesn’t even do that consistently, as proven when Serafina Pekkala intones some sort of witch spell (quite Arwenesque and definitely not in the books; this adaptation wants to be The Lord of the Rings so bad) to summon another Specter into attacking an enemy angel chasing her and the children’s dæmons on their way to their humans.
And the end of the battle is messy in general: The moment the Kingdom of Heaven disintegrates and is sucked into the abyss, we see the angels all wink out of existence in midair, then cut to Xaphania, clearly still alive in Asriel’s fortress. (Maybe its angel-proofing works both ways, like a faraday cage?) Ogunwe’s severed daughter seems to magically regain her soul, even though we know intercision is a permanent disfigurement committed by humans and in no way relies on the survival of the Authority. And instead of Lyra and Will attempting to help the wizened, terrified creature that was once the Authority, he disappears in a heap in what looks like a cold, concrete cell, looking for all the world like the freakin’ baby Voldemort in the death void at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It all feels sort of careless.
But the parts of the story that warranted the adapters’ attention were unquestionably transformed for the better. For one, it’s much clearer this time just how powerless Asriel truly is. In the text, he’s permitted to crawl around exploring the chasm until his big, heroic moment to remain dignified and go down in glory. Now he’s forced to confront himself in the Kingdom — literally, as Metatron appears to him in his own form. He cannot even distract the angel from his daughter on his own by losing to himself in a fight. He’s forced to wonder whether the woman he loves (claims to love, anyway; even before she takes matters into her own hands, he tries to sacrifice himself “for her,†in true self-aggrandizing fashion) might very well have betrayed him and the multiverse in her quest for power.
She might have, if not for her child — if not for the love that Xaphania calls “[her] salvation and [her] downfall.†“You have an extraordinary power to suppress the best of yourself,†the rebel angel tells the woman when she, reasonably doubting her ex’s blind overconfidence, seeks guidance. “A mortal who has not confronted their own darkness is as helpless as a child before [Metatron].†With Lyra in the world, the mutilated soul of Marisa Coulter has become the only true match for a seer angel.
Metatron gets a little upgrade, too. (A rising tide truly lifts all boats.) The angel didn’t ascend to the throne of heaven by behaving like a garden-variety mortal; he’s no Carlo Boreal. He immediately clocks Marisa’s initial attempts at flattery, forcing her to change tacts — to show him what he wants to see. Because he’s all but told her: She’s “unusual,†she “controls those Specters as if they’re [her] own playthings,†and most importantly, he identifies with her — as a human, she’s “ruthless but fallible.†He’s seduced by her soullessness, by the opportunity to mold her in his own image. That chestnut about spirit envying flesh turns out to be about as useful as, well, an un-self-aware atheist megalomaniac in an angel fight. A being made of pure Dust can’t be tempted by flesh itself, but rather by the ability to control it — by the opportunity to convince Marisa to betray Lyra, to betray Asriel, for a chance at immortality, for a chance to be like him. Metatron’s envy takes the form of subjugation.
And boy, do Marisa and Asriel offer him that fantasy on a plate. One could argue that Asriel knew she was bluffing, but one would be wrong; when he says, “Marisa, no,†he has a look of despair on his face. But she’s always been the one with the plan. The one who could suppress the best of herself to achieve her goals. She needed him feeling this wretched, for Metatron to crow, “Look at him. He knows he’s beaten. His end has come.â€
It’s a much better depiction of her victory, as she describes it in the book, to Asriel in their final moments:
“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he’d see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I’d ever done. I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn’t. There is none … All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that [my] love [for Lyra] was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I’d committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still.â€
But Marisa Coulter learns another lesson in this moment: At last, after what seems like years’ worth of plans and schemes, each sabotaged by a cruel twist of fate in the final moments, the scientist successfully seizes on this gambit’s final twist.
When Will uses Æsahættr to cut his and Lyra’s dæmon through to safety, Metatron is momentarily distracted. Marisa squeezes her eyes shut, signaling to the golden monkey to trip the explosives lining the walls of the abyss, creating a surge perfect for annihilating a kingdom — and a God. In slow motion, she and Asriel lock eyes, pull each other to their feet, and attack Metatron. One final dæmon ex machina — Stelmaria bounding from nowhere, outrunning the disintegration of the castle, to lunge for the angel’s neck — and the trio plunge over the edge, viciously clawing at each other, through the sky, down into oblivion. It’s Asriel who says it, but it’s Marisa who makes it matter: “For Lyra.â€
Field Notes
• Will’s dæmon? Kitty!!!!!!!!!!!
• Let’s hold off on talking about Lyra’s reaction to the golden monkey’s disintegration until the next recap. Much to think about there.
• Why is Asriel so obsessed with saying “in the earth†rather than “on earth� It’s a weird tic that would be humanizing on a character level — we all have our pet phrases in real life! — if it wasn’t so inextricably linked to his over-the-top rhetoric.
• Speaking of “over-the-top,†have you noticed how much non-sequitur screaming has been going on in the past few episodes? Lyra’s sudden shriek as they row away from Pan, Serafina Pekkala’s howl as they charge into battle, Marisa’s bellow as she magicks the Specters into pieces … Big fan of screaming in general, don’t get me wrong, but this stuff smacks of directing (“and here’s the part where this character yellsâ€) over organic context.
• Given that Pullman has described Specters as “a way of talking about certain mental states such as depression and self-hatred,†that magic feat gives off a strong “I am no longer mentally ill†vibe.
• A noticeable diversion from the book: The witches are fully on the Republic’s side this time, rather than split between the two sides. This makes both less and more sense. Less because no group is truly a monolith, but more because it was always baffling that the witches, whose whole deal sort of depends on Dust (“sinâ€) / sensation/knowledge, would side with those trying to exterminate their way of life, even to put humans in their place.
• In defense of the cliff-ghasts that attack Lyra and Will and the soldiers in the foothills: Cliff-ghasts are canonically scavengers; they’re evil-coded, because of course they are, but they’re literally in it for the food.
• “What I am is far beyond your comprehension.†“No it’s not.†Distinct Monty Python energy.