Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 8
Duration: 60 min (per episode)
His Dark Materials: Season 3 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
It’s been nearly two years since we last reviewed the second season of His Dark Materials. We found that the show was doing a fairly nice job of bringing Pullman’s boo trilogy to life. And now, with the third season, we delve into the third book, The Amber Spyglass. As this is a one-book-per-season show, this means that this is also the grand finale of the show, and while some aspects could have been explored a bit more, we rather enjoyed this show from start to finish.
The third season does have a few separate storylines that slowly start coming together. We see that Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Pan (Kit Connor) are in the clutches of Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson), who is keeping them drugged to make sure they cannot escape. Her motives are unclear at the beginning, but we do see a new side to her, one that may surprise certain viewers. At the same time, we see Asriel (James McAvoy) gathering his forces to fight against the Authority. It’s clear that he is going to stop at nothing to make sure his goals are achieved.
Will (Amir Wilson) is frantically searching for Lyra, as he is riddled with guilt after leaving her alone. Now that he wields the Subtle Knife he is also on Asriel’s radar, and he is asked to join his resistance force. Will agrees, but only after he receives help to get Lyra back. Dr. Mary Malone (Simone Kirby) is exploring different worlds and also learning more about ‘Dust’ and its properties.
The flow is somewhat what you’d expect from the show by now. The longer episodes lend themselves perfectly to having a nice balance between action and information, and this is also true for the final season. That being said, we did find some episodes to be a bit more measured than we expected, but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The show does a formidable job of building suspense and we quite enjoyed this story-heavy third season.
In this third season, it’s clear that the cast has cemented themselves in their roles, and thus you’ll see a bit more of what you have already seen in the previous seasons. The cast still does a formidable job fleshing out their characters and they show a convincing range of emotions. Of course, Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson are still the key cast members for this season, but James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, and Simone Kirby also get huge chunks of screen time. The supporting actors do a great job bringing their characters to life, and we can clearly see the work and effort that has been put into creating this series.
Even though the previous seasons came with quite a few extras, the Blu-ray version of the last season sadly did not come with any special features at all. This was quite disappointing, as we would have loved a bit more behind-the-scenes footage for this final season. Sadly, fans of the show will have to make do with only the episodes when buying a physical copy of the third season.
Conclusion
The quality of the show has remained the same when comparing the second season to the final one, and that’s a great thing. His Dark Materials: Season 3 managed to captivate us from start to finish, and we were more than content with how the show built up toward its finale. While there were a few slower moments to be found in between, they did help with the overall world-building of the show. We still do regret that the Blu-ray copy of the final season did not come with any special features.
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