His Dark Materials: The Botanic Garden (3x08)

Woof! Okay. Let's talk about it.

Cons:

The thing is, yeah, this episode has the problem it was always going to have, in that it feels disconnected from the rest of the story in a lot of big, obvious ways. We went through so much with Asriel and Coulter, and they barely get mentioned here. Characters like Iorek get barely a sendoff. The aftermath of Asriel's war isn't fully addressed; obviously it's implied that the Magisterium is going to go home with its tale between its legs and none of the angels on Metatron's side are going to bother anyone anymore, but we don't really see much of any of it. The Gallivespians, the other witches besides Serafina, they don't get their due here. This is how the book ends, too, I'm not saying they had a lot of choice in it, but I think the structural problems that have plagued this season are apparent when you have a finale that is kind of doing its own thing, almost entirely cut off from the plotty buildup leading to it.

Father Gomez coming to do his murdering, and Balthamos showing up to thwart him is also something from the books, but again it felt shoe-horned in. I get that I'm kind of contradicting myself, as this is an element that does tie back to earlier in the season, but it feels so disjointed, like, God is literally actually Dead, dude. Move the hell on.

Pros:

The thing is, though, this episode just had to get one thing right and I would forgive it all its other weaknesses. And... it got that thing right.

I want to start with Mary, who acts as the "serpent" in this little tale of temptation. She talks to Lyra and Will about what it is to feel in love, to give in to the fullness of what she can feel as a person, and that's what inspires them to realize the true depth of their feelings for one another. It's such a simple thing, and that's what makes it powerful. I appreciate the little change here that Mary was feeling attraction and love towards a woman, as I don't think it's that way in the books. Not a huge deal, just a nice little detail. And I also like that the story isn't about how Mary then fell madly in love and got married and had babies or whatever, it's just a quiet thing, a moment where she eats marzipan and remembers what it is to have butterflies in her stomach. The outcome of her romance isn't the point, here. That's lovely.

Lyra and Will... man. Okay.

I really need to give a lot of praise to these performers. Dafne Keen and Will Parry have a sometimes thankless job in portraying these characters who have to be young and innocent but also old enough to fall deeply, passionately in love. They have to play trauma and heartache and affection and childlike wonder, and the script, while decent, is also cheesy and overwrought, meaning that if these two didn't pull off the performance convincingly, it might have been truly insufferable to behold.

But it's not, because it's lovely, it's sweet, it's tender, shivery kisses and tight, desperate hugs as they sob into each other's shoulders, it's the joy of reuniting with their daemons, and the tender way they touch each other's daemons along with their own. The way they say each other's names, the way they kiss one last time through the final portal. The way Lyra talks about how one day when they die, they'll find each other again, and be so thoroughly joined that they will be together even as their atoms are used as building blocks for future life. It's High Romance, y'all, and these two actors pulled off an amazing feat, making it feel like young, inexperienced love and also like the deepest, most sacred thing in all the universe.

I don't really have a lot to say on the specifics here. I actually held back my tears during the whole bench montage at the end, but the minute the screen went black and the text appeared saying that they kept going for the rest of their lives but each lived full lives in their own worlds, I started crying. At its core, this is just a beautiful story. And sure, this television show was an imperfect telling of it, but I still deeply loved getting to see it play out in front of me.

And yeah, I guess... that's it! I feel kind of numb, that it's over. I'm grateful we got these actors to take on these precious characters, I'm excited to see what they end up doing next in their careers. This finale gets...

9/10

And now to grade the show as a whole. I think the overall thing I want to say about this television adaptation of one of my favorite book series is that it got a lot of moments really right. It had a lot of brilliant aspects. It had the most incredible Marisa Coulter I could ever have imagined getting. It had a Will Parry I fell in love with even more than the one from the books. And it had a lot of weaknesses. There were thematic elements about the church and faith and sin and love that didn't quite land. The way the daemons were integrated in particular left something to be desired. Sometimes the pacing was wonky. But usually, the things that didn't land about the show were a matter of... "I wish they'd done more or less of that" rather than "what just happened was stupid", you know? And that's better. I'm so glad I have this show to come back to and watch again someday. It's a different, and imperfect, way to revisit one of my favorite stories. As a whole, I think the show deserves pretty high marks.

7.5/10