Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is often viewed as an atheist take on the Christian allegory of CS Lewis in the fantasy adventure series The Chronicles of Narnia. The comparison is less than one-to-one, but there’s no denying that the show’s most prominent villains, the priests of the Magisterium, are a direct and horrific allegory for institutionalized Christianity.
One of the Magisterium’s primary goals is to eradicate sin from humanity by any means necessary, including its adaptation in HBO Max’s first season Its dark materialsto separate children from their souls. Naturally, the TV series spends more time with the adult characters of Pullman’s world than the books, and the shift in focus brings the books’ themes of adults controlling children to the fore.
Putting audiences in the minds of these villains without making them too likable — whether it’s a mother angry that her child’s identity isn’t just an extension of her own, or a global state that respects the free will of its citizens wants to eliminate before they come of age – was the biggest challenge in creating the show, according to series writer Jack Thorne.
“We introduced it deliberately [Father Hugh MacPhail, who rises to become the leader of the Magisterium] much earlier than the books,” Thorne said, “because we wanted to understand his journey. We wanted to understand how someone would do this to themselves and their country.”
Polygon sat down on Zoom for the release of Thorne’s third and final season Its dark materials, produced through a partnership between BBC One and HBO. The new season adapts the events of The amber binoculars and introduces yet more societies from across the multiverse where a monolithic religion has attempted to curb free will and accidentally decided to start with children.
When asked if he thought there were parallels between dark materials‘Fantasy horror and current trends from book bans and statutory claims of child corruptionThorne agreed that the connection was not lost for him.
“I’m very scared of where we are as a world right now. I think we’re all a little afraid of where we are as a world. The way we tucked into our binaries and gone If you’re not on my team, then you’re on the other team. And the forces that arose and took advantage of that. You think especially of Trump, and you think of Boris Johnson in my country and the frightening way they manipulated news to support their selfish agendas. That lives in very strongly [His Dark Materials
Pullman’s Amber binoculars, the final book in his trilogy, packs these themes alongside much more, introducing an ultimate antagonist behind the Magisterium, a version of purgatory, angels and even the creator of the universe. But it’s also the book that completes the series’ transformation from a classic fantasy setup – children finding hidden doors to other worlds – into something straight out of science fiction classics: a multiverse of alternate worlds filled with a wild variety of equal and unlike civilizations our own.
It’s a movement that sets Its dark materials alongside it in the same category of mainstream modern multiverse drama Everything everywhere at once, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verseand the Marvel Cinematic Universe is charging headlong towards it Avengers: Secret Wars.
Thorne also attributes this multiverse of multiverses to the present moment.
“Why are we drawn to the multiverse? What is it about the time we are living in that we want the possibility of the other? Uh, you know, yeah, I can think of several reasons why we might. Our time is like this – it feels like we’re going through something pretty profound. I don’t think we’ll realize what a revolution it was until we’re on the other side of it. I think it’s a youth-driven revolution and it’s about identity at its core. And when we work it out, the stuff – the His Dark Material books and the Avengers movies and everything – will end up looking like they exist in a new context.”
With the new season starting this week and production wrapping up, Polygon asked Thorne if he felt he was seeing Pullman’s books from a different perspective now than when the show began.
“We used to say right at the beginning of the process, ‘We’re going to do a Ph.D. in Philip Pullman,’” he recalled. “And I feel like I’ll never quite complete this PhD. And with The Dust Book He questions things I thought were the case, even now. He guided us through this whole thing and there wasn’t anything we did that went against where his universe sits. But at the same time, his universe is so diverse that we keep playing catch-up with his ridiculous intellect.”