I Am Not Ok

This is a post about the TV show/book series His Dark Materials. Mostly about the TV show at the moment, all things considered. 

I just finished watching the finale, and I am a fucking mess. A complete, fucking mess. 

I usually don’t cry over much. I read the books, and I knew that everything was going to happen. The daemon separation, the Land of The Dead, Mary Malone and the mulefa, Lyra and Will’s kisses, Baruch and Balthamos, everything.

All of it. I told myself it was going to be emotional, I told myself they would ruin me, and they did. Every detail from the bench itself and the positioning, to Will opening the window and breaking the knife, reflecting on Lyra and taking snippets from the past episodes, having Marisa and Asriel die for the sake of their daughter, all their motives surmounting to such a thing. 

Asriel deserved to die. Marisa didn’t, in my eyes. The show creators had spent their time, very well-spent time building up each individual character, Marisa as my specific example right now. She was manipulative and heartless within the first season, powerful and controlling in the second, and understanding in the third. She understood her weakness, her downfall. The suppressed love of her daughter. She wallowed and grieved over it, and yet she still used her powers for good. 

Now to talk about the goodness of such an adaptation. Yes, there were variations from the books, in particular, Jopari/John Parry’s death in Season 2.  I was distraught at the time. How could they take Lee’s death, word for word, emotion for emotion from the books, and mess up John Parry’s so much?! I believe that this was for plot’s sake, and the audience’s sake. Those who read the books would be bitter (myself), and those who hadn’t would likely be confused by a sudden story of unrequited love between John Parry the shaman and a witch. But they made up for it, big time. The creators took the symbolism of the bench to bittersweet, valuable and heart wrenching extremes. They took the symbolism of glances and subtle touch to build into the most romantic swell on TV that I’ve ever watched. They took the themes of storytelling, power, religion, love, and enhanced them all within this high fantasy world, cultivating different dynamics, making each element of the story worth it in its own way. 

And a thought occurred. Will is the Knife Bearer. Knife. Bearer. With a show based around books that involved a central theme of Adam and Eve and religion, the knife acts as a burden, a cross he must bear, per se, because Will and Lyra will forever be together. Their love changed the present, but they alone cannot change the past. He bore the power of the knife, passed every test, and broke it by the end, once and for all. A loss of power. A loss of the overwhelming grief and burden of thinking of Lyra, desperate not to fall back into temptation and cutting a window again... 

Everything about this show has moved me, changed me for the better. 

So, thank you His Dark Materials. Thank you for being an ongoing fantasy, a relevant, moving story, with a wonderful adaptation that will live on. 

“Tell them stories,” Lyra said to the ghosts of the Land of The Dead. 

“Tell them stories,” Atal told Mary, unaware of her status as the serpent.  

The story has been, and will continue to be told. Forever, I’d like to hope.