S03.E01: The Enchanted Sleeper

[Cranberry]

Quote

Held captive by Mrs Coulter, a dreaming Lyra finds herself in a mysterious place with someone familiar - Roger. Will continues his quest to find Lyra, meeting unexpected allies along the way.

Original air date: December 5, 2022 (HBO); December 18, 2022 (BBC iPlayer, BBC One).

[AnimeMania]

[bluestocking]

That was exciting despite a lot of it being table setting.  Loved the setting in the cave on the cliffs.  Where is this?  Wales? Ireland?  

Lyra looks older.  Will has grown a LOT.  And in one of Lyra's dream sequences it seems that Roger's voice has changed.  

The effects for the angels are very effective.  

[aghst]

Liked the new credit sequence.

Asriel is fighting an angel who pretends to be the creator?

So he's going around recruiting and the first guy he pursues is a military commander who is mainly worried about his daughters.  Ironic, Lyra is in a drugged-induced stupor thanks to Coulter and the guy he wants is more concerned about his daughter than fighting Asriel's Big War.

Marisa is going to keep Lyra safe vs. the Magisterium being in that little cabin, which is visible from the ocean and air, like those Magisterium air ships?

I don't understand why all the priests have insects or snakes or lizards for daemons, since they can't talk to them.  Also easily killed, as when Boreal killed that reporter by crushing her butterfly daemon.

Angels are after Will to summon him to come to Asriel but he's more preoccupied with finding Lyra.  The angels when they kiss are literally sizzling!

Asriel has to return with the general guy so he creates another light gash portal, only this time, he doesn't do a child sacrifice.

Speaking of which, Lyra see Roger in her dreams -- and the previews for the rest of the season shows Lee Scoresby.  Looks like those characters will return somehow.

This opening episode, is a continuation of the stunning cinematography of the series, particularly the otherworldly landscapes and production designs of cities and architecture which looks man-made but belong to these other worlds.

Cardinal MacPhail goes to their Geneva, where there's a big complex on a hill overlooking the river.  That looked to me like Salzburg, where there's a hill overlooking the Salzach river.

https://carryoncaro.com/hohensalzburg-fortress-in-salzburg-austria-the-best-preserved-castle-in-central-europe/

They replaced the Hohensalzburg fortress at the top of the hill with a different building (kind of like Dragonstone castle in GoT and House of Dragons is composited over a real island in Basque Spain).

Marisa uses ASL to communicate with a local deaf girl near the hideout cabin where she's keeping Lyra.  Why would she be using American Sign Language in her world?  But the girl sees Marisa drug Lyra and drag her back to the cabin when Lyra was trying to get away.

Will is on his way to rescue Lyra, along with one of the angels, sees Iorek fighting off some villagers.  Will shows him the power of the Subtle Knife by slicing Iorek's Sky Iron helmet in half with it.  Iorek decides he doesn't want any part of will and that knife so he's going to follow Will and the angel to rescue Lyra.

But Father Gomez, an upstart trying to impress MacPhail, will lead a Magisterium force to abduct Lyra.

[PurpleTentacle]

Holy jawline, Batman! Amir Wilson could cut glass with that.

So we are finally getting the backstory here. Maybe they should have told us a bit more about it in season 2 and it wouldn't have been quite as much of a slog. I get trying to stay faithfull to the books, but sometimes you have to change a few things, especially if the book is also considered a bit of a slog, like some people intimated here last season.

4 hours ago, aghst said:

Speaking of which, Lyra see Roger in her dreams -- and the previews for the rest of the season shows Lee Scoresby.  Looks like those characters will return somehow.

Well Asriel basically said this episode that death isn't the natural order of things and that the angel who calls himself god made it somehow. I guess usually you should get reborn, but he banishes your sould to another world or something?

4 hours ago, aghst said:

I don't understand why all the priests have insects or snakes or lizards for daemons, since they can't talk to them.  Also easily killed, as when Boreal killed that reporter by crushing her butterfly daemon.

Guess only a person with such a demon (soul) is the right material for the magisterium. A bit of symbolism with a sledge hammer there...

[PinkRibbons]

I think the general idea with daemons is that they do talk, just mostly to their human counterparts. I also think adults simply don't do it as much as someone like Lyra, who likes to have someone to plan and plot with, or maybe they do it in private. The books series only has one daemon that canonically doesn't talk, and that's Mrs. Coulter's - not that it can't talk, just that it doesn't, which adds to the creepy of it.

I have to say, I gotta give props to them giving at least a loose explanation for the actors visibly aging. I thought that would be a problem because daemons were supposed to settle essentially with the onset of puberty, but in the Book of Dust series Pullman retconned that to allow for it to happen at an older age. And so technically there's no reason why the TV series can't take place over a longer timespan.

[Bill1978]

7 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

So we are finally getting the backstory here. Maybe they should have told us a bit more about it in season 2 and it wouldn't have been quite as much of a slog.

I have a feeling the backstory was planned to have appeared in the cancelled cause of covid Episode 8 of Season 2, All we got was that final moment of Asriel talking to the angels, but that scene was meant to be part of an entire episode involving what Asriel had been up to during Season 2, so they had no other option than to exposition dump at the start of Season 3.

Cannot believe it's been 2 years since Season 2. It's great to have this show back so I can finally find out how the story ends after starting this journey in the cinema with The Golden Compass. I feel this show really is a hidden gem and I wish more people watched it. The world building is incredible and the cast of characters is great as well.

Speaking of characters, should I know who the tiny flying assassins hanging with Asriel are? Cause I feel the show expects me to know who they are already.

[PurpleTentacle]

18 minutes ago, Bill1978 said:

I have a feeling the backstory was planned to have appeared in the cancelled cause of covid Episode 8 of Season 2, All we got was that final moment of Asriel talking to the angels, but that scene was meant to be part of an entire episode involving what Asriel had been up to during Season 2, so they had no other option than to exposition dump at the start of Season 3.

Didn't know that there should have been one more episode. But even if that is where this exposition dump should have resided originally, I still think it would have been better if they had sprinkled it throughout season 2, maybe cut some stuff. As it was it was mostly treading water. They really could have done that story in like 6 episodes and still included all the backstory we learned this episode.

18 minutes ago, Bill1978 said:

Cannot believe it's been 2 years since Season 2. It's great to have this show back so I can finally find out how the story ends after starting this journey in the cinema with The Golden Compass. I feel this show really is a hidden gem and I wish more people watched it. The world building is incredible and the cast of characters is great as well.

I'm very torn on this show. On the one hand I love it. The landscapes are gorgeous, the characters great, the actors amazing (even the child actors are passable), the premise intriguing, but man did the second season drag and man are a lot of characters acting like complete morons a lot of the time.

18 minutes ago, Bill1978 said:

Speaking of characters, should I know who the tiny flying assassins hanging with Asriel are? Cause I feel the show expects me to know who they are already.

I don't know either. I suspect Asiel recruited them from some other world, where everybody is tiny and they still have a catholic church. I don't need a massive explaination, but a short sentence or two would have been nice.

Edited December 6, 2022 by PurpleTentacle

[aghst]

There are little features on HBO Max for each episode.  Besides the usual recap of the previous season or episode and sneak peak ahead, there is one that explains some of the new character including those tiny men.

[Bill1978]

4 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I don't know either. I suspect Asiel recruited them from some other world, where everybody is tiny and they still have a catholic church. I don't need a massive explaination, but a short sentence or two would have been nice.

I agree a simple sentence from Asriel to Ogunwe about how he recruited The [Insert Group's Name Here) from (Insert World's Name) where they are figthing [Insert The Name of Their Version of the Magisterium Here], which is what they call your Temple. Without that sentence I felt I missed something from zthat final scene in Season 2.

4 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I'm very torn on this show. On the one hand I love it. The landscapes are gorgeous, the characters great, the actors amazing (even the child actors are passable), the premise intriguing, but man did the second season drag and man are a lot of characters acting like complete morons a lot of the time.

Because I didn't read the book, I found Season 2 so fascinating and intriguing. Whereas Season 1 was a bit of a drag until we passed The Golden Compass movie. So I guess I;m one of those people who if I don't know what's goingto happen I find it exciting haha.

[Tuggy]

14 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I'm very torn on this show. On the one hand I love it. The landscapes are gorgeous, the characters great, the actors amazing (even the child actors are passable), the premise intriguing, but man did the second season drag and man are a lot of characters acting like complete morons a lot of the time.

I am with you on this one. I'm watching the show mainly because I am in love with the books and that I jump on every occasion to get back into this universe. But man is the show disappointing! The cast and visuals are good but the scenario and the dialogues are not... During this episode, I though multiple times that the situation did not make sense or that I was bored. So many jumps between plotlines, without much coherence or stakes, really. I guess by now, I am basically hate watching, which I find very sad 😢

Edited December 7, 2022 by Tuggy

[Bill1978]

On 12/6/2022 at 5:50 PM, aghst said:

I don't understand why all the priests have insects or snakes or lizards for daemons, since they can't talk to them.

This seems to be a show thing. I was looking around on Wikipedia to remind myself of all the characters we met and some of the characters have different daemons in the book. Gomez has a beetle; Fra Pavel has a frog. So, I guess the show just wanted to be as subtle as a sledgehammer to tell us who the evil people are.

[mrspidey]

3 hours ago, Bill1978 said:

This seems to be a show thing. I was looking around on Wikipedia to remind myself of all the characters we met and some of the characters have different daemons in the book. Gomez has a beetle; Fra Pavel has a frog. So, I guess the show just wanted to be as subtle as a sledgehammer to tell us who the evil people are.

It's not just a show thing. A daemon's forms is a reflection of the person's personality. In the books, Servants/Butlers are always depicted with dogs as daemons. The soldiers defending Bolvangar all have wolf daemons, if i remember correctly.

The Magisterium just naturally attracts people with the kind of personalities that result in those daemon forms 

[aghst]

7 hours ago, Bill1978 said:

This seems to be a show thing. I was looking around on Wikipedia to remind myself of all the characters we met and some of the characters have different daemons in the book. Gomez has a beetle; Fra Pavel has a frog. So, I guess the show just wanted to be as subtle as a sledgehammer to tell us who the evil people are.

4 hours ago, mrspidey said:

It's not just a show thing. A daemon's forms is a reflection of the person's personality. In the books, Servants/Butlers are always depicted with dogs as daemons. The soldiers defending Bolvangar all have wolf daemons, if i remember correctly.

The Magisterium just naturally attracts people with the kind of personalities that result in those daemon forms 

It might also be a production budget for effects thing.  I seem to recall in the first season it was suppose to be a challenge to have multiple characters and daemons on the screen at once, all talking.  So they concentrated on just the daemons for the main characters, making them speak.

The Gyptians all seemed to have small birds and those didn't talk or they didn't show them talking.  Witches were mostly birds, though larger ones who could talk.

The Magisterium guards or soldiers, several of them have German shepherds types of dogs, again larger animals than most of the other daemons on the show, but they don't speak.  I think it's a backgrounds visual thing, those soldiers in black with those dogs are meant to look menacing

[tennisgurl]

I cant believe how long its been since this show was on, the kids have really grown up! We are really getting into it now, the show is in the tough spot of being at the point of the story when we need a TON of lore dumped on us and we need a whole lot of exposition, which is easier to do in a book than in a show. I think they did a pretty good job giving us a lot of backstory and information, although it felt sometimes like they were overexplaining some things not explaining other things enough, like the little fairy people that Asriel was working with. Just a quick line would have sufficed, I thought at first that they had been previously introduced and I just forgot. 

The opener is amazing, it might be my favorite opener yet. The shots of the different worlds all lined up look so cool, it really makes me want to spend more time exploring, the little glimpses are so intriguing. I thought the affects in general looked great, very atmospheric. 

[Tachi Rocinante]

HBOMax missed the boat on promoting the new season.  When the 2 eps dropped, nothing showed on the main page and when I searched under the show, it defaulted to Season 2.  I had to choose Season 3 from the dropdown menu!

That being said, I enjoyed the setup.  I am not a book reader, so I am still interested in where this goes.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 12/5/2022 at 11:20 PM, bluestocking said:

That was exciting despite a lot of it being table setting.  Loved the setting in the cave on the cliffs.  Where is this?  Wales? Ireland? 

The angels said it was "a remote island in the German Ocean".

On 12/6/2022 at 1:50 AM, aghst said:

I don't understand why all the priests have insects or snakes or lizards for daemons, since they can't talk to them.  Also easily killed, as when Boreal killed that reporter by crushing her butterfly daemon.

Marisa uses ASL to communicate with a local deaf girl near the hideout cabin where she's keeping Lyra.  Why would she be using American Sign Language in her world?  But the girl sees Marisa drug Lyra and drag her back to the cabin when Lyra was trying to get away.

MacPhail's lizard daemon Octavia spoke last season.

Wikipedia says that ASL is a lingua franca.

[Llywela]

On 12/20/2022 at 10:25 PM, Noneofyourbusiness said:

The angels said it was "a remote island in the German Ocean".

In-universe, yes. In our universe, it was filmed at St Govan's chapel in West Wales.

[angora]

On 12/6/2022 at 12:50 AM, aghst said:

Marisa uses ASL to communicate with a local deaf girl near the hideout cabin where she's keeping Lyra.  Why would she be using American Sign Language in her world?

They were using British Sign Language. It shares some signs/commonalities with ASL but it’s a different language.