S03.E02: The Break

[Cranberry]

Quote

As the Magisterium closes in on Mrs. Coulter, Will tries to help Lyra to safety. Asriel's base is rocked by unexpected visitors.

Original air date: December 5, 2022 (HBO); December 18, 2022 (BBC iPlayer); December 25, 2022 (BBC One).

[PurpleTentacle]

A hole lot of dumb decisions all around!

-

Will: "I'll leave Lyra here with you!"

Mrs. Coulter: "The magisterium is coming and I can't protect here alone!"

Will: "I'm sure you can. Peace out!"

5 minutes later

Will: "Oh no, the magesterium ist coming and Mrs. Coulter can't protect Lyra alone!"

What in the actual fuck?!

He could have at least yeeted those two through a portal into another world before he left, but no, he leaves them in the same world as the magisterium.

The better option would have been to just take both of them with him. But I guess he can't because... no actual fucking reason!

-

So then he goes back and leaves one portal open behind him. Why? There is no reason other than that he will need it later, once the knife is broken. But he doesn't know yet that the knife will break. God I hate contrived writing.

After that he refuses to take Mrs. Coulter. Why? 5 minutes ago he trusted her enough to leave Lyra with her. None of this makes any sense!

Then he gets rattled enough to destroy the knife. Nice going, stupid. If you notice you can't concentrate, maybe you should stop trying to open a rift. You aren't 10 anymore, that shouldn't be a mistake you make.

-

Also I never saw him pick up the pieces. I sincerely hope he did after Mrs. Coulter was out and there wasn't any great urgency in the moment. Otherwise I'm going to rage quit this show. I don't care how much time I've invested. All of this was just so incredibly dumb!

[PinkRibbons]

Will never intended to leave Lyra with her mother, he was bluffing. He had every intention of getting Lyra out, just not Mrs. Coulter. Remember that Will has heard Lyra's story, and Lyra's story has Marisa Coulter kidnapping scores of children and then essentially mutilating them. And no matter what Mrs. Coulter says about how much she loves and wants to protect Lyra, drugging her and imprisoning her is fucked. Will only came into that room to get an idea of where exactly Lyra was in it so he could figure out where to cut through and grab her and Pan.

There is a shot of him picking up the knife pieces, and the reason it broke is highly important, but I suspect that will be explained next episode.

I gotta love Stelmaria and Asriel fighting about Lyra. She is the "unconscious" part of him talking, the part that doesn't want to pay attention to any parental instinct. It also made me wonder if Stelmaria has maternal feelings for Pan. (Pullman has never described how a daemon comes into the world with their human - I think he actually said he didn't decide it? - but he has said that daemons are named by the daemons of the human parents, which I've always wondered if that means that daemons have familial relationships to each other .)

[PurpleTentacle]

2 hours ago, PinkRibbons said:

Will never intended to leave Lyra with her mother, he was bluffing. He had every intention of getting Lyra out, just not Mrs. Coulter. Remember that Will has heard Lyra's story, and Lyra's story has Marisa Coulter kidnapping scores of children and then essentially mutilating them. And no matter what Mrs. Coulter says about how much she loves and wants to protect Lyra, drugging her and imprisoning her is fucked. Will only came into that room to get an idea of where exactly Lyra was in it so he could figure out where to cut through and grab her and Pan.

I assume you are going by book knowledge here, because nothing of what you are saying was in the episode. Coulter was there alone. He is like a head taller than her. If he wanted to take Lyra with him at that point he could have decked her and that would have been it. There was no need to be sneaky. I really shouldn't have to read the books for the show to make sense.

Also I think it's pretty clear that she is trying to keep Lyra safe, in her own twisted way. So why not take her with you? If Lyra wants to, you can still ditch her at *next location*. It's 4 against 2 (5 against 2 if you count the demons) and of the 5 one is an angel and one is a freaking polar bear. What is she going to do? Instead of just taking one of the straight foreward paths, he fucked around so much, that the magisterium got there, a bunch of people died and the angel got pissed and flew off.

Also still no explaination why he left the rift open apart from plot contrivance.

2 hours ago, PinkRibbons said:

There is a shot of him picking up the knife pieces, and the reason it broke is highly important, but I suspect that will be explained next episode.

There isn't. He is starting to gather them, but then Coulter interrupts him, by threatening him with a gun. He stops and then never goes to pick them up again. He could have picked them up while the camera was off him, but it wasn't clear.

Edited December 6, 2022 by PurpleTentacle

[aghst]

I assume it's not the end of the Knife.

If you watch after the credits, they have "coming this season" previews and he's opening up windows still.

Obviously was a ruse because he was counting steps so he knew where he'd cut into to surprise Marisa and take Lyra but Balthamos was impatient and booked after Baruch was killed.

The child actors have obviously aged.  Now they're old enough to have romantic feelings, as the previews showed.  But in this episode, Will still has bandages on his hand where his fingers were severed but he's obviously older.

Not sure what Marisa's plan was, she wasn't going to stay in that cabin forever.  She's used to a certain lifestyle.  She remembers Will using the Knife so she expected him to show up and they would all escape together?

Asriel is now torturing angels for information.  He didn't care that Lyra might be in danger until he heard about the Knife, called the god killer, then he started to GAF.

Mary Malone is somehow trekking across worlds too, with those I Ching sticks.  She keeps running into deadly young teen girls.  Not sure what she brings to the table now.  She was researching dark matter, purely as a physicist but now there are metaphysical implications.  No more computers, no calculations, now she's being led by some spiritual guide?

[PurpleTentacle]

3 hours ago, aghst said:

Obviously was a ruse because he was counting steps so he knew where he'd cut into to surprise Marisa and take Lyra but Balthamos was impatient and booked after Baruch was killed.

For something to be obviously a ruse there should be a reason for the ruse to exist. I don't see why you don't just take Lyra. Not only are you a head taller than her captor, you also have an angel and a polar bear with you. What possible reason could there be to be sneaky about it and waste time for the magisterium to catch up with you? Coulter flat out told him that they were after Lyra, but he thought it was a great time to fuck around, apparently.

Also Will wasn't shown to count steps until the Magisterium had already arrived. Are you guys sure you aren't projecting your book knowledge onto the show?

3 hours ago, aghst said:

The child actors have obviously aged.  Now they're old enough to have romantic feelings, as the previews showed.  But in this episode, Will still has bandages on his hand where his fingers were severed but he's obviously older.

I'm fanwanking that as him just covering up the stumps. Anything else doesn't make much sense.

Especially since Coulter lampshaded this episode that Will had grown a lot. So there is no fanwanking away that a lot of time has passed.

4 hours ago, aghst said:

I assume it's not the end of the Knife.

If you watch after the credits, they have "coming this season" previews and he's opening up windows still.

I assume the knife will not work well for a while, but well enough, and eventually be reassambled. It is the insturment to kill god afterall (although I suspect there will be a twist on that one as well). The question is how many unecessary detours it will take. If he didn't even pick up all the piece I'm out. That is just too much dumb for me.

[Bill1978]

16 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

There isn't. He is starting to gather them, but then Coulter interrupts him, by threatening him with a gun. He stops and then never goes to pick them up again. He could have picked them up while the camera was off him, but it wasn't clear.

I just got around to watching this episode. I had read your comments before viewing and decided to pay close attention. You see Will scrambling to get the pieces, Coulter pulls her gun on him, Lyra steps in front of him, we get the stare down between Lyra and Coulter. In the background you see Will stuff something in his pocket as he stands up, presumably the knife and the shards.

16 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

I assume you are going by book knowledge here, because nothing of what you are saying was in the episode. Coulter was there alone. He is like a head taller than her. If he wanted to take Lyra with him at that point he could have decked her and that would have been it. There was no need to be sneaky. I really shouldn't have to read the books for the show to make sense

I'm going to assume this may be a case of the actor being older than the book character making the scenario not make total sense. I imagine in the book since Will is younger he would be shorter, he wouldn't have been able to beat Coulter so had to do the plan in the book that we saw in the episode. And the story clearly required Will to return to the cabin so the knife could break (Coulter definitely said something that triggered the knife breaking so she had to be involved in that moment), so we had to have TV Will do the plan even if technically what you said could have happened and makes more sense. Although if that happened, we wouldn't have got that tense moment at the end of them trying to escape.

16 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Also still no explaination why he left the rift open apart from plot contrivance

This I have no explanation for except, unless he left it open in case he got killed and Lyra and Iorek could jump into another world if needed?

At the moment Asriel story is the least intriguing of the events. Well Mary's seems pointless at the moment but its early days for her, so I'll give her another episode before saying her story is the least intriguing, even if I forgotten how the sticks allow her to jump worlds.

[PurpleTentacle]

9 minutes ago, Bill1978 said:

I just got around to watching this episode. I had read your comments before viewing and decided to pay close attention. You see Will scrambling to get the pieces, Coulter pulls her gun on him, Lyra steps in front of him, we get the stare down between Lyra and Coulter. In the background you see Will stuff something in his pocket as he stands up, presumably the knife and the shards.

He does, but it might just have been the knife part he still had in his hands. It mainly looked to fast for him to have picked up all the pieces. But this is a minor gripe and if it turns out that he has all of them I'll shut up about it.

10 minutes ago, Bill1978 said:

I'm going to assume this may be a case of the actor being older than the book character making the scenario not make total sense. I imagine in the book since Will is younger he would be shorter, he wouldn't have been able to beat Coulter so had to do the plan in the book that we saw in the episode. And the story clearly required Will to return to the cabin so the knife could break (Coulter definitely said something that triggered the knife breaking so she had to be involved in that moment), so we had to have TV Will do the plan even if technically what you said could have happened and makes more sense. Although if that happened, we wouldn't have got that tense moment at the end of them trying to escape.

I considered that after the episode, but that doesn't change the fact that it was badly written. If circumstances change, you have to change your adaptation to account for it. An easy one would have been Coulter threatening him with the gun, or just flashing it on her hip, at the start of their conversation, making it clear that she has it on hand. That even would have been good foreshadowing.

But even then, I'm still not sure how you can account for him having an angel and a polar bear with him. Assuming he also had those two with him in the book, I don't see the need for subterfuge there either. Sure they are waiting outside right now, but it would be way faster and way less dangerous for him, to get them and beat up Coulter, than to walk through another world and trying to sneak Lyra out. Also why didn't he just bring them in the first place?

[Tachi Rocinante]

Metatron?   METATRON??  Are they fucking serious with that bullshit???  If that's in the book, Pullman is an even bigger douche than I thought.  Is there a Scarscream coming later?

Anyway, I thought it was fairly clear Will was bluffing.  There was a quick throwaway line where he says, "I know she's lying" or something like that when he leaves the first time.

I keep forgetting the scientist lady's name is Mary. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

53 minutes ago, Tachi Rocinante said:

Metatron?   METATRON??  Are they fucking serious with that bullshit???  If that's in the book, Pullman is an even bigger douche than I thought.  Is there a Scarscream coming later?

I think it refers to this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron, but I'll admit I was thinking Transformers. 

[Tachi Rocinante]

4 hours ago, Superclam said:

I think it refers to this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron, but I'll admit I was thinking Transformers. 

So I learned something today, thank you!

[Beatriceblake]

They seem to be chucking extra scenes in between characters who didn't meet and characters who didn't meet until later a lot. I didn't like that they had Father Gomez show up the cave and confront Mrs Coulter. His deal in the book was to be alone and quietly tracking Lyra across worlds on his own while the Magisterium army would have gone to the cave. It also means I'm going to be really annoyed when neither Asriel or Coulter have actually killed him when they had the chance and he pops back up later.

[bluvelvet]

On 12/14/2022 at 8:16 AM, Tachi Rocinante said:

Metatron?   METATRON??  Are they fucking serious with that bullshit???  If that's in the book, Pullman is an even bigger douche than I thought.  Is there a Scarscream coming later?

Anyway, I thought it was fairly clear Will was bluffing.  There was a quick throwaway line where he says, "I know she's lying" or something like that when he leaves the first time.

I keep forgetting the scientist lady's name is Mary. 

 

See how late I am to this, just watching the episode. Will says that line or something similar once he gets back to the group, so I interpreted that to mean he planned to go back and get Lyra.  This was before he noted the magistarium ships

[Notwisconsin]

Metatron is the fourth person of the trinity. Nothing to do with transformers.

[Black Knight]

On 12/7/2022 at 2:21 AM, PurpleTentacle said:

But even then, I'm still not sure how you can account for him having an angel and a polar bear with him. Assuming he also had those two with him in the book, I don't see the need for subterfuge there either. Sure they are waiting outside right now, but it would be way faster and way less dangerous for him, to get them and beat up Coulter, than to walk through another world and trying to sneak Lyra out. Also why didn't he just bring them in the first place?

I think it has to be taken into account that Mrs. Coulter is a woman and Will is a nice boy. It's not going to be in him to strike, much less "beat up" a woman when there are other options available for handling the problem.

Iorek is a big bear that wouldn't be able to easily move around in that space, which renders him largely ineffective. And the angel was unlikely to be willing to help, as we get confirmed later on by him peacing out of there. Will thought Mrs. Coulter was away and he could just go in to retrieve Lyra. And when she came upon him, she talked nicely with him instead of threatening or attacking him, so he really wasn't going to hit her. Instead he got what information he could from her and then led her to believe he'd be leaving without Lyra, knowing that with the knife it would be easy for him to go back now that he had Lyra's precise location.

[PurpleTentacle]

11 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I think it has to be taken into account that Mrs. Coulter is a woman and Will is a nice boy. It's not going to be in him to strike, much less "beat up" a woman when there are other options available for handling the problem.

Iorek is a big bear that wouldn't be able to easily move around in that space, which renders him largely ineffective. And the angel was unlikely to be willing to help, as we get confirmed later on by him peacing out of there. Will thought Mrs. Coulter was away and he could just go in to retrieve Lyra. And when she came upon him, she talked nicely with him instead of threatening or attacking him, so he really wasn't going to hit her. Instead he got what information he could from her and then led her to believe he'd be leaving without Lyra, knowing that with the knife it would be easy for him to go back now that he had Lyra's precise location.

That is a lot of handwaving. Far more than I'm comfortable with.

Iorek could have fit quite easily, I don't think Will is as big of a sexist that he would make a destinction between male and female murderers and the angel only pieced out after, because all this bullshit was taking too long for him (something I can totally relate to). Why wouldn't he have helped to get it done faster?

[cleo]

I'm not exactly hate watching this but I'm not really a fan either.

Agreed with the comments above about Will not taking Mrs Coulter. Had to be pretty obvious he was leaving her in potential danger of being killed.

He and Lyra have all the power with the knife and the bear etc. I don't really buy Will would just have the heart to abandon her to the Magesterium.

The scenes with Coulter and the psycho priest were good.

I don't think Asrael is supposed to be an anti hero? I think he is just supposed to be a straight up good guy? I've never watched a show where the supposed hero was such a garbage human being. Whatever his rationale is, he's still fine with killing innocent kids and torture. The former in particular I cant get past. He is not much different than those he is fighting imo. I just don't subscribe to the ends justifies the means.

Edited May 22, 2023 by cleo