This is hands down the best episode of the series so far, there is lots of action and heart with a lot of great performances. Lyra vs Mrs Coulter is a perfect showdown as we see the emotional effect and the anger, they both share for each other.
In just one episode, Lyra played by Dafne Keen confronts her mother and takes on Bolvangar, whilst also freeing the children but then is plunged headfirst into even more danger. The Gyptians, an armoured bear, an aeronaut and a witch also arrive just in time and we get to witness a very odd fight, it was full of action and danger yet we weren’t sure who was winning and then the witch arrives to help destroy the evil facility and everyone is saved.
We begin this episode in the clinical corridors of Bolvanger and the tension is rising. The tension slowly increases throughout as Lyra tries to rally the other children around her before they have their daemons cut away from them by the scientists, played by Amit Shah and Lia Williams. These two play every different character’s as Shah's character is questioning what they are doing as he sees it as wrong yet Williams character is strong as she believes in the cause and the reason why they are doing this to the children. A surprising character is Sister Clara played by Morfydd Clark; you don’t discover until the end that she actually is one of the very few survivors of these experiments. As we don’t see daemons much it is very shocking at the end of the episode when this is revealed. We know something isn’t quite right with Sister Clara thus this reveal catches you off guard.
Lyra is soon under the knife which leads to Mrs Coulter played by Ruth Wilson to discover it is her own daughter about to be harmed shuts down the experiments on Lyra. What follows is an intense and oddly satisfying conversation between Lyra and Coulter. This conversation is full of emotion and heart and yet it takes a turn and we see how alike these two characters are, just by their screams of anger. Wilson and Keen's performance is amazing in this scene, they have a great relationship onscreen and it is engaging to watch them together. Lyra is strong and cold while Coulter is emotional and vulnerable. Wilson is also great to watch when she is in an episode and in this episode, we see the emotional side of Mrs Coulter. In particular, we watch Mrs Coulter breakdown which is unexpected by lovely to see as it makes her human. We discover she really does love her daughter and never wanted her to get hurt.
A lot happens in this episode and just as we get over the battle of Bolvanger, we are hit with something new. We learn that Lee Scoresby played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has a duty to look over Lyra now, just as his balloon is overloaded with cliff-ghasts as Lyra is thrown into the frozen unknown leaving into another cliff-hanger for the next episode. It will be interesting to see if the next episode will keep the pace of this episode or if it will slow down again.
This is the episode we have all been waiting for and it didn’t disappoint. We had some excellent performances from the entire cast, moments of interest are the Lyra and Coulter face off and the moment we see the horrified children whose daemons have been taken away from them. these moments make this episode intriguing to watch and you don’t want this episode to end. Everything just works in this episode but it is worrying that the momentum will slow down now we have had the big battle we have been building up for six episodes.
