'His Dark Materials' Season 2 Episode 2 Spoiler Preview: Who is the ally and who is the enemy Lyra meets?
You won't want to miss Episode 2 ('The Cave') of Season 2 of 'His Dark Materials' because Lyra is going to meet a friend, Dr Mary Malone. To call Dr Malone, the Irish, lapsed Catholic scientist, a pivotal character, is an understatement. She is as important to the denouement of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' as Lyra and Will are.
So this is just the start of her story on the series and her role will expand rapidly as the story picks up the pace and continues into Season 3, based on 'The Amber Spyglass'. For now, here's what we do know about her — as a lapsed Catholic, she understands a lot of what Lyra is trying to tell her about her world, and about Dust. But she is also "The Scholar" — she is the scientist the alethiometer tells Lyra to find.
In the trailer, we see Lyra crossing into Will's world (which is our Earth and this world's Oxford) and being fascinated with things like a smartphone, cinema and cars. But she also has a job to do — which is makeing contact with Dr Malone, someone who can tell her about Dust. This leads her to Dr Malone, who takes her to "The Cave", which is her gigantic quantum supercomputer lab built expressly to study "shadow particles" or "dark matter" that both Lyra and Dr Malone realize is the same thing as Dust in Lyra's world.
Lyra also sets off the computer when she is hooked on it, making it react wildly to her because she is the child of the prophecy. There are many quantum possibilities associated with her, leading into different permutations and combinations of time and space. Lyra also tells Dr Malone that she, as a scientist, has something very important to figure out and it is vitally important that she does. The fate of the multiverse depends on her.
But before she meets Dr Malone the ally, she runs into Lord Boreal the enemy, who now knows that she is in Oxford "with a boy". Back in Lyra's world, the war drums are beating as the Magesterium and the witches have a full-on clash as Father McPhail takes charge after the Cardinal dies. But Mrs Coulter seems to have her own agenda — she is torturing poor Lee Scorsceby now to figure out where Lyra is. Thanks to the information she got from the witch she tortured in the last episode, she now knows that her daughter is a powerful chess piece in the game ahead and both her love as a mother and her love of power drive her to pursue Lyra. As she tells Lord Boreal, "she's mine".
The Subtle knife will soon be making an entrance in the series, along with Will''s father, Col. Parry, who knows about the existence of the knife. As he tells Lee, it is so sharp that it can cut through the fabric between worlds. It also provides protection. Lee hopes it will protect Lyra wherever she is because the "fate of all life depends on her", according to the witches' prophecy. The only problem is that the Magesterium wants to use her as a sacrifice instead.
'His Dark Materials' airs on HBO on November 23 at 9 PM ET.