It’s time for a bear battle! Are you ready?

That’s right. The genre for this episode is BEAR BATTLE. But first, some other stuff happens. Let’s talk through it all and see how Lyra and friends are doing in this, the second to last episode of the season. That’s right, we’re already here.

As you’ll remember from last week, after promising to take real good care of Lyra, Lee Scoresby goes and lets Lyra fall out of his balloon. And I’m sorry, looking back at the recap at the beginning of the episode, it didn’t feel like Lee tried very hard to grab onto her before she fell out of the balloon. So if he’s feeling bad about this (spoiler: he is), then good.

Anyway, Lyra falls out of the balloon and is… fine? I guess in this universe the ground is made out of pillows because everyone who fell out of the ballon was perfectly okay. I mean, we all knew they would be, so maybe it’s nice that the show is sparing us the time and energy it would take to explain how. But still. We’re already having to suspend our disbelief a lot for a show like this. You don’t even have to meet us halfway. Just take a few steps towards us maybe?

Since that’s not happening though… we’re moving on. Lyra stumbles into Panserbjørne territory and immediately gets imprisoned. Here, Lyra meets a cosmology scholar who gives her a lot of valuable information. Information #1: He reminds her that she’s a little girl. Check! #2. He was imprisoned after he couldn’t give the king Iofur Raknison what he truly wanted: a daemon. #3: Iorek should have been king, but he was disgraced and exiled (we already kind of knew this, but as a reminder!) #4: Lord Asriel is no longer in a cell because he tricked Iofur into letting him continue his research here in Svalbard, AKA cold bear-land.

The alethiometer, meanwhile, lets Lyra know that Iorek is on his way to save her. The only problem? If Iorek comes to Svalbard, surely all these armored bears will kill him. So Lyra hatches a plan. Lyra decides that if her father can trick Iofur into giving him what he wants, surely she can too. Especially with the alethiometer at her side. She tells Iofur she has information about Iorek that he will want to hear. You see, Mrs. Coulter didn’t tell Iofur everything they were doing in Bolvangar. Yes, they were removing daemons from their humans, but they were also giving animals artificial daemons.

Of course, this is a lie. Just making sure we’re on the same page.

Lyra tells Iofur that Mrs. Coulter has done this experiment on Iorek and that she herself is in fact Iorek’s daemon. She explains, “Humans get animals. It would make sense for bears to get humans, doesn’t it?”

Iofur is super jealous. He’s like, “Mrs. Coulter didn’t get me a daemon dammit! And I imprisoned her ex-lover for her! What did Iorek ever do for her? Why does nobody love me best?” Etc. etc.

Lyra flatters Iofur and tells him she truly does love him best and wishes she were his daemon instead of Iorek’s daemon.

To prove that Lyra is who she says she is, Iofur asks her what the first creature was that he ever killed. The answer? His own father. Super metal, am I right? Lyra’s like, “It’s SO COOL that you killed your father. You’re basically a God. Only a God would kill their own father.” Hear that, Menéndez brothers?

Anyway, long story not so short: Lyra convinces Iofur that the only way he can truly beat Iorek and have Iorek’s daemon as his own is by challenging him to a one-on-one battle. This bear is truly dumb.

Ahem. We interrupt this BEAR BATTLE programming to bring you a check-in on everyone’s favorite adolescent from our very own world, Will Parry. This week, he gets to do a whole lot more than watch a YouTube video of his missing dad. This week, Lord Boreal is back, giving his mom Elaine a whole heck of a lot of trouble,

Boreal comes back to see Elaine and tells her, “I’ve learned information about your husband, and I can’t say it to you on your porch.” When she still won’t let the dude inside, he pushes his way in. Apparently, valuable/dangerous objects disappeared 13 years ago, and they think John Parry stole them. He totally did steal them.

Meanwhile, Elaine’s like, “That’s interesting, BUT WHY DO YOU HAVE A SNAKE IN YOUR CLOTHES?”

Boreal denies having a snake in his clothes and tells Elaine he will be back to search her house when he gets the “appropriate paperwork.” He’s after the letters that Elaine tried to give Will a few episodes back. And he will stop at nothing to get them. Wuh oh.

CLIFFHANGER (for now)! Let’s get back to the bear battle. It happens pretty quickly, and for some strange reason, they choose to focus on Lyra’s face rather than the two giant fighting bears behind her. But maybe they don’t want to promote animal fighting? I guess that’s fair. Maybe I should sit back and ask myself why I’m getting so excited about seeing to giant CGI armored bears hurt each other. What’s wrong with me… on the inside?

That’s a question for a whole separate blog post series, probably.

Anyway, Iorek wins the fight, as we knew he would, and becomes the new king of the Panserbjørne. He thanks Lyra for her help and tells her she’s one of them now. So she’s a Gyptian and a Panserbjørn. Must be cool to get adopted by everyone who meets you, especially when your parents are both actual trash.

Iorek stands before his bear brethren and makes his first big king bear speech: “There will be no more killing, This is the end of death in this palace. It’s time for a new beginning. Bear ways, not human.” All the bears drop their helmets. 

All of this took up a lot more time in the book and was explained a lot better, especially the fact that Iorek had rightful claim to the throne this whole time and he was basically tricked into leaving it behind. In the tv show, it just kind of seems like these bears will follow whoever murders the most people. This is not the case! If only we had on more season so that we could delve into this more #bitter.

After Lyra and Iorek are done visiting with their new bear army, they go find Roger. Apparently Roger and Iorek fell out of the balloon together and yet ARE TOTALLY FINE. Roger says, “Iorek Byrnison made me stay out in the cold when he went to rescue you.” And clearly Roger’s totally cool about that.

Anyway, back to our world where there are depressingly few bear battles. Will and his mum have just discovered that their house has been broken into! Oh no!

Elaine is worried her son won’t believe her, but she stresses that the letters she tried to give him are important and that they need to make sure they don’t get into the wrong hands. Will says, “I believe those letters are important. I believe there’s a man with a snake. I believe you, okay?” THANK GOODNESS. Will, you precious baby.

Now Will must go find the letters. And I’m just wondering WHO IS TAKING CARE OF THE CAT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD?

When Will gets to the house… he finds the letters… but… (sorry I’m trying to build suspense) there’s someone else in the house! Two someones! Also the cat is there and seems to be in good health. But back to the someones. They try to go after Will and one of them falls and dies… Okay, well, actually, Will pushes him and he dies. So Will is a murderer now. And he’s on the run. With the letters. TO BE CONTINUED.

Back in the cool daemon world: The magisterium is flipping out because Iofur is dead and Asriel is free. Asriel and his research is super scary to everyone because he’s clearly a loose cannon and what is he going to do about dust and what will the magisterium do no one knows omg run-on sentence to denote panic! Mrs. Coulter says she knows Asriel and she knows how to get him. Since that worked so well last time, I totally believe her.

Elsewere, Lee has also fallen out of his balloon and his also totally fine. Maybe this is witch magic, since Serafina Pekkala shows up here to remind Lee that he has a responsibility and a battle to fight. They have a little conversation that seems important, so I’m going to include a bit of it here. Please know that Lee’s horrible accent is back in this scene, so read the following with a bad Texas accent in your head for the Lee bits:

Lee says, “I failed you, and her.”
Serafina: “You fought for her, and now her fate is in another’s hands.”
“So this is still about fate?”
“Of course it is.”
“She needs me?”
“She needs all of us.”
”I hope I’m strong enough.”

Somewhere nearby but not in the same place, Roger and Lyra know they have to go find Lord Asriel. Roger gives Lyra a hug, and Lyra asks, “Is this for me or for you?” Which is what I’m going to start saying to people when they try to hug me.

Roger tells her, “I know you’re brave, but I hope you know if you’re ever scared, I’m here.” Roger is such a sweet little beeb. Iorek needs to apologize for leaving him in the cold.

So for those of you who have been waiting, Lord Asriel is finally back. And he’s even more unhinged than the last time we saw him. When Lyra finds him, Lord Asriel is NOT HAPPY to see her, and that’s putting it mildly. He basically screams “NO!” at her over and over again. That is… until he sees Roger. Suddenly his mood changes and he’s drawing people warm baths and making hot cocoa and being the perfect host.

Hmm. Sounds like someone else’s reaction to seeing Lyra at an unexpected place where there were other children and it was snowy outside. Mrs. Coulter. I’m talking about Mrs. Coulter.

This is the point in the show where I realized the true story behind His Dark Materials is learning what complete assholes your parents are. People complain about how this show being anti-God and anti-religion. But I think the true message here is that part of growing up is questioning authority and learning that those figures you put all your trust in (whether that’s your parents or the church or whatever) don’t have all the answers.

I’ll reflect on this (AND MORE!) next week as we wrap up the first season of His Dark Materials. See you then!