Ooooh… things are getting good, friends. We’re already down to only three more episodes of His Dark Materials (after this one). And we’ve finally got the subtle knife!

I’m pretty dang excited, so let’s just hop right in to the recap.

The episode starts with a really long narration about the subtle knife and the origin of spectres, which seems like a bit of an overkill because by the end of the episode, I have a pretty good idea of what these things are without the long expository speech at the beginning. Basically, the subtle knife can cut through any material, and it can even cut through worlds. But spectres are able to travel through these worlds through the holes, and that’s where spectres come from. The more you know!

That’s a very simplified explanation, but it gives you the general idea.

So we got two big storylines in this episode and then two smaller (but v, v important) plot points that I want to touch on, so rather than going back and forth between them, let’s cover them one by one: Lyra and Will’s journey to the tower and Lee finding Grumman are our big stories in this episode. Additionally, we have Mrs. Coulter up to her bullshit, and Mary Malone has a breakthrough.

Let’s start with the tower. Because hell yeah.

So the narrative about the tower up until now is that there’s no way in and no way out. But guess what? There’s a door. Dang, that was super obvious and easy. So Will and Lyra get to the top of the tower and find a man tied up there. The man tells them that there’s a creepy boy hiding in the tower, and he has… the knife.

Creepy boy shows up immediately. They fight for the knife. For a minute, it really seems like Will is about to plummet to his death. Instead, he gets a couple of fingers chopped off, but eventually, Will is able to seize the knife.

The old man tells Will that the fact that he lost those fingers is a sign that he’s meant to be the bearer of the subtle knife. Because guess what? The old man is ALSO MISSING THOSE SAME FINGERS! Dun dun dunnn!

You would think what would follow is a long training session in which the old man spends weeks preparing Will to take his place. But no, the man’s just like, “Okay so there are two sides to the knife. One side will kill everything, and the other side will split worlds in two. You got it? Have fun.” He tells Will he has to protect the knife and Will can’t let anyone else use it. And then he kills himself. No joke.

At this point, Lyra and Will are both thinking, “Well this is awkward because we were supposed to give the knife to someone else and now we’ve sort of adopted it? WTF do we do?” But they agree they have to get the alethiometer back, so they’ve decided they’re going to figure out a way to steal it.

Why……. didn’t they do that in the first place? Okay. Whatever. Next.

Storyline #2: Lee Scoresby is still searching for Grumman. And this time? He finds him. Alright, at this point, Grumman is confusing with all of his names. He tells Lee to call him “Jopari”? But we all know he’s John Parry in his original world, and that he’s Will Parry’s father. Right? So I’m just going to call him John Parry from now on, if that’s okay.

When Lee gets to him, John Parry says that he knew Lee was coming because he summoned Lee there. Turns out John Parry has Lee’s mother’s ring and that’s what brought him here. John tells Lee they have to find the knife to bring it to Asriel. Lee says, “Psh, I don’t like Asriel.” John says, “Who does?” I mean, millions of James McAvoy Stans everywhere love Asriel. But I guess if you discount all of them… no one.

John explains to Lee that there are two sides in this fight: One that doesn’t want us to know anything, and one that wants us to know things and explore.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, Lee and John Parry get in Lee’s balloon with a new mission: to find the knife and deliver it to Asriel.

Now on to some smaller (BUT SUPER IMPORTANT) subplots. Let’s start with Mary Malone. She’s still trying to research dark matter (AKA DUST) even though the university wants to shut her whole project down. Boreal shows up and inquires about the project and offers to assist her financially, but Mary is understandably very suspicious of him and doesn’t accept his help.

She explains to her assistant: “What we’re dealing with is powerful beyond our comprehension. We can’t let that go into the wrong hands.”

Later in the episode, she has a nice sit down with her machine to try to get some information from the dark matter. I’m just going to give you what she learned because, phew, it’s a lot.

Mary: Are you shadows?

Dust: Yes.

Mary: Are shadows the same as Lyra’s dust?

Dust: Yes.

Mary: Is that the same as dark matter?

Dust: Yes. Humans have always known us. There are uncountable billions of us. Some call us angels.

Mary: Angels are creatures made up of shadow matter? Of dust? And shadow matter is what we call spirit. Does that mean angels have intervened in human evolution?

Dust: Yes.

Mary: Why?

Dust: Vengeance.

Vengeance, y’all. VENGEANCE. WTF!

Also happening this episode: Boreal meets with Mrs. Coulter. Like, for real, Boreal is everywhere. It’s kind of his super power. I’m kind of shocked he wasn’t also in John Parry’s little cottage waiting for Lee. But I guess he was busy that day.

Anyway, Boreal tells Mrs. Coulter that he knows where Lyra is. She’s in Oxford, but not the Oxford where they live. ANOTHER Oxford. At first, Mrs. Coulter is unimpressed. After all, Boreal doesn’t actually have Lyra. She’s running around free. But Boreal DOES have something incredibly important to Lyra: the alethiometer. Which means she has to come back to him eventually.

So Mrs. Coulter agrees to follow Boreal into another world to find Lyra. Wuh oh. Everyone’s coming in to our version of the universe.

A couple of other things I want to mention:

1. WILL PET PAN! People don’t normally allow other people to touch their daemons. So this felt extremely intimate and even (dare I say) sexual? Lyra even seems shocked by it, but then Pan tells her, “It’s okay. I wanted it.” I wonder what this means about Will and Lyra’s relationship.

2. I should also mention that at the end of this episode, the witches kill a whole bunch of soldiers guarding the portal to another world. They are going to our world to search for Lyra as well. Things are about to get crazy. WHO WILL FIND LYRA FIRST?

That’s it for this week, everyone! See you next time for more knifey adventures!