It appears that fans will see the adaptation of the whole The Amber Spyglass story in just one season. Given the story’s complexity and the many notable characters on stage at once, His Dark Materials executive producer Jane Tranter teased in the past that it might be split into two seasons. In a recent interview with Deadline, she revealed that they would make everything fit in only one season.
“I wanted to split it in two, but we’re doing it in one. You can’t always have what you want,” Tranter said.
When asked to elaborate more about her answer, she explained that the decision has not come from HBO’s or BBC’s headquarters, but because the story fit into eight episodes.
“I like stories told really slowly and that kind of like, ‘Let’s really dig into this,’ but truthfully that was me just longing to go on making His Dark Materials all of my life, and actually, The Amber Spyglass is quite right adapted into eight episodes and I will fully and humbly admit I was completely wrong and talking out my butt. I really wanted to just keep doing it.”
RELATED: Executive Producer Is Already Working on His Dark Materials Season 3
She then went on to explain some details about the scrapped episode from the sophomore season. The COVID-19 outbreak forced the producers to cut an episode from the His Dark Materials Season 2 order. Besides the seven regular episodes, the season would have featured one more standalone episode featuring the adventures of James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel. They decided to go ahead without the freestanding episode to keep the season release on schedule.
“One of the great things about an episodic series is that each episode asks questions and doesn’t … it shouldn’t anyway … automatically supply the answer within that episode. That answer will come later. And unfortunately, there was some answers in that missing episode. So we had to rearrange quite a lot of things and look at different ways that we could answer those questions elsewhere in order for it all to make sense.”
Unlucky for Lord Asriel fans, the episode’s elimination implies that James McAvoy will not appear in the upcoming season.
His Dark Materials Season 2 will debut on BBC on Sunday, Nov. 8. In the US, the show will hit HBO and HBO Max on Monday, November 16.
Would you have preferred to see two seasons covering The Amber Spyglass? Let us know in the comments section below.
Recommended Reading: His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass
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