On BBC’s His Dark Materials
Lyra and Will is the best written YA romance I’ve ever read. Not joking when I say I felt hollow for months when they had to be separated at the end of ‘The Amber Spyglass’.
Amir and Dafne did a fantastic job. I loved how they gave them more soft moments without cheapening their bond. Throughout the books, their relationship is incredibly delicate and subtlety written (they’re young after all) and they could have easily made it more obvious and over exaggerated for a Mainstream Audience. You’d think that wouldn’t be possible but thats what Moira Walley Beckett did with Anne and Gilbert in ‘Anne with an E’ (that relationship basically consisted of staring at each other from a distance in that show rather than having a consistent build up)
I read an interview of Amir saying that he and Dafne never really looked at it as a romantic thing. It was more important that Will and Lyra were two friends that get along, and something might happen if it does happen. “When playing the scenes, it was never in the back of my mind” which is the way it should be approached with Lyra and Will because their relationship was not “framed as romantic” by Philip Pullman, it came naturally.
I personally always saw it as a deep bond between two teenagers, that became physical during the end because of everything they went through. It went beyond the typical romantic duality.
However, If I had to choose which version of their relationship I prefer (the book or the TV Show) I would have to choose the book. Because I felt during the last third, in the finale, that their relationship was a bit compacted like kiss — you have to choose worlds — separation. In the book, that part is so dragged out and emotional. Lyra and Will spend ages trying to find loopholes, find that there are none, then both of them get angry and upset. And it’s described that the angel felt their ‘sorrows in the air’. In the tv show, I didn’t really feel all that because everything was so ‘get to the point’ — when this is supposed to be a drawn out climax.
Unlike some others, I simultaneously believe that Lyra and Will are each others other half/soulmates. They are the only people in ‘His Dark Materials’ that can touch each others daemons without it being a violation and they will never love anyone else the way they loved each other. That’s basically confirmed in ‘The Secret of Commonwealth’ (the spin off to ‘His Dark Materials) where Lyra states that she still thinks of him every hour and that he’s the centre of her life.
And that their separation made sense.
Even though it was the most heartbreaking thing I ever read and left me hollow inside — its not realistic for them to have a solid relationship at 14 or how ever young they were at that point, especially on top of all their trauma. Also, it’s suggested in the books that everything must go back to the way that it was (closing all the windows) almost saying to the reader, you can’t live in a fantasy world forever, you have to go back to the real world and live a full life. It’s like at the end of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ where Frodo destroys the ring, yet still dies at the end because of everything he went through.
It’s not fair. It’s not right. But thats just how life goes sometimes. Plus it made their ending a lot more memorable and iconic. I’ve actually gone to their real bench in Oxford and cried.
Although saying that, Philip Pullman has to let them see each other again when they’re adults, in the last ‘Book of Dust’ — at least one last time come on now. But I have a feeling he won’t reunite them until they die because he’s a cruel, cruel man.