HBO announced on Monday that the sophomore season of “His Dark Materials” will premiere November 16. Deadline reported shortly after the HBO announcement that the team behind the show, including writer Jack Thorne, are working on scripts for a potential Season 3. Though “His Dark Materials” has yet to be renewed for a third season, HBO programming chief Casey Bloys stated earlier in the year that the show’s first season had been a strong viewership success for HBO — particularly with regard to children and parents co-viewing — and said he was eager to see subsequent installments. IndieWire has reached out to HBO regarding future plans for the fantasy series.
The upcoming second season of “His Dark Materials” will star Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, Amir Wilson, Ariyon Bakare, Andrew Scott, Will Keen, Ruta Gedmintas, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Joining the cast this season are Terence Stamp, Jade Anouka, and Simone Kirby.
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The synopsis for the sophomore season, which was released alongside the official Season 2 trailer in August, reads:
[Season 2] begins after Lord Asriel has opened a bridge to a new world, and, distraught over the death of her best friend, Lyra follows Asriel into the unknown. In a strange and mysterious abandoned city she meets Will, a boy from our world who is also running from a troubled past. Lyra and Will learn their destinies are tied to reuniting Will with his father but find their path is constantly thwarted as a war begins to brew around them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Coulter searches for Lyra, determined to bring her home by any means necessary.
The first season of “His Dark Materials” was well-received by critics, including IndieWire’s Libby Hill, who noted the considerable difficulty of adapting Pullman’s books for television in her review and said that HBO’s efforts came closer to nailing the execution than all prior attempts.
“If you read the reviews of ‘His Dark Materials,’ you’ll see critics voicing a lot of the same complaints and lauding the same elements,” Hill said in her review. “Shepherded to the screen by showrunner and executive producer Jane Tranter and written by Jack Thorne, the series clearly understands Pullman’s novels and wants to share them with a larger audience, and have thus far done an admirable job. It’s a series that’s not perfect, and it isn’t the adaptation of the books that we deserve, but it’s good, and that’s a start.”
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