The best character arc in “His Dark Materials” belongs to Mrs. Coulter

• HBO and BBC’s His Dark Materials has returned for its third and final season.
• The General Oblation Board, is a group that kidnaps kids and uses them as experimental subjects by severing them from their daemons.
• Marisa’s charm and attractiveness conceal this from Lyra.

After several seasons of cliffhangers, HBO and BBC’s His Dark Materials has returned for its third and final season, this time covering the grand finale of Philip Pullman’s book series, The Amber Spyglass. This season will take Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson) to numerous worlds, where they will encounter strange and fantastic creatures, leading to a battle against the heavens itself. Although it is impossible to predict at this point how well this enormously detailed and ambitious novel will translate to the big screen, expectations are high based on what has been revealed so far.

But looking back on the last two seasons is a perfect opportunity to consider one outstanding character and her development over the course of the show. One of the main antagonists of the series is Marisa Coulter, played here by Ruth Wilson (Nicole Kidman played the same part in the movie The Golden Compass); however, as the stories progress, the audience witnesses dramatic changes in her motivations, outlook, and behavior, making for one of the best character journeys in any genre show.

To understand why Mrs. Coulter begins so violently, let’s look at her in more detail. Marisa will go through a lot of changes during the series, but certain things remain the same. We learn that she is Lyra’s mother halfway through the first season. She is a powerful woman and a prominent member of the oppressive Magisterium, the theocratic overlords of Lyra’s cosmos. One of them is her soul’s animal manifestation, her nameless golden snub-nosed monkey demon. He has a lush coat and an unassuming face, but he lacks speech and is much more animalistic and violent than other daemons in the show.

Mrs. Coulter exudes an almost superhuman amount of charisma on both the text and the screen; she is someone who has complete control of herself, her daemon, her appearance, and her dealings with other people. At the end of the day, she just has herself in mind, thus she is skillfully alternating between being sweet and matronly and being violent and demanding in order to manipulate and achieve her aims.

Wilson does a fantastic job in this capacity. You have the impression that she is deceiving you all the time. Before she does something terrible moments later, you notice a gleam of kindness in her eyes and believe it to be genuine.

She treads the same fine line between kindness and brutality as the character did in the books, but something about her comes across as more authentic on both ends, as if she truly means whatever she says. Her clothes, designed by Caroline McCall, are conservative, elegant, and undeniably feminine but in a way that presents authority and dominance, a clear, broad-shouldered silhouette. They are in rich hues and tactile materials like silk and velvet. She uses every aspect of herself to manipulate how others perceive her, dressing for those around her and for her image, which transforms into her taste.

Marisa is unmistakably the antagonist of the first season of the program since she is the head of the General Oblation Board, a group that kidnaps kids and uses them as experimental subjects by severing them from their daemons. Although neither she nor her colleague Lord Boreal (Ariyon Bakare) is a member of the church’s inner circle at this time, they remain loyal to the Magisterium and have a close relationship. She doesn’t despise children, and she doesn’t give a damn about her colleagues at the Magisterium, so it is obvious that her motivations for doing this are not moral. She conducts these tests both for the authority they bestow upon her and out of personal interest in higher powers.

Marisa’s charm and attractiveness conceal this from Lyra, who initially mistakenly believes that Marisa is a mentor who wants to assist her in rescuing her kidnapped companion. Despite her malicious deeds, it is obvious that she cares about Lyra because she has always known that she is her daughter. As she introduces Lyra to her world of power and glamour, it’s unclear whether her concern stems from love or a desire to control or mold Lyra in her image. Lyra is something Marisa wants, but that doesn’t quite translate into love.

When Mrs. Coulter is released from the confines of her own world, we see new sides to her character and our heroes and villains in Season 2 of His Dark Materials. We get to see her relationships with other Holy Church members, who view her as simply a woman who is growing out of her boots, as well as the limitations she has had to live with in order to survive.

When she meets Mary Malone (Simone Kirby), a scientist in “our” world, she discovers just how much the system has hindered her from realizing her potential. As a result, her scorn for the system grows and her priorities start to alter significantly. Here, Marisa significantly increases her power while losing against her own daughter. As she discovers herself in charge of the devouring specters that have plagued Cittagazze, her charisma and her capacity for self-control truly become superhuman. She understands that she owes little to the Magisterium and even less to Lord Boreal, who is now getting in the way of her goals by killing him and betraying them both.

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