His Dark Materials returns for Season 2: Can it recover from a Season 1 that was "just bland"?

The Ringer

"The first season, which debuted at the end of 2019, suffered a fate that might be worse than being flat-out bad: It was just bland," says Miles Surrey, adding: "As someone who’s been clamoring for a faithful adaptation of my favorite fantasy series from childhood, His Dark Materials was frustrating in part because the show came so close to getting it right: The production value was legit, the CGI armored bears and daemons that were created looked great, and the ensemble was almost perfectly cast. (Whoever decided that Lin-Manuel Miranda needed to play a grizzled Texan aeronaut should be tried at the Hague, along with Tom Hooper.) But while a middling adaptation of Pullman’s first book might inspire flashbacks to the 2007 film bombing at the box office so badly that any chances of a sequel were shut down, HBO and BBC granted the series an early Season 2 renewal before the first season even aired. If nothing else, His Dark Materials was afforded the opportunity to become the best version of itself. (The show hasn’t yet been renewed for a third season, but the creative team is already working on new scripts.)"

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• Season 2 has less of the choppy nature of its first, and seems to have a little more confidence in what it's doing
• Dafne Keen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ruth Wilson discuss "raw" Season 2