Ruth Wilson is the Most Magical Part of HBO’s ‘His Dark Materials’

HBO’s new series His Dark Materials takes place in an alternate world where witches are real, polar bears can talk, and people’s souls live in animal form outside of their bodies. However, the most magical part of the new series has nothing to do with any of His Dark Materials‘s fantasy trappings. The actress Ruth Wilson pulls off a real magic trick here as Mrs. Coulter, transforming fully into the guise of the arresting villainess and trapping us all under her spell.

His Dark Materials is based on Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) and the The Book of Dust trilogy. All of those books focus in one way or another on the adventures of Lyra Belacqua, a noble-born orphan who lives in a world ruled by a theocratic power called the Magisterium. (Think the Catholic Church, but on steroids.) Lyra has been raised from infancy at Jordan College, Oxford. There, she’s sort of a wild ragamuffin more interested in playing war with the poor kids of the college town than she is in learning from the esteemed scholars raising her. However, that changes when she sneaks in on a secret meeting where her uncle, Lord Asriel, is almost killed by the scholars. Lyra stops the assassination and in return gets to eavesdrop on Asriel’s heretical presentation on something called “Dust.” Dust, it seems, holds the key to potentially overthrowing the Magisterium.

Soon after Lord Asriel leaves to return North, Lyra meets a mysterious woman named Mrs. Coulter. This Mrs. Coulter is unlike any woman Lyra has ever met at Jordan College. She is beautiful, stylish, clever, and most of all, interested in Northern expeditions. Lyra is soon recruited by Mrs. Coulter to be her “assistant,” but it’s clear that the scholars have decided it’s time for the unruly tween to have a feminine influence. What’s also clear is the scholars don’t particularly trust Mrs. Coulter as they gift Lyra with a mysterious truth-telling device called an alethiometer — and warn Lyra to keep it from Mrs. Coulter.

Ruth Wilson’s Mrs. Coulter doesn’t show up until the third act of His Dark Materials‘s premiere episode, but as soon as she does, she owns the whole damn thing. She enters with fanfare, strutting into the college like she’s a queen surveying her dominion. Accompanied by her golden monkey daemon, she soon bewitches Lyra — and the audience. Wilson delivers every line with a smirk playing at the corners of her lips and with the amusement of a cat toying with a mouse.

Speaking as a hardcore fan of Pullman’s The Golden Compass, Wilson’s performance is more than a gift — it’s a conjuring. In the 2007 film, The Golden Compass, Nicole Kidman played the part like an old Hollywood ice queen who leaned on glamour like it was armor. However, Wilson goes someplace further, and even stranger with the part. Wilson plays Mrs. Coulter as if she has a gaping black hole where her heart should be. She breathes terrifying life into Marissa Coulter, that devious and seductive character who stalked my childhood nightmares with a runway walk. I remember never quite knowing if I was more scared of the threat she posed or that I desperately wanted to be like her. Her form of moral bankruptcy was richer in my eyes than any glossy fashion magazine photo spread.

That’s how it is for Lyra, too. Dafne Keen’s Lyra is a tomboy fitting for adventure. What Mrs. Coulter offers Lyra is the promise of Northern expeditions, but something more. Her brand of feminine power is something the girl has never seen before, and as trailer for upcoming episodes suggest, it’s a tool that might bring Lyra what she wants. Mrs. Coulter clearly uses her beauty, grace, and charm as weapons to disarm her rivals. She uses flattery and roleplaying to psychologically manipulate Lyra. If Lyra could learn to be like Mrs. Coulter she would have the power to enter the secret places only men are supposed to go; she could have rare control over her life. But to be that way, she first needs to succumb to Mrs. Coulter’s mysterious plans.

Mrs. Coulter’s power, like Lyra’s, lives in her lies. It’s in the finesse she puts into her beauty, the way she can twist a situation with a smile, but more importantly it’s in what she doesn’t say with her words. Ruth Wilson seems to understand this to the point of truly embodying it. As Mrs. Coulter, Wilson seizes every frame with a playfulness grounded in cruelty. She’s a force of nature as powerful as the mysterious Dust itself.

Ruth Wilson is without a doubt the best part of HBO’s His Dark Materials.

Where to stream His Dark Materials