His Dark Materials season 3 (series finale) ending explained

The final season of His Dark Materials concluded with several questions lingering in the minds of fans. The season ran for a total of eight episodes between 5th and 26th December, 2022.

The main characters, Will and Lyra, who have left a long-lasting impression on fans, got a bittersweet ending. There is a chance they could meet again on 'another adventure' but that can't be confirmed for now.

With Dust constantly being a threat to everyone, even in the finale, let's take a look at how the ending of the show shaped up.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers from His Dark Materials season 3 finale

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His Dark Materials: Will and Lyra finally return to their respective worlds

After setting the ghosts free from the Land of the Undead and returning healing Dust to the ailing multiverse, the couple were not granted a perfect happy ending. They had to make a decision: either stay together and be a part of the death of the multiverse or separate forever and save it.

Previous knife bearers had sliced windows in the multiverse and no matter what, Dust was leaking through the worlds into nothingness. As seen with the Mulefas' dying seedpod tree, the loss of Dust was ravaging the world and some of it was escaping in the form of Spectres.

According to angel Xaphania, as long as people stay conscious, creative, and go in search of experiences to counter the lost dust, a single window can be left open.

Will and Lyra soon realized that the exception window had to be the one Will had cut in the Land of the Dead through which the ghosts escaped. This meant that neither Will nor Lyra could exist in each other's world and they had to separate to save the multiverse.

Will and Lyra said a heartfelt goodbye to each other with a kiss. Will then broke the knife, allowing the angels to seal the remaining windows shut. Lyra returned to Jordan College while Will reunited with his mother Elaine. They promised each other to always stay in touch.

They decide to ‘meet’ for an hour on the same bench in their world's Oxford’s Botanical Gardens every year at midday on midsummer’s day and remember one another. We then learned that Will became a medical student and then a surgeon, while Lyra became a scholar at St Sophia’s College in Oxford, where she learned to read the alethiometer again.

Lyra lost her ability to read it after choosing to save the world over love. The final slate of the show tells us that she learned to re-read the device so that she and Pan could go on their "next great adventure".

The entire conclusion of the show was bound by fate and as a whole served as a great finale. While fans of the show will miss it, they are pleased by its satisfying ending.

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What is His Dark Materials about?

His Dark Materials is a fantasy drama show based on the trilogy of novels of the same name by Philip Pullman. It follows the story of an orphaned girl named Lyra and her quest to search for her friends in the vicinity of an invisible cosmic substance called Dust.

The show's IMDB synopsis reads:

"A young girl is destined to liberate her world from the grip of the Magisterium which represses people's ties to magic and their animal spirits known as daemons."

The show is produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Productions for BBC One and HBO, with the latter handling international distribution.