HBO’s Ambitious 3-Season Fantasy Series Deserves a Revival

Published Aug 5, 2026, 11:09 PM EDT

Valeria Sordi is a Senior Writer for Collider. A Montreal-based film and television writer across Features and Lists, she primarily focuses on drama, science fiction, and fantasy. With a strong background in screenwriting, Valeria specializes in exploring the art, storytelling, and cultural impact of film and television.

Daemons and talking polar bears and a repressive religious regime, oh my! When it comes to vastly underrated fantasy sagas, it doesn’t get much better than HBO’s His Dark Materials.*** ***Produced in collaboration with BBC One, the much-anticipated TV series based on Phillip Pullman’s trilogy of novels is set in a multiverse that includes our own world. His Dark Materials follows young Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen) and her daemon Pantalaimon (Kit Connor) as they uncover a conspiracy involving kidnapped children and a mysterious cosmic substance known as Dust, teaming up with Will Parry (Amir Wilson), a boy from another world, to battle the authoritarian Magisterium.

Also starring James McAvoy and Lin-Manuel Miranda, His Dark Materials received critical acclaim for its outstanding cast and breathtaking visuals but, despite its success in the United Kingdom, didn’t become quite as popular as the series deserved to be. Unfortunately, lack of worldwide mainstream appeal typically means that an IP is shelved. But there is still so much more to explore in Pullman’s (and Lyra’s) world, and a sequel might be just what *His Dark Materials *needs to get the flowers it deserves.

His Dark Materials’ November 2019 premiere was an attempt to capitalize on the sudden fantasy TV series-shaped hole left by the end of Game of Thrones and its controversial final season. But, despite positive reviews, the series struggled to stand out amidst a new host of adaptations also hoping to become the next big fantasy series — think House of the Dragon, The Witcher, and The** **Wheel of Time.

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is perhaps why the series did not plan to continue past Season 3, which is a shame because Pullman wrote no less than five novellas, a short story, and a new (as yet incomplete) trilogy series set in his multiverse following the completion of the *His Dark Materials novels. *

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