Your Materialists are thrown asunder into Will's world and continue our adventure into Philip Pullman's masterful trilogy with our first The Subtle Knife episode.
The Subtle Knife opens in our world, where a young boy named Will Parry is bringing his ill mother to an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Cooper, who reluctantly agrees to take care of Mrs. Parry. After leaving his mother, Will returns to his house and frantically searches for a green leather writing case filled with letters from the adventure-seeking father he’s never met. Strange men have been coming to the house asking questions and looking for the case, and Will wants to find it before they do. Just as Will finds the letters, the men break into the house and one of them makes his way upstairs. Will rushes through the doorway, accidentally pushing the man down the stairs and killing him. On the run, Will makes his way to Oxford where he hopes to have his questions about his father answered. Late in the evening as Will walks along a tree-lined street, he notices a cat acting strangely. Upon investigating more closely, he is surprised to see a barely-visible opening in the air leading into another world. Will decides to cross through the opening from one world to another. He finds himself on a strange, deserted street and seeks refuge in a small house, where he encounters a feral-looking Lyra Silvertongue. Elsewhere, Serafina Pekkala witnesses Mrs. Coulter torturing a witch for information about Lyra and kills her to prevent her from telling Mrs. Coulter what she knows. Serafina goes to Svalbard to speak with Lord Asriel’s servant Thorold, who tells her that Lord Asriel means to start a war with God. She flies back to her clan, where Lee Scoresby and Ruta Skadi, the queen of the Latvian witches, has joined them. Lee Scoresby says that he is going to look for the scientist and explorer named Stanislaus Grumman. Serafina and her witches decide that they need to summon other witch clans to fight on Lord Asriel’s side and protect Lyra. Ruta Skadi will go to Lord Asriel to see what he is really doing. Back in the new world, Lyra and Will meet two children who tell them that the city they are in is called Cittàgazze. They say that it is filled with specters, which are wraiths that feed on adults but do not harm children. After speaking with them, Lyra and Will agree to go back to Will’s world so Lyra can find a physicist who can tell her about Dust. Once there, it is clear to Lyra that this is not her Oxford and her mission might take longer than expected.