3x08 The Botanic Garden

"What's the point? Why did we get here?" Indeed.

I have so many questions - possibly more questions than answers. Unfortunately, since this show literally bored me to sleep, by my count, at least four to five times, I don't have the motivation to rewatch the whole show to hunt for clues. I realize every episode can't include a gigantic mid-air fight with witches and angels and the like, but the music and the agonizingly slow camera pans became comatic for me throughout the series. That said, forgive me if there are glaringly obvious answers to some of these questions that I might have missed in my groggy states of mind, but I was left wondering:

Why does Pan seemingly change animals randomly, sometimes even - within - the same scene.

What is Marisa's true nature that she was able to repel and destroy, seemingly out of nowhere from the viewer's standpoint, a host of specters? Since she apparently fell into the abyss, I guess we'll never know unless there is a follow-up series.

How is a bug bite enough to kill an angel?

Where was the Magisterium during the big fight with Metatron and the Authority? Sure, Hugh died, but it was an entire theocratic government type thing. Where was everyone else?

During Mary's mushroom trip adventure wondering around the earth, how does she know where she's going? Is she being guided by an unseen force toward her destiny?

What was with all the hubbub of trying to find Lyra and Will and get getting them back to Asriel's camp all about? Once back, they barely played any part in the final outcome of episode 7, which mainly involved Marisa, Asriel and Marisa's monkey.

How or why does Will magically get a daemon just for going to the Land of the Dead? People are going to be awfully freaked out when Will's walking around his original world talking to his spirit animal when everyone else in that world doesn't have one.

If people from Lyra's world can't survive without their daemons, how are Will and Lyra wondering around in the last episode, presumably for days on end, without theirs? I realize the daemons are "upset" at Will and Lyra for leaving them, but I didn't think just having emotions was enough to break what was presented as an immutable bond between spirit animal and human.
Why didn't Lyra and her daemon die - or at least the daemon, assuming Lyra has super powers, or something - when she went to the underworld?

So Xaphania has the presumably immense power to close up windows to all the other worlds in the multiuverse but was hamstrung on doing anything about Metatron? I don't know. I could keep going.

I get it though. When it comes to shows with magical or spiritual elements, there are certain things we're just asked to accept at face value. This is usually why I avoid them because even if there is a "logical" explanation, the explanation includes other details that we're supposed to accept at face value as given components of such and such reality, and on and on. Oh, I guess Marisa can kill ghosts now! Who knew? It just seems like a convenient narrative crux.

By the time the show ended, it didn't feel like much had changed, except that I supposed at the start of the show, the dust is actually in the process of - leaving - which turns out to be a bad thing, so all of the events at the end of season 3 ensure that it remains ... I think.

The ending was touching, if a little protracted, but the shots of Will and Lyra "meeting" on the bench got me at the end. The finale itself was slow, like many previous episodes. Episode 7 seemed like the real finale, but I know the showrunners had to tie up some loose ends. I enjoyed the idea of the show better than the execution. As I said, I didn't like the style of shooting chosen for the show. It made these episodes drag terribly. From an acting standpoint, I really enjoyed Ruth Wilson's work as Marisa. She was compelling on screen, perhaps the most compelling thing about the whole show. I don't really have a pithy ending, so I'll just say that I give the show a 6out of 10 and be on my way.