Jack Thorne Talks “His Dark Materials” and Growing Up

Jack Thorne, one of the writers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has spoken about his new show; he is the head writer and showrunner of His Dark Materials, whose second season concluded recently. In an interview on Slate‘s His Dark Material‘s podcast, The Authority, Thorne described why he writes about young people and explained his portrayals of different characters in the show.

In His Dark Materials, each character has a daemon (a manifestation of the soul that appears as an animal) that settles – or stops changing form – as they grow older, normally during adolescence. When asked about the time in his life when his daemon would have settled, Thorne revealed that “that wasn’t a good time for me.” He stated that this was the reason why he often writes about children.

I get asked a lot why I keep writing about young people. And it’s because I remember that time very, very clearly. And the reason why I remember that time very, very clearly is because I was watching other people rather than living myself. So I just studied; I just studied how other people worked.

Thorne also focused on changes in the characters during the interview. He spoke about how the show’s heroine, Lyra (Dafne Keen), is growing as the show continues, saying that “it’s that thing of growing up and falling in love” that is changing her. He also discussed another one of the main characters, Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson), who was “fundamentally altered” by some events of the final episode. He said that in Season 2, “the whole idea was to see inside the history of her.”

Thorne also revealed his favored method of writing.

I refuse to give a full stop to every sentence.

He then expressed that he prefers to not overexplain, allowing the audience to interpret his writing for themselves, and that he doesn’t want to “decide for everyone else” when it comes to interpretations of his writing.

What did you think of Season 2 of His Dark Materials? Are you excited for Season 3?