HIS Dark Materials has come under fire from viewers after leaving out a heart-wrenching encounter from the Phillip Pullman books.
The BBC and HBO drama took its darkest turn yet this week when Lyra (Dafne Keen) discovered a dying Billy Costa (Tyler Howitt) after weeks of searching.
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Billy had been cut away from his daemon – a harrowing process that ultimately proved to be fatal.
After being returned home to Ma Costa (Anne-Marie Duff), his mum, he was reunited with his daemon, but it was too little, too late and he ultimately passed away.
The series of events was a marked departure from the source material upon which the show is based.
In the Northern Lights book, Lyra finds a different boy, Tony Makarios, who has also been ripped from his daemon.
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The harrowing exchange sees Tony clutching to a dried fish for comfort, desperately trying to soothe himself by pretending it’s his daemon.
The moment is a significant one as it shows the magnitude of the pain inflicted on the youngsters kidnapped by the General Oblation Board.
Fans were quick to highlight their disappointment at the moment being switched out.
“I think tonight’s episode lost something desperately sad when they decided not to go with the dried fish part. In the book that is the moment that guts – the horror and futility of it. We lost the ringing poignancy of that scene in the book,” one viewer wrote on Twitter.
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“I can forgive merging Tony with Billy for a TV adaptation, but they should have kept the fish! And he should have been asking for Ratter. The emotion of that scene was watered down,” a second agreed.
A third chimed in: “Literally nothing about this adaptation has p****d me off more than merging Billy Costa and Tony Makarios and making this moment about someone they know being hurt rather than the pure horror of something that shouldn’t be done to anyone.”
While a fourth echoed: “With so little focus on the daemons and how physically close they always are, I don’t think the moment landed at all. And without the dried fish part it lost so much poignancy/horror.”
Elsewhere in the episodes, witch Serafina Pekkala made her debut and Lyra continued to bond with armoured bear Iorek Byrnison.
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The furore comes after fans became convinced that Mrs Coulter could also be a witch in last week’s episode, noting her ability to separate from her daemon like Serafina .
Elsewhere, some found themselves swooning over Iorek, claiming he had a “sexy” voice.
His Dark Materials airs Sundays at 8pm on BBC One and is available to stream on iPlayer.
