His Dark Materials Season 3: Executive Producer Already Working on New Episodes

We're just a matter of days away from the return of His Dark Materials, as the HBO and BBC One series will be returning for a second season. While the series has yet to officially be renewed for a Season 3, its creative team began to tease work on a third batch of new episodes earlier this year -- and now we have a bit more insight into what that will entail. In a recent interview with Radio Times, executive producer and production designer Joel Collins confirmed that Season 3 is "in the early stages of development."

"The world of season three is exceedingly weird and complicated," Collins revealed. "The complexity is stepped up in terms of the story, the visuals and the narrative... There's very few of us in a very secret group doing early work, which is exciting and complex. We're trying to solve the puzzle away from all the eyes and the noise. And it's that kind of really precious time you get before hundreds of people start asking questions."

Collins also teased the new creative changes for the third batch of episodes, which he calls "complicated and brilliantly fun".

"It's all complicated, but I utterly have an idea of the Mulefa and what their world is, Asriel's Republic is an amazing place," Collins added. "We obviously go to the land of the dead, and what an exciting thing to think about and journey through. It's literally a huge, complicated, and brilliantly fun puzzle."

Collins also dipped into how the series' third season would work amid COVID-19 restrictions, something that the film and television industry at large is still trying to figure out.

"I don't think there's a lot we'd do differently – we're very very lucky in that we have built a studio that's the home of the show, and the studio now has extraordinary COVID restrictions in place," Collins explained. "There are temperature scanners at the door, and if there [are] any issues they get dealt with pretty quickly. And I think that when it comes to controlling the environment, you're really lucky if you have a studio environment that you can appropriately control. I don't think it'll change anything in terms of our ability to make the show, and create its scale. VFX can be done and has been done all the way through lockdown – it's not easy, but it's done in a different way. Instead of hundreds of people sitting next to each other at desks, everyone's working remotely to do the same work."

"Let's be honest – six months with everyone at home, they've gone through a huge amount of content online! And everyone's going to need more!" Collins continued. "We're going to need a lot more His Dark Materials."

His Dark Materials premieres November 8th on BBC One, and November 16th at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.