The Golden Compass Film: How it SHOULD Have Ended

Prelude: In 2007, New Line Cinema turned the first book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series into a major motion picture. Shortly before release, they cut the ending eleven minutes of this story with the hope of using it as an opening scene to a sequal. However, the sequal was never created, and the ending was lost. After watching this movie multiple times and reading the trilogy for myself, I looked over the ending of the book, watched many various interpretations of it on YouTube, and created my own comical take for the lost ending. Some close friends and family generously made up the casting, after a few lengthy arguments with pesky siblings. Thank you for watching, The Golden Compass: How It SHOULD Have Ended.


Narrator: After narrowly escaping the perilous clutches of Bolvangar, Lyra and her friend Roger travel to Svalbard to find her father, Lord Asriel, and rescue him from her mother, Mrs. Coulter. Yes, ironic, isn’t it? Meanwhile, Lord Asriel, held prisoner in his own laboratory, works vigorously on a mysterious device, fully aware of the danger he is in.

Lord Asriel (mumbling to self and rummaging through papers): the only way... affect a crossing... parallel universe... a sacrifice.... in the death of a child... my, that’s a depressing thought... but it must be done, and must certainly be justified. Now how in the name of the entire Magisterial operation am I going to come upon a child in these parts?
(Scene Changes)
Lyra (approaching laboratory): This is it!

Roger: Really?

Lyra (approaching and feeling around the door): There’s got to be a doorbell around here somewhere....

Roger (after a few seconds): Just knock, why don’t you?!?

Lyra Knocks. The door opens by itself. Lyra and Roger walk down a set of stairs into a small room with a desk. Lord Asriel turns around and screams.

Asriel (shaken): Oh... hi... uh... how did you get here?

Lyra (confused): Long story.

Asriel: Ah... Why did you come here?

Lyra (suddenly remembers why she came): You’re in danger!

Asriel (dryly): I’m perfectly aware of that. Now... why don’t you go into the other room for a little while and clean yourself up? Asriel points to the main room outside his study.

Lyra leaves.

Asriel (arguing with himself): Brilliant. Just brilliant. I can’t kill my own daughter! That’s beyond me; it’s beyond even her mother! But I must cross into this other universe! No. It just isn’t right. Your work! Your project! No! Your morals! What morals? Stop talking to yourself and figure something out! Right.

Roger: ahem.

Asriel (looks at Roger and pauses in sudden realization): That makes sense now.

Roger (suspiciously): What makes sense?

Asriel: Um... why don’t you go tell Lyra, that... the two of you will sleep right where she is now. You can prepare for bed.

Roger: Uh... okay.

Roger goes into the other room with Lyra.

Lyra: What was going on out there?

Roger (whispers eerily and nervously): I think he’s gone psycho.
Lyra (snaps): Don’t be ridiculous! How could he have gone psycho?

Roger: He’s freaking out and arguing with himself and acting like this is the worst sistuation he ever could be in.

Lyra: Well, if you’d been locked up here this long, you’d be psycho, too. Besides, we needn’t worry about that any longer. I brought him the alethiometer, so we’re all going to get out of here soon enough.

Roger: Soon enough to avoid Mrs. Coulter?

Lyra (frustrated): I sure hope so. And please don’t mention her. I’m doing my best to forget certain events in my recent past.

Roger nods thoughtfully. Roger climbs into bed, but Lyra leaves the bedroom and goes into Lord Asriel’s study. Lord Asriel turns around.

Lord Asriel: Lyra. How are you?

Lyra: Well enough. I wanted to talk to you.

Lord Asriel (thoughtfully): Well, I’ll make you a deal. How about first you tell me how you got here, and then I’ll answer any questions you have.

Lyra: Fine. I was kidnapped-- er... left voluntarily to the north with Mrs. Coulter, but I realized what she was up to--

Lord Asriel (curiously): And what was that?

Lyra: Surely you have heard of the Gobblers, the General Oblation Board, and what they do to children?

Lord Asriel: Oh, yes. I remember them. Please. Go ahead.

Lyra: So I ditched her before we got past London, and I was found and rescued by Gyptians, who took me aboard their ship and introduced me to Lord Faa, their leader. But to get to Svalbard, we had to travel on land, so we docked at Trollesund, at the coast of Noroway, and I met Mr. Scoresby, a Texan aeronaut, and Iorek Byrnison, the armored bear who lead us here. But I was kidnapped by the Samoyeds as an offering to the king of the bears, Ragnaar Sturlusson, who I tricked into thinking I was a daemon, and convinced him to fight Iorek. Obviously Iorek won, and we continued to Bolvangar, where I was almost killed, but, ironically, Mrs. Coulter rescued me at the last second. She sat me down and tried to explain herself and her horrible actions, but it didn’t do any good. So she, noticing that my attitude toward her was not about to change, told me the truth: that she was my mother, and she was trying to protect me. I had a right good shock at that point, but I snapped out of it when she started bugging me about the alethiometer, so I knocked her out, fought the Tartars, and came to find you.

Lord Asriel (surprised and seemingly mildly impressed): That’s quite a story.

Lyra: I suppose.

Lord Asriel (leans back in his chair): Now what may I answer for you?

Lyra (businesslike): Two things, actually. First thing: What in the world are you doing here?

Lord Asriel (gestures to the study, and implying all beyond): Well, that’s just the thing. There isn’t one world. There’s millions of them, as I assume you heard when you were snooping on my discussion in the Retiring Room. They’re all connected, and I want to form a bridge from one world to the next. I have completed a device that may do so, but it requires energy that is only released in a separation between a person and their daemon. Frankly, I can only cross at the expense of another’s life. That is my only setback.

Lyra (satisfied, yet still slightly confused but willing to drop the matter): Thank you. Now tell me this: Mrs. Coulter told me you were my father, but I need confirmation, because I don’t exactly trust what she’s told me so far.

Lord Asriel: I can certainly see where you’re coming from with that. But she was not lying to you.

Lyra looks at him oddly.

Lord Asriel (slightly disturbed): Now stop looking at me like that. I’m not Darth Vader, you know.

He pauses shortly, the realization of his mistake hitting him.

Lord Asriel (slightly embarassed): Wait.... let me rephrase that....

Lyra (curtly, indifferent): Well. It’s good to have that cleared up. I’m going to bed now.

Lyra leaves and strolls into her bedroom and climbs into bed with Roger. She closed her eyes sleepily. The lights go out to blackness so nothing is visible.

Dreamy, hypnotic music plays, sigifying the passage of time.

Lyra wakes up sleepily. She looks to the other side of the bed, where Roger is missing. She looks around for him.

Lyra: Roger? Roger! Roger, where are you?

Lyra sees a light from behind the closed door to the bathroom. She groans and rolls her eyes.

Lyra: Roger, I swear if you’re in the bathroom at this time of night, I’m going to kill you!

No reply.

Lyra (more tentatively): Really! Come out now! We should both be asleep!

Still no reply. Lyra pushes open the bathroom door. There is nobody inside. She races into Lord Asriel’s study, where papers are a mess and things are missing.

Lyra (fearfully and loudly): Where are you? What’s going on?

Iorek (after a few seconds and outside the door): Lyra! I must return to the bears! It’s Lord Asriel! I do believe he’s gone mad; he took Roger and went that way!

Lyra: That’s the same thing Roger said about him! Which way did they go again?

Iorek: That way!

Lyra: Which way?

Iorek: That way!

Lyra (slightly exasperated): Which way is that way?!?

Iorek (forcefully): THAT WAY!

Lyra (very exasperatedly): I CAN’T SEE YOU!

Iorek: LEFT!!

Scene changes. Filming ends at our house and begins at Silver Lake, or somewhere where there is still snow.


Lyra runs from Lord Asriel’s laboratory, following the distant shapes of Lord Asriel and Roger. Slowly she gains on them.

Lyra (mutters while running): Must-- not-- pass-- out.

She catches up to them after a minute or two. She barrels into Roger, who tumbles down a hill and lays motionless by a strange device that is obviously what Lord Asriel has been working on. Lord Asriel is setting the wires on the device.

Lord Asriel (surprised): Well, that’s convenient.

Lyra looks down at Roger, who is plainly dead. She shrugs soberly.

Lyra (slightly sadly): Well, I suppose it is for a good cause.

Mrs. Coulter (unseen from behind with a gun in her hand): I could ask exactly the same thing!

Lord Asriel and Lyra whip their heads around.

Mrs. Coulter (indignantly): Well, did you anticipate that I wasn’t clever enough to follow a set of tracks that were laid out in plain view, so easy for one to discover?

Lord Asriel: Um... we took a sled. Who might have made those tracks, I have no idea.

Lyra (raises her hand embarassedly): Guilty.

Mrs. Coulter (points gun at Lord Asriel): Don’t move.

Lyra (backs up): You can’t shoot him!

Mrs. Coulter (turns to Lyra): There may be no other way to grant peace.

Lyra: Yeah, right, like shooting someone will grant peace. One bullet always leads to another, until you’ve got a full scale war on your hands.

Lord Asriel: Well, if you’re so worried about peace, why don’t you come with me and avoid the whole thing?

Mrs. Coulter (laughs phsycotically): Come with you? We’re both insanely dangerous, and somehow have ended up on opposite sides of a war, and you expect me to come with you?

Lord Asriel: I’m serious! We can work together, you and I......

Mrs. Coulter snorts in disbelief.

Lord Asriel: Kind of.

Lyra: I’m sorry to interrupt, but if you’re going to kill each other, can you get it over with quickly?!?

Mrs. Coulter: Lyra, don’t listen to him. He’s a maniac.
Lord Asriel: Oh, really? Well, I do believe you agreed with me thirteen years ago.

Mrs. Coulter remains speechless.

Left without a scathing reply to say in response, Mrs. Coulter proceeds to pull the trigger. Nothing happens.

Lord Asriel: I am almost positive you will regret that gesture later on.

Mrs. Coulter: And I hightly doubt it.

Lyra (watching Mrs. Coulter struggle with the gun): Here. Let me try.

Lord Asriel: You’re siding with her?

Lyra: At the moment, she has the best chance of getting us out of here, if I can convince her not to shoot you.

Mrs. Coulter (still struggling with gun): You see? Your child had a better understanding of things than you do.

Lord Asriel: Well, then why don’t you explain to her why you left her at Jordan College to grow up instead of trying to raise her yourself? I’m sure she will understand that.

Mrs. Coulter: Gladly. But may I first point out that if I had attempted to raise her myself, the consequences most likely would have been disastrous. But after the gunfight-- (pauses to try and fix gun)-- I decided I my life was much too complicated and bailed. Frankly, I’m beginning to regret that decision, because by now my life is more complicated than it ever was before I bailed: the Magisterium beginning to mistrust me, their assumption that I of all people would pardon Mister Psychotic Science Project over there, (gestures to Lord Asriel) because I most possibly would once have done so thirteen years ago.......

Mrs. Coulter trails off awkwardly.

Narrator: By now, it has become evident that Mrs. Coulter is reluctant, maybe even uneasy, to admit that she had indeed once loved Lord Asriel while she had a loaded handgun pointed at his face.

Lord Asriel: Well, that’s hardly an adequate explanation.

Mrs. Coulter: Enough of this.

She tries to pull the trigger again, but once again, nothing happens.

Lord Asriel (hand up): That’s it. I can handle a divorce, but this has gone too far.

Mrs. Coulter (eyes narrowed suspiciously): I do believe your source of information is faulty, because I am one-hundred percent sure that I never divorced you, much less married you in the first place.

Lord Asriel: Can I make a point here?!?

Mrs. Coulter (plainly): No.

Lyra watches them argue with an annoyed expression.

Lyra: Can I intervene for a moment?

Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter both turn to her, but you see Mrs. Coulter’s eyes drift slowly to her gun, still pointed at Lord Asriel.

Lyra: If you bother to listen to me at all, I think that before we start bickering like five-year-olds, we should figure out what to do about the huge Magisterial Sky Ferry that will catch up to us in about an hour or so, because I don’t think she will get very good press if she’s caught here with her employers’ most deadly enemy, and I’m sure that if Lord Asriel is caught, nothing good will become of him, and I honestly don’t wish too much ill will on either of you.

Mrs. Coulter looks strangely at Lyra. Lord Asriel stops and whistles a short tune, openely avoiding conversation.

Lyra: Thank you.

Lord Asriel (after a few seconds): Well, if you will both excuse me, I should be busying myself working on my device for the crossing between worlds.

Lord Asriel moves toward his device.

Mrs. Coulter (furiously): That’s it.

Mrs. Coulter slaps the gun and yanks on the trigger, shooting at Lord Asriel pretty much randomly. One of the bullets hits Lord Asriel’s device.

Lord Asriel: No-- Don’t-- We’ll all get transported to a parallel universe!!

The camera goes red (being covered with the cameraman’s hand), and Lord Asriel, Mrs. Coulter, and Lyra are loudly transported to a parallel universe.

The three of them wake up in a playground, slowly coming to full conciousness.

Once they are fully concious, Mrs. Coulter glances at Lord Asriel’s and Lyra’s expressions.

Mrs. Coulter (indignantly): Oh, and I suppose you think I’m going to assume the blame for this!



The End