Question: What does your daemon look like? Is it a ferret, a fox, a monkey, a regal snow leopard? In the world of His Dark Materials, the joint BBC-HBO adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s hugely acclaimed young-adult fantasy series, everybody’s got a literal spirit animal — magical creatures called “daemons” that function like having an external animal-shaped soul you can run around with and talk to. As a way to engage the audience, daemons rank right up there with Harry Potter’s Gryffindor-to-Hufflepuff sorting matrix, or Game of Thrones’ great houses, only even more personalized. And if HBO pulls off yet another swing-for-the-fences fantasy adaptation properly, you’ll want one of your own.
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