The epic new trailer for His Dark Materials reveals a world-spanning war

We've been seeing peeks at the new BBC and HBO original series His Dark Materials for a while now, but with just weeks to go until the series' U.S. premiere, we were bound to get an even bigger trailer sometime. Today, the new official trailer for the entire first season of the series adapting Philip Pullman's beloved trilogy of novels has landed, and it's an epic display of airships, armored bears, and parallel universes. 

His Dark Materials follows Lyra (Logan's Dafne Keen), a young girl living at Jordan College in Oxford in an alternate universe in which human beings have part of their soul contained in a kind of animal avatar known as a daemon. When the famous explorer Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) comes back from an expedition with a startling discovery that parallel universes exist and can possibly be accessed, Lyra just happens to be snooping around long enough to witness the beginnings of a conspiracy against his work. When her best friend Roger is kidnapped by a secretive group that seems to be stealing children everywhere, Lyra begins an adventure that takes her across the world and, possibly, to worlds other than her own. 

The new trailer is the most plot-heavy peek at the series we've gotten yet. If you're a fan of Pullman's novels, you'll recognize quite a few of the elements and phrases thrown around, including the Alethiometer, talk of the Magisterium, and what's really happening to all of those children. If you're new to this world (or many worlds), you'll be dazzled by witches, polar bears, cities in other universes, and the compelling performances from Keen, McAvoy, Ruth Wilson as the devious Marisa Coulter and Lin-Manuel Miranda as the airship pilot Lee Scorseby. Check it out:

The first season looks like it's going to be sticking pretty closely to the narrative of the first novel in Pullman's trilogy (with some extra stuff from spinoff books thrown in), The Northern Lights (released as The Golden Compass in the U.S.), but there are hints of what lies beyond that, and if the series catches on with viewers, there's a rich expansion ahead in adapting The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. 

His Dark Materials arrives November 4 on HBO.