Mary Malone

[close] Dr. Mary Malone is a physicist from Will's world (which is supposed to be the world in which the reader and author live), who is investigating dark matter, known also as Dust, and is told she must play the part of the Serpent for the second Adam and Eve. She is a former nun, having become an atheist after an encounter with a man from Italy and the taste of marzipan reminded her of her first romantic encounter.

Lyra Belacqua, upon arriving in Will's world, meets Mary when she tries to find an "experimental theologian" (physicist) in hopes of discovering more about Dust. Mary is amazed by Lyra's knowledge of dark matter, especially after Lyra demonstrates her ability to speak of the unknown by use of the alethiometer.

Mary, inspired by Lyra's abilities, utilizes the supercomputer she and her colleague, Dr. Oliver Payne, designed to study Dust by writing a program that allows her to communicate with Dust using words instead of symbols. The Dust consequently tells Mary to travel from her own world, through the window that Will found at the beginning of The Subtle Knife. The Dust tells her through words on the computer screen that she is supposed to "play the Serpent". The Dust also tells her about the journey she is about to embark on and warns her to destroy the computer before she leaves. Mary travels through Cittàgazze to yet another world, where she will eventually become the Serpent. She spends most of The Amber Spyglass with creatures known as the Mulefa, trying to see the Dust, which the Mulefa can do naturally. This leads to the creation of her "Amber Spyglass", which is used to achieve this purpose.

At the end of the third novel, the witch Serafina Pekkala reveals to Mary both how to see her dæmon and also its form - that of an Alpine chough. She offers to help Will upon their return to their own world.

Mary Malone does not appear in Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation of the novels, due to her importance in the mulefa subplot and the mulefa being too difficult to portray onstage. The role of the tempter was given to Serafina Pekkala, who was also the bearer of the spyglass, which had been created by Jopari as a device to view Dust.

Source: Wikipedia.