I forced myself to watch this from s1 and I'm glad I did, even tho the writing is still kind of bad and cheesy imo. I hadn't seen the The Golden Compass, so I had no idea what this was about. It looks like they're conflating Metatron with Lucifer a little bit but w/e.

I like the idea of animals having their own moral codes tho, like with the vulture things in purgatory. I always appreciated how carion birds have some sort of natural stance against killing... like it would make their life easier if they just cheated and did it sometimes.

The blown out vulture thing refusing to kill Lyra seemed to touch on that idea, although I'm not sure if that's what was intended with that scene or if it just didn't want to lose the sustenance from getting rid of her.