Review: Shadow and Bone: Season 2

Remember that episode of Friends when Rachel and Chandler were fighting over the cheesecake and it ended up all over the hall, but tasted so good that they just ate it off the floor? That’s the best analogy I have for season two of Shadow and Bone. It’s delicious, but it has, in fact, exploded all over the floor. Or, if you like, it has exploded all over the floor, but it still tastes delicious.

Perhaps this was inevitable. On the one hand, there’s the looming spectre of cancellation-happy Netflix hanging over the show, which no doubt made everyone want to squeeze in as much material as they could just in case the axe falls. Then there’s showrunner Eric Heisserer’s open preference for the Six of Crows characters, inserting them into the narrative at every available opportunity and expediting Alina’s story to get to theirs.

Even the structure of the Grisha-verse book series itself poses a problem, starting with the Shadow and Bone trilogy* which was a standard YA trope-ridden fantasy of “plucky girl plucked from obscurity negotiates love triangle while saving world from sexy dark lord who has the hots for her.”

* Simultaneously kickstarting the current surge of Slavic fantasy novels and the YA trend of [noun] and [noun] titles, including A Court of Frost and Starlight, The Girl of Fire and Storm, A Curse So Dark and Lonely, A Book of Spirits and Thieves, A Sorrow Fierce and Falling, and Girls of Storm and Shadow, which is part of the Girls of Paper and Fire trilogy – yes, those are all for real.

The trilogy was followed by the Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom duology, which deliberately set out to buck those clichés, a gas-lamp fantasy centred around a heist and the complex dynamics and backstories of its six core characters. Lastly, there’s the King of Scars/Rule of Wolves duology, which wrapped up plot-points, character arcs and political situations from the previous two sets of books. There’s also a couple of short story collections, such as The Language of Thorns and Lives of the Saints, which provide more details on the world’s invented mythology.

The second season of the Netflix show builds its story from nearly all these books: Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising, Crooked Kingdom, King of Scars and Lives of the Saints, which is how we get to the exploded cheesecake.

Unlike season one, in which the Crows plot to kidnap Alina was near-seamlessly woven into the book-faithful adaptation of Shadow and Bone, season two not only gives four episodes each to the two remaining books in the trilogy (cutting out a lot of good material in the process) but squeezes in the entirety of Kaz’s backstory and vendetta against crime lord Pekka Rollins from Crooked Kingdom, followed by a mission to fetch a sword in Shu Han that can be used to combat the Darkling’s shadow-creatures. Shu Han is a place not yet visited in any of the books, and the Fetch Quest itself is completely original to the show.

Suffice to say, anything involving the Crows has very little to do with the good-versus-evil narrative occupying the likes of Alina, Kirigan, Mal and Nikolai – if you’re in this for the Crows, then you have to accept you’re in it for the character dynamics, not any meaningful contribution to the Shadow and Bone storyline (at least, not one that doesn’t feel deeply contrived).

Heisserer was very open going into this season that the Ice Court heist (the plot of Six of Crows) would not be featured, understandably holding off for a potential season three/spin-off to give it the time and attention it deserves. This is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with Netflix, especially since (let’s be brutally honest here) it’s the story everyone is most interested in seeing, and which would translate so beautifully to a visual medium.

Making matters worse, that hypothetic season three depends entirely on gaining high viewing numbers for an extremely cramped season two of Shadow and Bone, which more than anything just wants to get itself over with so it can adapt the storyline that won’t materialize if it doesn’t get those numbers. Welcome to the new world of streaming services, everyone! This is how we’re all expected to enjoy our entertainment media these days: rushed and truncated storylines that are hurrying to get to the good stuff, supplemented by mounting stress and worry that we’ll never get to actually see the good stuff.

In a perfect world, Heisserer would have been able to adapt each of Leigh Bardugo’s seven books in a way that was rewarding and measured – or if not that, then been allowed to skip straight to Six of Crows, which is clearly where his interest lies. This should not be how stories are constructed and/or adapted: with everything dependant on ratings, with the responsibility put on fans to keep the numbers up, and entire projects shelved because distributors are more interested in getting the next juggernaut hit than in letting storytellers just tell their stories.  

At this point streaming services are a joke – why bother watching anything when it’s only going to last one or two seasons and end on a cliff-hanger with entire plots and arcs left unresolved? But now I’m heading into a side rant.

The condensed nature of Shadow and Bone’s season two means that we not only lose plenty of interesting supporting characters (Harshaw, Sergei, Oncat) but also political intrigue that could have been expanded upon to great effect: the Apparat’s machinations, Nikolai’s orchestrated winning of hearts and minds, Alina grappling with the cult growing up around her – all fascinating stuff that could have made for excellent television.

But there’s also a curtailing of material that the show itself set up. Remember that whole subplot about Western Ravka vying for independence since it had grown weary of sending supplies and soldiers through the Fold to the east? The growing fear of industrialized countries whose weapons are steadily outstripping the power commanded by the Grisha, and the religious fanaticism that drives them? Inej’s conflict about having to take a life against the edicts of her faith? The fact that Zoya and the Darkling had a sexual relationship?

She's not impressed by any of this.

Yeah, that’s all been flung to the wayside. Season two churns through its material, and scenes in which characters do slow down for a breather usually focus on love triangles or training montages, as opposed to the far more interesting elements of Bardugo’s political landscape and the complexities of the inequalities/prejudices/persecution therein.

But that is not to say that season two of Shadow and Bone is bad. Heck, there’s plenty of stuff here that’s really good. It’s just a remarkably cluttered season of television, which veers wildly between its myriad of largely disconnected plots and stretches its cast of characters so thin that many of the emotional beats don’t have enough space or build-up to land properly.

***

But it gets off to a good start, even as the writers start tinkering with Bardugo’s material right from the word go. The season can essentially be divided into two parts, each comprised of four episodes. The first half is itself divided into two plotlines: Alina versus the Darkling, with the storyline adapted from Siege and Storm, while the Crows rally around Kaz in his takedown of Pekka Rollins, a plot that’s lifted from Crooked Kingdom.

The second half sees Alina and Mal hit the major plot-points of Ruin and Rising, although with a profoundly different ending, and the Crows embroiled in a completely show-original storyline in which they try to acquire a preternatural sword that can destroy the Darkling’s shadow-creatures, before intersecting with the characters of the trilogy in the Shadow Fold.

Unsurprisingly, the truncation of two books into a single season, plus the highpoints of Crooked Kingdom (which is comprised of events that take place after Six of Crows, the book they’re holding off on for a proposed season three/spin-off) and another totally original Crow-adjacent adventure, leads to a fairly hectic season of television. Things are switched around, added, omitted, tweaked, flipped or downright rewritten. Some things work, and others don’t.

For instance, it was both clever and elegant to reveal that the man behind all the Crow-related shenanigans of the first season, in which they were hired by someone to kidnap the Sun Summoner, was Prince Nikolai in disguise.

Turns out that man who commissioned the job was just a front for Sturmhond the privateer, a.k.a. Prince Nikolai, a.k.a. the spare heir to the Ravkan throne. Although it’s a bit questionable as to why Nikolai would be trying to remove Alina from the Little Palace (where his own family had custody of her) it’s a neat way of introducing him to the show, forging a connection to the Crows, and putting their storyline of the first season into context.  

It also gives Kaz a chance to prove his Sherlock Scan credentials by spotting Nikolai among the servants and deducing that he's someone important in disguise, and giving the audience a chance to see Nikolai handle a situation well before he crosses paths with Alina and Mal.

This is an example of a good change, which works well with the new material the adaptation has brought to the table, and the original characterization of Bardugo’s characters. In other parts of the story, you can see the cracks, as when Mal is kidnapped at the end of one episode, and then returns at the start of the very next. His disappearance has no effect on the plot whatsoever, and causes hardly any fuss among the other characters, he having escaped his captors and re-joining his allies completely offscreen.

In another scene, Alina and Tamar move very, very slowly through a ruined chapel to reach an escape route, even though time is of the essence and it would have made more sense for them to run. When one of their compatriots is badly wounded (as in, his hand is severed) Tamar gets the line: “he needs a healer.” Yeah, no shit.

That’s not even getting into the fact that in the same episode Alina has a confrontation with the Darkling that no one else can see, only for him to appear to everyone just a few seconds later, thereby undercutting the creepiness of his prior scene. You can tell that a lot of this material must have been stitched together on the fly, whether due to Covid restrictions or issues in the editing room.

And if you’re familiar with the books, it’s quite stunning just how far they deviate from the source material, despite hitting the major beats. The show covers the hunting of the sea whip from Siege and Storm, though in the book the Darkling was onboard, holding Mal hostage and supervising the ship’s course, before Sturmhond manages to escape with Alina on the Hummingbird. The attack on the Grand Palace where Vasily is killed remains intact, but it changes almost the entire context of how and why it happens.

The second half of the season deals with Ruin and Rising, and begins with Alina emerging from her prolonged concealment in the underground catacombs (though drops the part where she temporarily loses her sun summoning ability). In the books, Alina was separated from Nikolai on entering the catacombs, and a few chapters deal with her party of Grisha trying to re-join him on the surface, not to mention a massive subplot in which he’s turned into a shadow-creature and retreats into the Fold, thereby eliminating him from the climatic battle.

The show does away with this whole part of the book, though it keeps Bardugo’s twist that the third and final amplifier is not the firebird at all, but a bloodline – namely, Mal’s bloodline. He therefore needs to be sacrificed in order to enhance Alina’s power and destroy the Shadow Fold.

It also changes the entire climax of the trilogy, in which Alina (taking her inspiration from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s final episode) choses to share her abilities with others, making the destruction of the Fold a joint-effort on a massive scale. This causes her to lose her abilities forever, after which she fakes her own death and retires to quiet anonymity in the orphanage with Mal.

Gone is the massacre of the Grisha – including Botkin – at the Little Palace. Baghra is not blinded by her son, but kept prisoner until her escape and eventual death at his hands. Characters such as Harshaw and Sergei (whose trauma leads him to betray Alina’s whereabouts) are omitted entirely, as are the first season’s Fedyor and Ivan (apparently the actors came down with Covid, forcing massive rewrites in the script. One suspects characters such as Vladim and Fruszi, who act as Kirigan’s lieutenants, were created to compensate for their loss).

The Apparat, who was a major political player in the books, gets a single scene with Nikolai long after the situation is resolved. Alina’s hair doesn’t turn white, and neither does she share her summoning abilities with others – in fact, by the final scene she’s still standing alongside Nikolai and presumably continuing the charade of their engagement.

On this point, I have mixed feelings, and I’ve little doubt that fandom discourse had a lot to do with the second season’s conclusion.

As it happens, I was fairly satisfied with the end to Alina’s story in the books. Sure, a girl losing immense power and settling down to domestic bliss with her least-interesting love interest is not a great look on paper... but it’s also an ending that’s entirely in keeping with her character, and probably the most sensible in-universe decision she could have made.

But fandom was less happy about this resolution, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that it can all be traced back to shipping preferences. Sure, the party line is that Alina choosing the quiet life is disempowering and un-feminist (even though it’s what she wanted) but it doesn’t take much effort to discern that her other love interests were much more in keeping with what fandom at large finds appealing – a charismatic prince and a tortured dark immortal – who would have bestowed wealth, status and (more) power on Alina, thereby making it easy to argue that they were the more “enlightened” or “progressive” options for any romantic resolution.

Fandom says: nay

To shippers who preferred the Darkling, or even Nikolai, as the true partner for their self-insert version of the protagonist, Alina deciding to marry Mal and losing her power is very easily twisted into an insult against its target audience (namely teenage girls). If you think any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same line of reasoning shippers used for Star Wars’ Rey and Avatar the Last Airbender’s Katara, two characters who were also heavily defined by fandom shipping and the patently illogical arguments raised that insisted her hook-up with the male character of fandom’s choice was the only morally correct creative decision.

Ironically, author Leigh Bardugo herself seemed to take this criticism onboard, for in Rule of Wolves, the last book set in this particular continuity, Zoya becomes a god-like queen of Ravka and a universally-adored girlboss who is free to start a relationship with King Nikolai with no political strings attached. Unsurprisingly, this turn of events rings just as hollow and empty there as it does in any self-indulgent fanfiction.

Because being a girlboss-queen in this context means instant respect, unquestioned authority and wearing fancy clothes. Nothing about tax reforms, peasant uprisings, propaganda levelled against you, the never-ending slog of day-to-day administrative work, or how you’re expected to start pushing out babies ASAP.

This is the part where people start crying “it’s just fiction!” Yes, I'm aware. But more than anything else I need my fiction to be emotionally truthful. All you have to do is look at Kylo Ren’s pitiful “redemption” arc or the awful teen love triangle in the first season of The Legend of Korra to realize that fan-mandated fiction is bad fiction.

In the books, Alina made the hard call, and her sacrifice of power and self-imposed exile is a much more poignant and bittersweet conclusion to her story than the “have it all” mentality that so many readers demand these days. There was more pathos in book!Alina gliding her fingers through some sunbeams, clearly mourning what she had lost, than show!Alina using the cut in order to kill an assassin in the show’s final scene.

Fandom says: yay!

I’m not sure what Heisserer has planned for this development, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it seems to be hinting at a corruption arc given Alina’s little smile at the assassin’s death. As there’s nothing like this in the books, it appears we’re looking at yet another original storyline to be shoehorned into Bardugo’s material.

(Though granted, there’s the chance that if Heisserer gets his proposed season three, he simply wants to keep the likes of Jessi Mei Li, Archie Renaux and Patrick Gibson on-board, though I can see this leading to yet more problems later down the track).

But the truth is that even though authors sometimes do things we don’t like or agree with, they usually know what they want their own stories to be about. To deviate from authorial intent often leads to stories that don’t make sense. For example, in reaction to the oft-repeated fandom argument that book!Alina never had much agency, the show added a scene in which she deliberately burnt the maps through the Shadow Fold, ensuring that she would be put on board the ship and not separated from Mal.

This leads directly to the deaths of all her fellow cartographers in a volcra attack, something she spends the rest of the show not giving a shit about.

So... maybe they should have kept Alina’s original characterization intact, since the whole point of her story was that she kept getting swept up in events that were outside her control, instilling in her a desperate wish for escape and seclusion. Writers may get things wrong sometimes, but when they start writing according to the whims/demands/opinions of fandom, they’ll definitely get it wrong. Alina should have been allowed to retire in peace so the show can move on to the next part of the story.

But just as the Crows were all up in Alina’s story, now Alina will be all up in theirs.

***

But this is not to say that Alina’s story is now inherently bad, and as with the first season, I can defend some of the choices they’ve made. The fact that she’s verbally more confident is a good thing, if not just because she’s now in a visual medium and we don’t have the advantage of her first-person narration to delve more deeply into her insecurities and the disconnect she felt with the saint persona that had been applied to her.

She’s still something of a generically feisty YA heroine, but Jessi Mei Lin is winsome enough to make us root for her character. As in the book, she and Mal have successfully escaped Ravkan soil, but have no delusions about settling down and staying out of sight – the point of contention between them is how exactly they’re going to defeat General Kirigan and destroy the Fold. Both are aware of their responsibilities – to a fault, in fact. Just as they’re on the verge of consummating their relationship, they call a halt on the basis of hearing some loud fishing boats. Huh?

Also contrary to his book counterpart, Mal is in full supportive boyfriend mode, though I concede that in deciding to have him separate from Alina in the final episode is seeded throughout the season. His desire to see the world once their task is completed is subtly set against Alina’s growing sense of duty to Ravka and her embroilment in its political landscape.

The fight they have midway through the episodes is adapted from the books, though modified slightly. There, Mal is struggling with the power Alina wields as the Sun Summoner, while here, he’s concerned about the fact she’s all about Ravkan politics when he just wants to help her harness the power of the firebird and get back to their lives. He can tell that Ravka is a long-term commitment, whereas destroying the Fold is a one-and-done event.

And of course, once the revelation emerges that his connection to Alina is simply due to the fact he’s the third amplifier, it logically leads to his decision to become the next Sturmhond and depart onboard the Hummingbird. For a while I thought this was out-of-character. After all they’ve been through, he’s going to just ditch Alina? But it makes sense that he wants to see what life is like outside the confines of destiny (they also nicely establish his affinity with Nikolai’s ship and crew) while Alina commits fully to the restoration of her broken country.

As he tells her: “choice is the real true north,” so as risky as I think it is for the show to shake things up to this extent, and furthermore to do so due to fandom’s dissatisfaction with the book’s ending, I grant that at least the writing put in the effort to make these developments work.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Alina kills the sea whip and takes on its power, but naturally it’s not enough to destroy the Fold – we’re only in the third episode! Like the book, the show sets up the reveal that Mal himself is the firebird; the third amplifier that Alina needs to attain her full potential. Though the outcomes is different, the setup is largely the same: Baghra takes the two of them to the remains of Saint Ilya Morozova’s laboratory, and there reveals that she was one of his two daughters.

(For those that have forgotten, Morozova was one of the world’s most famous Fabrikators, who experimented extensively with merzost and created the first amplifiers. After he brought a child back to life, he was martyred by the terrified townsfolk who wrapped him in chains and threw him in the river).

Baghra goes on to say that the legend surrounding Morozova – that he resurrected a boy who had been torn in half by a plough – was a modified retelling of true events. In reality, he brought back to life Baghra’s sister, whom she had killed with the Cut in a fit of pique. The little girl was brought back to life using merzost, and thereby became Morozova’s third amplifier.

Or something. Honestly, I’ve read the books and watched the show twice now, and I’m still not entirely sure how all this fits together. Apparently Baghra’s sister went on to start a bloodline that culminated in Mal, who as a result, was inexorably drawn to Alina because he was designed to be the amplifier for her powers.

But... why was this third amplifier depicted as a firebird? How did a bloodline come to be symbolized by a bird, especially when the sea whip and the stag are very real mythological creatures? Shouldn’t there have been – just spit-balling here – some sort of family crest or symbol in Mal’s possession that could have connected him to the concept of a firebird? Or was it that Morozova planned for the third amplifier to be the firebird, only to exchange it for his youngest daughter instead, leading to his original intention becoming part of the legend?

Bardugo’s world-building on the rules of Small Science and merzost and bloodlines and amplifiers and the way Mal was a preternatural tracker and the co-dependency between him and Alina and the immortality of certain Grisha and their relationship to the concept of Saints... remains rather muddled. In the case of Mal, it really feels like Bardugo had this climactic sacrifice in mind and reverse-engineered her story to lead up to it, in a way that doesn’t feel particularly organic or elegant.

But however convoluted the path was to bring us here, the situation remains: in order to destroy the Shadow Fold (and by extension, Kirigan) Mal must die in order for Alina to gain the power of the three amplifiers. Fear not, he comes back. I think Alina used merzost on him? Which in the show, might be the reason behind her little smile when she uses the Cut to kill someone? Because you can’t use merzost without losing something of yourself?

Obviously there was something odd about Mal’s resurrection since Nina refuses to take credit for it happening, but nothing gets explained very well either, and if there are any consequences for Alina’s actions (since Baghra made her promise not to use merzost) then it’ll have to be saved for a later season.

In the books, her hair just turns white.

***

So what’s General Kirigan, a.k.a. the Darkling, a.k.a. Aleksander up to during all this? Sadly, Ben Barnes isn’t given a whole lot to work with here. The scales have come off Alina’s eyes, the game is up and the mask has been dropped: he’s a Bad Guy now, and all that remains is to defeat him.

As with the show’s newfound lack of interest in Ravka’s political landscape, we’re not allowed to delve too deeply into Kirigan’s motivations, for even when he or members of his posse verbally state their grievances and fears (Fruzsi points to one of her companions and tells the other Grisha that the First Army not only burned his face but cut out his tongue) the fact that they’re in dark makeup and sharing deranged grins when they try to cut down our protagonists are clear visual cues that they’re the bad guys and we shouldn’t feel for them.  

Which is bizarre, since when you get down to it, Kirigan’s entire motivation is to mount a permanent and inexorable defence for the Grisha. Sure, he plans to overthrow the (lustful, gluttonous, rapist) king and his decadent court, and hold other countries hostage with his mastery over the Shadow Fold and its inhabitants, but his motives are very clear: “I am rebuilding this country for the Grisha.”

The Grisha who, let’s not forget, have been persecuted and hunted and executed throughout this world’s history – and continue to be so well into this season. I have no interest in woobifying the Darkling, but he does have a point, especially when the First Army almost immediately starts caging and torturing the Grisha (I did like his sardonic little: “this again” comment on seeing the cages at the fringe of the Fold). 

Alina has no good answer to his question as to what will happen when the Fold is gone, and the Grisha are still discriminated against. Kirigan seems convinced that this is what will happen, though Alina is more sympathetic to ordinary people, presumably because she was raised among them and has no first-hand knowledge of the centuries worth of persecution that the Grisha have endured.

But the Fold was never the problem, it was a misguided solution to the real problem: that the Grisha are a valuable commodity – either to be manipulated for one’s own ends, or to be destroyed (usually out of religious conviction) to ensure that no one else can use them against you. That’s the conflict at the heart of this entire universe, and the attempt to do anything else will always be secondary to the fear and hatred directed at the Grisha. Everything stems from that.

But the Fold is very much what Alina (and the show) would like us to focus on. To her, the plan is to reunite the country, end the war, and defeat Kirigan by destroying the Fold. That done, everyone will owe Alina a great debt of gratitude for having dismantled it. The remaining Grisha will come under King Nikolai’s protection, and Alina will lean on her status as a Living Saint to counteract the prejudice against them.

This ignores the fact that the oppression of Grisha was around long before the Fold, and that in the minds of the people the Fold won’t have disappeared because of a Grisha, but because of a Saint (and I can’t understand how the people of Ravka have never twigged to the fact that the saints they worship – all of whom had preternatural abilities – were almost certainly Grisha).

That leaves Nikolai as their secret weapon of unity and peace, and to be fair, conversations do take place about what he plans to do as king. But the show just as much as the books make Nikolai something of a magic bullet when it comes to solving the inherent mystical racism of this world. Turns out that all Kirigan needed to do to save his people was to put a good king on the throne! Of course! Why didn’t he ever think of that! The plot even conveniently gets rid of Vasily to clear Nikolai’s way to the throne, no strings attached.

More work needed to be put into real solutions as to how Nikolai planned to solve this societal problem: the book at least has him go out among the commonfolk to win hearts and minds, but the show doesn’t even bother with that. Granted, King of Scars does delve into the reality that it’s not a simple happily ever after for Ravka, but if the oppression of Grisha is the crux of this story, if it’s the very reason for the existence of the Shadow Fold in the first place, then it’s an underlying issue that really needed to be addressed more. Everything else is just a bandage on a festering wound.

So in light of all this, what makes Kirigan the villain? Like Magneto in the X-Men or Morgana in Merlin, his intentions are good but his methods are bad. He’s ruthless and manipulative and certainly isn’t above using his own followers like pawns (Genya being the obvious example of this). Whatever his goals are at this point, the cruelty and indifference with which he treats those he’s ostensibly trying to protect is the best reminder that he’s been devoured by his cause and simply taken it too far.

Like so many villains, Kirigan had noble intentions, the moral high-ground and a willingness to fight for his convictions, and so to justify his defeat, the narrative inevitably had to make him power hungry and one-dimensional.

At this point, the show has no further interest in delving into the complexities or nuances of his character, and we’re asked to judge him on a micro as opposed to a macro level (that is, his long-term ends don’t justify his more personal means). According to the show’s moral compass, his intention of making a safe place for the Grisha don’t excuse the existence of the Fold, the suffering of Genya, or the tit-for-tat attacks on non-Grisha.

Not helping in my assessment of this setup is that Andor still lives rent-free in my head, where the entire thesis of the show is “how much is too much?” when it comes to fighting fascism. Shadow and Bone sands off the edges of its core premise for a more simplistic conflict, which ultimately becomes a relatively personal battle between selfish Kirigan and selfless Alina. She’s right and he’s wrong, and though I’m not remotely opposed to teenage girls taking out manipulative “pity me!” gaslighters with the pointy ends of swords, it’s ironic that in this case, the villain actually made some pretty good points about the unsustainability of the status quo. It’s a shame they took the easy way out instead of really making this a moral quagmire.

In light of all this, and as someone who is never hugely interested in good girl/bad man ships anyway, I can’t say the psychic interactions between Alina and Kirigan were that interesting. Much like Rey and Kylo Ren and Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, the two share a mental connection and are able to interact with each other on some sort of psychic plane, but nothing really comes of it. I mean, putting a hero and a villain in a room together and making them talk should be riveting, but in this case we know there’s nothing left to say. Neither one is going to budge from their convictions, and there’s is no subtextual manipulation or question about anyone’s true motives. It’s just an empty exchange of words.

(I can’t believe I’m saying this, but even the Rey/Kylo stuff in The Last Jedi was more interesting since in hindsight, each one was totally misinterpreting the other – at least until The Rise of Skywalker completely threw out that premise).

The similarly-staged Kirigan/Mal scene was infinitely more interesting since a. it was a fresh dynamic, and b. they actually had something important to say to each other. The scornful way they addressed each other as “cousin” was a great touch.

Still, because of the weird hocus-pocus surrounding Kirigan and Alina's use of the stag as an amplifier, this bond actually makes some degree of sense, though they’re careful to say there’s no precedent so the writers can do whatever they want with it (sure enough, they’re still psychically interacting even after Alina severs the bond between them, and who the hell knows how Kirigan manages to confront Mal in his dreams).

In the end, Alina and Kirigan make up two halves of a light/dark connection that fandom always loses its shit over, though this one is refreshing in that Alina isn’t here to redeem her erstwhile dark prince boyfriend stalker. Most episodes have them in completely separate locations, gathering their weapons and allies, attempting to predict what the other’s next move will be, and in the end she runs him through.

***

In my review of last season, I said: “there is a genuinely rich tapestry of political, social and geographical ramifications at work within the various storylines, with practically every character being motivated in some way by the world in which they live.” And as mentioned, my biggest disappointment in this season is that this interest in politicking and espionage and how people are shaped by the larger forces around them is gone completely. (Maybe I should just go watch Andor again).

The truncation of the two books into a single season is the biggest and most obvious cause of this omission. To me at least, this sort of material is infinitely more interesting than the story’s emphasis on relationship drama, and even the stuff I did enjoy more, such as the complexities of the heists, the world-building and the ethical conundrums, are very much baked into this invented world’s politics, history and geography. With the Shadow Fold as the embodiment of the conflict, almost everything that happens can be traced back to the tension between Grisha and ordinary people, creating a ripple effect that touches everyone’s lives.

Sadly, the shortened runtime means that certain scenes from the book not only can’t be expanded on, but are omitted entirely. The extensive chapters in which Nikolai and Alina go “on tour” to promote their engagement among the people of Ravka is cut entirely. So is the cult that grows up around Alina as a Living Saint, one that worships her and culminates in her nearly being torn apart by an adoring mob. Gone too is the Apparat, leading his own contingent of followers in the catacombs beneath the earth who may or may not be loyal to Alina herself.

All this would have been so ripe for more exploration, but most of the politicking is confined to brisk conversations between our main players. There’s nothing like the woman in season one giving herself away by saying “West Ravka” or a General establishing an independence movement for those on the other side of the Fold, or even the somewhat mishandled but still narratively interesting fact that Alina was both Saviour and Shu, and the populace’s confused reaction to that.

What do we get instead? Well, there’s the distribution of a propaganda poster depicting Kirigan and Alina in cahoots together after the expansion of the Shadow Fold, but this disappears completely after the first episode. Alina’s liberty is compromised after she overhears an awkwardly-staged conversation at a local library, in which two refugees blame her for the current state of their lives.

There’s mention of a bounty on Alina’s head authorized by Fjerda, and of tensions boiling up in Shu Han, but neither of these countries are visited in any great depth. On meeting Alina, Nikolai sensibly asks for clarification about what she was attempting to do in the Fold and where her allegiances lie, and later points out that she’s important not just as a Sun Summoner, but a symbol (this also goes nowhere, though there’s one brief moment when Alina notices a stained-glass window of herself as a saint).

There was the opportunity for Queen Tatiana and Prince Vasily to be more fleshed-out, particularly the latter, who is responsible for turning Mal in for court martial, attempting a clumsy overture on Alina, and foolishly making public where the royal court is hiding (which leads to the nichevo'ya attack). Granted, he didn’t get much focus in the book either, but it’s the opportunity a better-paced season of television would have given him that I’m mourning.

The tension and simmering resentments between the First and Second Army boil over, resulting in Grisha being locked in cages and sacrificed to the Fold, but Nikolai’s attempt to unite both armies is effortless, without any gradual building of trust or egalitarianism between the uneasy allies (and this is after the first season established the huge difference in the way each army is treated, from the bulletproof keftas to the substantially better food that the elite Grisha enjoy).

That Alina makes a power play and volunteers to lead the Second Army raises some contention between herself and Mal, the latter feeling that she’s putting a target on her back and getting distracted from her goal of reaching the firebird, but we never see her in the capacity of a military leader, there’s no time to dwell on her new position’s implications, and the choice is taken out of her hands soon enough.

For a second there it was an interesting butting of heads, especially between two lovers, but the lack of real conflict also applies to the Grisha on both sides of the fight. Are the likes of Nadia and Adric not queasy about the thought of fighting their fellow Grisha and – up until very recently – close companions? This is where the loss of Ivan and Fedyor is really felt, especially since characters like Fruzsi and Vatra have not been seen before.

And then of course, there’s the betrothal between Nikolai and Alina, which is ostensibly meant to strength their alliance and present a united front between sainthood and royalty to the populace, but from a Doylist point of view has less to do with political expediency and more to do with adding yet another corner to a love quadrilateral, which is the bread and butter of any YA story.

As ever, there could have been some great material in which the two have to sell their supposed love to the public, reactions from those who know it’s a sham and those who don’t, and how the Darkling would respond to it (I don’t think he even finds out it’s happening?) Nikolai is also told by the Apparat in his final scene that he is only as strong as Alina is, but this is almost the very last scene of the season so – as ever – there’s no time to explore its implications.

Ultimately, the only indication that the destruction of the Fold had any impact on the larger world outside our main characters was a brief glimpse of flag-waving Ravkan villagers and soldiers in Fjerda reacting to its disappearance. It’s all just window-dressing, and a marked contrast to how deeply embedded it was in the story last season.

***

All of which brings us to Genya and David, whose storyline in this season is also remarkably odd. It starts off great, with Genya caught between a rock (Kirigan) and a hard place (the First Army) when she’s rescued from the latter by the former. Obviously she owes him her life (and because he’s so great at manipulation, he tries to forge a connection between them by describing them both as “survivors”) but she’s also palpably terrified of him, and has clearly realized she’s in over her head.

David arrives at their base with another scraggle of Grisha survivors, and by putting their heads together the couple attempt to get away... with the dumbest escape plan ever. It’s literally just “we meet at a place and then run”. Yes, David does manage to get away with Morozova’s journal (does this come back into play at any point? I lost track of it) but Genya is caught by Kirigan and horribly disfigured.

Now, I watched this season through twice, and I’m pretty sure Genya doesn’t get her iconic line: “I am not ruined, I am ruination”, so maybe they’re saving it? She and David are reunited, commit themselves to Alina’s cause, and work through their relationship issues.

But time constraints really prevent us from delving too deep into Genya. In many ways she’s the most interesting character of the entire story: an outsider by dint of being Grisha, and yet held apart from her own people due to the Darkling’s machinations. Forced by him to act as a spy on the King of Ravka (and all that entails) and full of self-loathing due to the abuse she suffers at his hands, she’s in the interesting position of being both powerful and powerless.

Her assassination of the king by poison cannot technically be considered a “good” thing in the sense that it weakens the monarchy at a time stability is needed to defeat the Darkling, and yet it was a perfectly justified thing to do on a personal level (heck, she even points out that she put the poison on her body, meaning that if the lech had just left her alone, he would have been just fine). It’s another interesting ethical problem, in that Genya did the right thing for the wrong side and for reasons that could be construed as either right or wrong.

Genya is surprisingly okay with the fact that David ditched her while she was being disfigured, and the two of them provide some inside information as to what Kirigan is up to in order to win Alina’s trust. But then, when the final assault on the fort happens, she and David are separated. David pulls a heroic sacrifice when he gets Genya inside an elevator and pulls the lever, but it’s completely unclear what happens next.

I know that David eventually dies in the books (though I’ve yet to read Rule of Wolves) but here Genya only sees bloodstains on the wall and is unable to sense his heartbeat. And yet, you know what it means when no one can find a body. So... are they sparing him now just to kill him off again later?

All things considered, it’s a strange subplot for the pair of them, particularly when Genya finds diagrams David has made to craft an engagement ring for her (because again, they do get married in the books). The storyline manages to be sourced from the trilogy, with bits pulled out of the last duology, and be largely original at the same time, leaving it on an open question that I suspect not even the showrunner has decided how to answer yet.

I’m stumped here, folks.

***

Meanwhile, in Ketterdam...

Look, these scenes are so much more energized and innovative, that you can simply tell the writer’s room was infinitely more interested in these characters than the Shadow and Bone cast – even if much of the story is rather scattershot.

Our three (not yet six) Crows return to their home turf to discover that the Crown Club has changed hands to Pekka Rollins and been renamed the Kaelish Prince. As they soon discover, Kaz gave up the deeds to the Crow Club to Tante Heleen in order to get Inej on his mission, but with her dead, the entire thing passed to her employer, Pekka Rollins (though Heleen’s absence might well pose a problem in the next season, since she has a small but rather crucial role in Inej’s arc).

After Inej batmans out of there and the boys are thrown in a paddy wagon, Kaz starts to suffer from a sudden case of Traumatic Flashbacks due to the close proximity of other people. One run-in with the disguised Prince of Ravka later, and Jesper and Kaz manage their escape, only to realize that they’re still wanted for murder, having been framed by Pekka Rollins.

So despite some nice set up with the Prince involving a mild battle of wits and the irony that Nikolai is offering them “her bribe [to keep quiet] in exchange for her next move”, the two subplots sadly part ways. Granted, it’s difficult to imagine how Nikolai could have fulfilled his narrative duties in Alina’s plot with the Crows tagging along, but his smarmy charisma against Kaz’s dark intensity was a great dynamic.

Along the way, we learn that Jesper has been a Durast this whole time. It’s an odd thread to add at this point in time, though it’s been seeded reasonably well (it explains why he’s such a crack-shot if nothing else) but the reasons for him keeping it a secret are treated as a fairly big reveal in the books, and here are tossed out almost incidentally.

I’m not even sure newcomers would have grasped the backstory here: that Jesper’s mother was a healer who overexerted herself when it came to her patients and ended up dying as a result. As such, Jesper blames Grisha abilities for the loss of her. It’s not particularly well handled, to the point where the writers clearly felt the need to add some weight by tying it to his relationship troubles with Wylan, but none of it really lands properly.

Speaking of Wylan van Eck, this episode marks our introduction to him, and like everyone else, he’s perfectly cast. Did anyone else think he looked just like Valerian from Tangled, only not a little shit? You don’t need me to tell you this kid is adorable, and Jack Wolfe nails the character’s determination, insecurity, deep intelligence, and endearing naivety. Since the show doesn’t delve into his background this season, I won’t spoil anything, but there’s also a fitting air of sadness around him, as well as a few hints as to where he’s come from (he catches himself halfway through telling Jesper he had a tutor, and gives Kaz a very meaningful – and nervous – look when he hears about the new commission Kaz has taken in the season’s final minutes). There are also some lovely details strewn throughout, such as the fact his bottles are marked with musical notes so he can tell what’s in them.

On the other hand, I’m not sure what to make of the fact that his relationship with Jesper has been rewritten as a reunion that’s taking place some time after a one-night stand in which Jesper doesn’t immediately recognize him. The love story in the book is a sweet slow-burn, in which the gradual unravelling of their secrets (Jesper’s mother and Wylan’s family issues) forms the backbone of their relationship, and includes a very amusing case of mistaken identity when one is disguised as a completely different character.

This is the two of them just reconnecting after they’ve already slept together, with Jesper acting like a bit of a cad for not remembering Wylan, and Wylan acting inexplicably weird for strange reasons (like, he’s angry at Jesper for not using his Durast abilities? Why would he care? Especially knowing how Grisha are currently being treated?)

As with a lot of things this season, it’s not overtly bad, just a somewhat inexplicable change that doesn’t add much to the overall proceedings.

I’ve already covered the other characters in my post on season one, though there’s some fun to be had in Nina joining the team (there are a few sweet scenes with Inej, but for the most part I really enjoyed her rapport with Kaz. They’re complete opposites, and yet they understand each other, and there’s a grudging respect at work there).

And it’s worth saying that Freddy Carter as Kaz Brekker is the casting coup of the entire show (yes, Ben Barnes was the fan-favourite to play the Darkling, but as characterization goes, there’s no comparison). Like Patrick Stewart as Professor X or Matt Ryan as Constantine, he just embodies that role to the point where it’s unnoticeable. He is Kaz and Kaz is him.

I liked that the show wasn’t afraid to examine the inherent toxicity of his relationship with Inej either. Look, Inej apparently caught some flack with her line: “I will have you without armour, Kaz Brekker, or I will not have you at all”, which some have decided is ableist (another example of shippers reaching for the nearest morality-based argument so they can elevate their frustration with a fictional character not catering to their preferred ship by putting it on the level of a serious social issue).

The truth is, Inej is allowed to walk away from Kaz if he isn’t prepared to give her what she wants from a relationship – even if it’s not his fault that he can’t do so. It’s not Inej’s responsibility to cater to his trauma, help him heal from it, or put up with it because he refuses to do anything about it (and before you ask, yes there ARE in fact therapists in the Grishaverse). It’s not fair and it’s deeply sad, but it’s the truth. People are allowed to choose not to be in relationships.

And much like the Darkling himself, Kaz is manipulative in his own way. Every time Inej has enough, every time it looks like she’s on the verge of leaving for good, he throws her a few breadcrumbs which is just enough to get her to stay. He might not be doing it on purpose, and I’ve no doubt it’s coming from a genuine place of wishing she’d stay with him, but his words escalate over time (like a drug intake) without any actual change in his behaviour until Inej finally realizes things are never going to change and that she has her own life to live.

Leigh Bardugo must have known that for her fanbase, everything is always about the shipping, so kudos to her for going against the grain. The whole thing rejects the usual fandom narrative, in which the girl can and WILL stick around until the boy is magically healed by the power of her unfaltering love, but I’m glad this show took the more realistic option. He ain’t gonna change because of you, ladies. He can only do that to himself.

As it happens, Inej ends up in the same place she did at the end of Crooked Kingdom: parting from Kaz in order to board a ship and go hunting for slave-traders, which is an easy enough bus to come back from for the proposed season three.

Still, we remain a hypothetical season away from getting the complete set of Crows all in the same frame, and it’ll be genuinely tragic if we don’t see that happen.

***

But what of the actual Crows storyline? Everyone loves a good heist, though there are two ways it can play out. The first is that you know exactly what’s going to happen, only for things to go sideways (as on Andor) or you can only know the rough sketch of the plan, so that the story can blindside you with the reality of what’s really happening (like in Ocean’s Eleven).

This is more the latter type than the former, but Kaz’s attempt to bring down Pekka Rollins doesn’t really live up to either one. This is mostly because Kaz’s crew have no idea what’s going on most of the time, and it’s all over and done with very quickly. It’s mostly made up of some fun little sequences: Kaz enlisting the men from Per Haskell by beating the shit out of them, the Crows trying to break into Pekka’s accountant’s office (in which Nina really proves her worth), Jesper and Wylan entering Pekka’s house and passing themselves off as piano repair men, and the use of the festival as a cover for their activities (which really needed to be seeded better, like the meteorite shower was in Andor. I told you that show lived in my head).

We get a gunfight in the streets, in which Wylan and Jesper are driving a ratcatcher’s wagon, Kaz blowing up the Crow Club to demonstrate how serious he is, and the uncertainty about Alby’s fate (played by a perfect little actor) and just how far Kaz is willing to go to pull this off.

It’s all... fine? I liked the fake-out regarding Nina’s loyalties, and the mini-subplot Inej is given with the taxidermist assassin (though does this mean they don’t plan on adapting Dunyasha for the next season, since that would just be repeating themselves?) But like I said earlier – it just doesn’t land as strongly as it could have done. Which is unavoidable since everything about Kaz’s motivation is truncated, and they’re dramatizing it out of order with Crooked Kingdom.

Pekka Rollins is dealt with within the first four episodes, and the remainder involve the Crows being hired for a new mission on behalf of Prince Nikolai: to travel to Shu Han and retrieve a sword called Neshyenyer, which can cut through shadow and potentially destroy the shadow-creatures.

There was some set up for this, what with Mal coming up with the idea after we’ve seen him reading a book on the saints. As it happens, this is a real volume that Bardugo wrote, and includes the whole backstory of this sword – but the fact remains that this is a completely original story for the Crows, and is furthermore... a bit terrible.

The Crows are recruited by Tolya and Zoya, who join them on their mission. On realizing that the Neshyenyer on display in a Shu museum is a fake, they try to get in touch with the individual who stole it in the first place, someone called the Collector, who operates through a fence known as the Disciple, who may have possession of the real artefact. I think.

They meet with the supposed fence, a woman called Ohral, who they quickly tumble to be the Collector, and come up with a way to rob her house. It is essentially “wait until she’s gone and then break in.” That’s it. No other reconnaissance required. After their ludicrously unprepared break-in goes southward, they end up trapped in a small antechamber which floods with hallucinogenic gas.

Also, this happens.

Everyone gets visions that shed insight on their personal hangups, some interesting (I liked that Kaz sees his brother, who asks him “who are you without your vengeance?” which is a good question going forward) and some not so much (Tolya simply sees his sister die, while Jesper gets the entirety of his misgivings about being a Durest wrapped up in the same sequence in which they’re introduced).

Most interestingly, Inej has a vision in which she and Kaz are physically close and he removes his gloves – which heartbreakingly is enough to make her realize it’s all just a vision. She’s the first one to snap out of it because of the sheer unlikelihood of Kaz behaving in that way towards her.

Wylan gets to save the day when – and I swear I’m not making this up – he notices some butterflies and instructs the others to eat them. Ohral reveals herself to be the original Saint of the Neshyenyer story after pulling a Magneto by targeting the iron in everyone’s blood, but Kaz salvages the situation by finding her weakness and wheeling out her elderly husband. For some reason this spurs her to give up the sword, and one speech about the Power of Love later (though it was a nice touch they edited Matthias into that particular montage) they’re on their way.

Because the plot makes absolutely no sense, the best part about this sequence has to be the character dynamics. I liked that they remember that Nina and Zoya were once cohorts, and the two of them get the chance to argue about the decisions they’ve each made in life (later Nina gives Zoya a lingering goodbye look when she leaves Kirigan’s funeral with the other Crows).

Zoya is the only one who doesn’t get Ohral’s love for her fading husband (it’s the standard immortal-loves-a-mortal heartbreak) but I trust you all picked up on the foreshadowing regarding her relationship with Nikolai? Nina asks her what she fights for in life and she says not love, but Ravka – soon those two things will be one and the same.

Jesper and Wylan patch up their relationship, much to the delight of Shipper on Deck Tolya, but if the experience brought them closer together, then it has the opposite effect on Kaz and Inej. He didn’t want Inej involved on such a dangerous mission in the first place, but her motivation in coming was her loyalty to Saint Alina (nice continuity from season one, especially since a lot of the other original ideas the show established have been abandoned).

And the experience makes her realize there’s no future between herself and Kaz – at least, not with things as they are now. This is borne out by the fact that Kaz recoils away from her after she’s forced to touch him in order to get the butterfly into his mouth (that’s a real sentence) and it’s a nice thoroughfare to her decision to leave at the end of the season. I originally thought it would have been a good opportunity to have Kaz have to overcome his touch aversion by having to save Inej’s life, but on reflection it really had to play out this way in order to let Inej reach her own decision about what she wanted from the relationship.

Basically, the whole adventure comes down to shipping drama, as a sword is always the most boring MacGuffin you can send your protagonists after. If it’s not Excalibur, then I don’t care about it – especially when it doesn’t end up doing anything of particular importance anyway (yes, I know that Inej uses it to save Alina’s life by killing a shadow-creature in the finale, but that’s one of those scenarios that are set up especially to justify what the characters have been doing for the last four episodes).

***

But the real problem with the Crows material, especially in the first four episodes, is glaringly obvious. When set against the existential world-threatening stakes of Alina’s story, the two halves of the plot are completely, painfully, almost comically unconnected. A heist has nothing whatsoever to do with gathering amplifiers and preparing armies, not even thematically, and it is profoundly difficult to care about Kaz’s vendetta against the man responsible for his brother’s death when the world itself is being threatened.

At one point, the quiet but life-changing revelation about Morozova’s connection to Mal and how it will lead to his sacrifice is set alongside the Crows dramatically dying of poison gas in Ohral’s house, and you don’t need me to tell you that each segue goes together like oil and water, chalk and cheese.

I can actually understand, structurally speaking, why they chose to dramatize the events of Crooked Kingdom before the Ice Heist, though it robs the show of Bardugo’s wonderful drawing-out of everyone’s backstories. The magnificent slow burn that eventually culminates in the truth about what happens to Kaz’s brother is reduced to some short, fuzzy flashbacks that captures none of the horror or cruelty of the long-con that was run against them in the books. And yet, with everything else that the show had to juggle, it was inevitable. They simply didn’t have time to focus to that extent on a single character amidst such a huge ensemble cast.

Doing it this way means that the show has a “clean slate” going into season three, one in which they can focus on the difficulties and details of the heist without cluttering things up with everyone’s personal hang-ups. With that in mind, I’ve seen some complaints that the show has used up all its “emotional collateral” by churning through the material too quickly, but that’s just not true. There’s still a TON of stuff they have to cover regarding the Ice Court heist, including the horrific implications of jurda parem, Nina and Matthias’s reconciliation, Wylan’s relationship with his family, Jesper's father, Kuwei Yul-Bo, the great escape...

There’s plenty more to go, not to mention all the dangling threads they set up with Alina using the cut (and being pleased with herself) and Nikolai’s infection by the nichevo'ya (which suggests they plan to tackle King of Scars on top of everything else? Yikes).

***

Then there’s the Nina/Matthias drama, which I still want to like more than I do, and which is largely being carried by the strength of the two actors involved. First of all, I feel bad for Calahan Skogman, who almost certainly would have had a tough time at being so separated from the rest of the cast this season, missing out on all the fun dynamics while he twiddles his thumbs in prison.

But this was fairly inevitable after the show chose to dramatize his and Nina’s complex backstory in “real time” across the course of the first season, ending with him in Hellgate. It was an understandable creative decision, but it naturally led to Matthias being trapped in a (literal) holding cell for the duration of this season.

Either they’d have to speed-up his breakout (which wouldn’t make much sense since the whole reason Kaz breaks him out is to get intel on the Ice Court, something he doesn’t need until after he accepts the jarda parem job) or to leave him in there, treading water. Despite coming up with another reason as to why Kaz might decide to break him out (to enlist Nina’s skill-set in his takedown of Pekka Rollins) they go for the latter option, and for what it’s worth I think they did the best they could to give him some meaningful material.

It was a stroke of genius to incorporate Pekka Rollins into the proceedings: first as someone who attends the prison fights, leading him to notice Nina’s reaction to Matthias and a fun red herring when we’re led to believe she’ll turn on Kaz in order to free her man, and later when he arrives at Hellgate as a prisoner, only to immediately assert his dominance among the other prisoners, and kill the only friend Matthias has made on the inside.

This was genuinely very good material that opens up some possibilities for the next season, and is done elegantly enough that it feels like something pulled from the book, even though it's completely original to the show. (Technically Pekka Rollins does attend the prison fights, though it has no impact on the story).

As for Matthias himself, he’s having lascivious visions of Nina while struggling with his inner faith, which at least gives him some inner conflict to grapple with – though I still think it was a huge mistake to have Nina explain to him why she had him arrested as a slaver at the end of last season – imagine this material in the context of Matthias still believing that she betrayed him out of sheer vindictiveness. That he knows she was just trying to save his life makes his anger at her petulant and confusing.

Not that Nina is any less bewildering. She’s saying things like “he’s the love of my life” and that Matthias “chose me” and that they’ll soon be running away towards their happy ending, and I’m like... really? You guys didn’t spend that much time together, and he’s already rejected you twice. Why would Nina believe he’s still open to a relationship with her? If her repeated attempts to break him out of prison were coming from a place of guilt, then sure, her actions would be understandable – but she just seems delusional in her belief they’re going to be a couple once he’s been freed. Just a little tweaking regarding her motives and expectations could have improved this whole subplot.

But I liked Matthias’s relationship with his poor doomed fellow prisoner and his reaction to having to fight the wolves, and there’s a downright fantastic scene in which Rollins clocks why he’s there and delivers the marvellously ironic line: “you wouldn’t want a moment alone with [the person who put you here]?” Because heh, we’ve seen exactly what he wants to do with the person who put him there.

Speaking of which, the person I watched with this was a little confused about whether his visions of Nina were dreams (though he’s fully awake whenever we see them) or memories (suggesting that they got intimate while out on the permafrost). In trying to explain it, I realize I didn’t know either. In the book they’re simply recurring dreams, but here... is he just fantasizing about her?

It all ends with Nina getting a pardon for Matthias (which she inexplicably goes to implement by herself) only for him to end up killing a guard in a prison fight, leaving them both right where they started.

***

And then we reach the climactic final fight. Just as the most interesting part of any heist is a. all the characters practicing what they’re going to do and the juicy dynamics that emerge from this and b. when things inevitably go wrong and they have to start improvising on the fly, the most important element of any depiction of high-stakes warcraft is the strategy that goes into it.

In this case, both sides are caught between two objectives. Kirigan must decide whether to go after First Army encampments, or hunt down Nikolai and Alina. Alina’s party must decide whether to focus on destroying the Fold or combating the Grisha that remain in the Second Army and prevent Kirigan from advancing. Ultimately, Kirigan gives the order to capture Alina and the tracker, while Alina’s people form two teams: she and Mal to enter the Shadow Fold and destroy it from within (the contingency plan to try and spare Mal’s life having gone southward) and Nikolai’s troops seeking out Kirigan (which turns out to be a trap – Kirigan uses the cut to destroy Keramsin to draw Alina out).

The show may have broken a few world-building rules in how it deals with the psychic bond between Kirigan and Alina (and Mal) but the way in which Kirigan gathers intel works very well. It’s been established that the person harnessing the power of an amplifier will glimpse said amplifier’s last moments, and this not only ends up being a clue as to Mal’s true nature (as Alina sees that its final act was being drawn to Mal) but gives Kirigan the information he needs. Having killed his own mother to draw on her power, he hears her tell Mal that he’s of Morozova’s bloodline. As such, he has a vested interest in keeping Mal alive, to prevent Alina from gaining all her power. So, full points there.

Out heroes fall for the trick in believing that the Darkling and his Grisha are at Keramsin, when in fact they’re standing by to destroy Nikolai’s flying ship, forcing them to retreat back to the fort, while Kirigan moves the Shadow Fold so it swallows the structure whole (as it happens, Kirigan can only get it exactly halfway across, which provides a pretty cool backdrop for the final fight).

The final battle therefore takes place on two fronts. The Crows return just in the nick of time, some to back up Nikolai’s forces as they’ve been retreating through a gauntlet of Grisha in the fort, and the others to whisk Alina away to the centre of the Fold (which in a nice touch, is the place where Kirigan first made the Fold – you can tell by the statues that flanked him in the first season’s flashback).

A lot of fighting and running commences, but I appreciated that the action sequences in the fort made use of the architecture and geography around them – it’s nice to see actors in an actual space and not up against a green screen, and between the walls, the overhead walkways and the trenches, there was a lot of interesting space for everyone to inhabit. The slow steady advance of the Grisha was suspenseful, as was Nikolai’s dwindling party (RIP Dominick, you were a classic Sacrificial Lion who was introduced for the sole purpose of dying nobly) and the innovative attacks/deaths – special mention to Adric and Nadia learning to co-use their Squaller abilities on the fly, and Fruzsi not realizing her fingers had been blown off until her hand was right in front of her.

And of course, the show finally giving Lewis Tan the chance to show off his skills. Up till his big action sequence, it was like nobody had any idea he was a stuntman/martial artist.

Meanwhile, Kirigan ponders of Alina whether she’ll go with “your convictions or your heart”, and surprisingly, it’s her convictions. The plan to save Mal goes pear-shaped when David doesn’t have enough time to take a fingerbone and Tamar (who was planning to resurrect him with her heart-rending abilities) is separated from them. Nina is on hand instead, but she gets conveniently knocked out, and so Alina is left to drive the blade home and kill Mal.

But have you noticed that whenever the whole “man must kill woman he loves to save the world” is gender-flipped (Buffy and Angel, Wanda and Vision, Alina and Mal) there’s a much greater chance that the male character will almost immediately be brought back? That’s ends up being the case here, as Mal is only gone for a few minutes.

Kirigan turns up for some final back-and-forth with Alina in the flesh this time, but she’s had enough and runs him through with the sword. Just to drive the point home, she tells him: “there’s no redemption for you,” and I get the sense that somebody was also irritated by the end of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Kirigan dies, all his one-noble intentions that were twisted beyond repair dying with him.

With him go his nichevo'ya, and the other half of the cast, who have been trapped in a chapel and achieving precisely nothing this whole time, are spared a gruesome death at their hands (though not before Nikolai is injured by one of them).

All the above takes place in the season’s final episode, and in its hour-long runtime, the main conflict is resolved by the twelve-minute mark. The rest is an epilogue and setup for the next season. I suppose I can’t complain, I like it when stories take the time to let their characters wind down after a life-endangering, earth-shattering adventure. But what happens next?

Nina tries and fails to get Matthias out of prison. Mal heads off with Inej and the twins onboard the Hummingbird as the next Sturmhond. That’s a fun collection of characters to play around with, and I can’t say I hated the interested look Tolya gives Inej. Alina keeps her powers and is apparently still officially engaged to Nikolai, though both are aware she’s not in love with him. Zoya, Alina and Genya form a triumvirate of power, and there’s a little bit of a ship tease when Zoya sets eyes on Nikolai, who in turn realizes that his power is tenuously linked to Alina and threatened by the shadow wound that was inflicted on him.

But unfortunately, the show’s final scene is more absurd than terrifying. In the book, the threat of jurda parem is genuinely horrific. It’s a drug that expands the power of the Grisha tenfold, and yet is highly addictive and uncontrollable. The way Bardugo introduces the horror of its implications is masterful, as is the growing dread it inspires in our characters. Here, the threat is reduced to Kaz’s voiceover and an almost comical scene that comes right the hell out of nowhere in which Nikolai’s coronation is interrupted by a Fjerdan assassin high on the drug (if you’ve read the book, there’s nothing about this scenario that makes any sense at all).

The woman staggers out into the aisle and uses her powers to make everyone cough up blood and keel over in slow-motion, before Alina uses the cut to slice her in half. It all looks like a c-grade horror film, and as interested as I am by the potential of a corruption arc for Alina, it’s also just a lead-in to yet another original story that has no bearing on the actual book series.

Can we please, please, please just get to the Ice Court heist already? I don’t want to disparage anything that’s already happened or anyone’s efforts on the show thus far, but let’s be brutally honest here guys: the Ice Court heist is what we’re all here for.

This sequence is clearly a hook for next season, but hopefully they’ll get a chance to “reset” it properly and use Bardugo’s proper introduction to the drug, in which Kaz is abducted by the man hiring him for the job and shown the terrifying results of the drug first-hand. They could easily stage it as a mini-prequel to him presenting the commission to the remaining Crows, as we saw here.

While we’re at it, hopefully they’ll avoid shoehorning Nikolai’s ongoing arc and whatever they’ve got planned for Alina into the mix. My trepidation is based simply what I mentioned at the start of this season: because of the shitty way Netflix is currently handling its myriad of shows, we’re having to watch a highly truncated version of seven books into three seasons, which is obviously not doing anyone justice, and adding a sheen of desperation to how the story is unfolding (though I concede Covid played its part as well).

Having assembled a fantastic cast and grade-A production values, it’s a shame to watch everything get as chopped and changed as it has been, with episodes gliding over scenes from the books that were rich for development and depth, and wholesale new storylines inserted into episodes. We’re not going to get the chance to see this IP adapted again any time soon, and all anyone really wants is for it to be done well.

I want to keep eating the cheesecake, and I don’t even care that it’s exploded all over the floor. But it’s difficult not to yearn for what might have been had Heisserer been given the time and space he needed to properly adapt this complex work of fiction.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I ended up liking the quasi-love triangle between Mal, Alina and Nikolai, mostly because the boys were given the chance to become friends (in the books, they barely interacted). Yet here, after Nikolai initially breezes past Mal, they get on a first-name basis, win each other’s respect, and ultimately hug it out. The scene in which Mal quietly hands over Alina’s wellbeing to Nikolai in the event of his death was surprisingly affecting.

That said, I still wasn’t completely won over by Patrick Gibson. I don’t want to be a dick about it, but he didn’t really channel the spirit of Nikolai as I imagined him: a more fox-like appearance with redder hair (there’s a reason he’s often referred to as the “too-clever fox”, a character of Ravkan folklore) and with an endless river of charm pouring through him to offset his arrogance, which in turn conceals deep reservoirs of insecurity.

He needed a silver tongue, a smile that could make you feel you’d follow him to the end of the earth, and charisma to spare. Gibson’s take on the character had the appearance of charisma, but not the real thing. Too much effort was going into his devil-may-care attitude, and too often it comes across as smarm. His magnetism should have been lethal and instead it was lukewarm. Sorry.

Turns out I wasn’t entirely sure what the difference between a pirate and privateer was. Apparently the latter’s activities are formally sanctioned by the government, which is why Sir Francis Drake was never referred to as a pirate.

There are a few narrative loose ends that were raised only to be dropped. Baghra ponders that her father might still be alive, Alina keeps floating the possibility that she could form an army of light to combat Kirigan’s shadows, and of course that whole plan about how they might ensure that Mal can be brought back from the dead – none of it comes to anything, and I wonder if this was a casualty of a Covid-ridden production.

At one point Kirigan says of himself that he “was betrayed and almost died for it” and I wonder if this was a nod to his original tragic backstory. The show depicts his grief and bitterness stemming from a fridged girlfriend, though Bardugo’s canon has him befriend a young girl who then tries to kill him for his amplification abilities so that she might better protect her younger sister. It’s all very sad, and it was a pity to see it changed.

Speaking of backstories, I really think the story of Morozova should have been dramatized. It’s difficult to really connect with the grief and guilt Baghra endured, not to mention the centuries worth of life she’s dragged herself through, without a visual representation of these events. Even if it was just a brief rendering of the false narrative that grew around the family’s tragedy, one that gives way to a depiction of the real events as they happen. I’m imagining something like the retelling of the Deathly Hallows in the last Harry Potter movie, which would have worked well here, for the sake of clarity if nothing else.

For the record, there were two f-bombs dropped this season: the first when Adrik is having his severed hand tended to (fair enough) and the second when Pekka Rollins defends himself in Hellgate prison (also understandable). Still, I was little surprised to hear them.

There was limited Zoya in this season, and I heard somewhere it was because the actress was unavailable. As with a lot of things, it’s a shame, as they completely drop the thread that she and Kirigan had been in a sexual relationship with each other. That was of their own making, and nothing is done with it.

There were some fun running gags throughout this: people ducking away from Tolya’s sword, the guy using the privy onboard Nikolai’s ship, Mal being told not to touch the lever...

Last season, almost all of the Grisha subsets are represented in one capacity or another – except the Alkemi. That’s rectified here with the introduction of Vladim, who helps Kirigan with his amplifiers and whose whereabouts go completely unmentioned after he directs the General into the Fold. Good luck to you Vladim, wherever you are.

I still hate the effects used for Alina’s sun summoning. It should look like bright shafts of light, not the soft rippling of light on water. It just looks so weak and unsubstantial.

This may be an odd thing to commend a show on, but as far as I noticed, there were no recasts of any character, something which is becoming more and more prevalent these days. But the two main contenders – the Apparat and Pekka Rollins – were once more played by Kevin Eldon and Dean Lennox Kelly (I couldn’t tell you why, but these felt like the two most likely characters to get Other Darrined). They even brought back Sean Gilder for a single scene as Nikolai’s go-between, and Hugo Speer as Lieutenant Bohdan.

Was it just me, or was Danielle Galligan given extra padding to plump up her weight a bit? I recall there being a bit of controversy about that last season considering Nina is described as plus-size.

Did anyone recognize Fruzsi? She was Daemon Targaryen’s first wife in House of the Dragon, the one he clubs to death with a rock! I honestly wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t known going in, as she appears so much younger here.

A little detail I liked was when Kirigan was gathering his forces to him at the abandoned mansion, and he had the squallers creating a surrounding mist to keep the place concealed. I love it when mystical powers are used for day-to-day, practical purposes.

Every episode comes with a title card, and the best was by far the one featuring the six of crows – that is, six actual crows sitting on a sign together. The one with a knife in its beak is clearly Inej, and the latecomer that flies in is seemingly Nina, but the sixth is caught behind a window, trying to get out – Matthias. Nicely done, and makes me nervous all over again as to the proposed third season. By the time I finished my post on the first season, the second was already announced. There’s still nothing on the third this time around.

Avengers are assembled and just waiting for a heist