As someone who fell in love with the Grishaverse books after watching Season 1 of Shadow and Bone on Netflix, I can say that this last season had some unexpected turns as well as long-awaited ones.
First of all, I am warning you again, in case you missed the title, that this review contains A LOT of spoilers from both the show and the books. It will mostly be my feelings and opinions about how the season was similar to or different from the books.
If you are still reading, that means that you are aware of the spoiler risks.
SPOILER ALERT
Book Alina couldn’t use her brains, in my opinion. But I have to give it to the Show Alina, she had both the courage and the brains for the operation.
When I watched Season 1, I desperately needed Mal and Alina to be besties and not lovers, but after reading the books I started shipping them really badly.
For those of you who have not read the books, Nikolai and Mal are not besties as they are in the show. And I LOVE that the producers decided to make them BFFs. The actors’ bromance definitely has an impact on that.
The casting for Nikolai, Tolya, Tamar, and Wylan was truly amazing.
The real heart of the show was obviously the Crows. I know of so many people who wanted to skip all Shadow and Bone scenes to see the Six of Crows ones.
Matthias being in Hellgate for the whole season breaks my heart so badly that you can hear it shatter from a mile away. And Nina working so hard to get him out, melts my heart. I think everyone knew that Nina would not betray Kaz to save Matthias though, because she is smarter than that and she knows Kaz can help her save Matthias.
The funniest part of the season was Mal getting kidnapped without anyone realizing it. And when he finally escapes, people scold him for being missing.
Genya and David deserved better. Again, for those of you who have not read the books, since you can never see this on the show, I’ll tell you: David and Genya got married in the books. David eventually dies, but in The King of Scars we get a scene when he takes a break from reading and says: “If you upset my wife again, I will kill you where you stand.”
But the “you do not need fixing scene” and the beauty of the ring David made for Genya…
I was going to speak a little bit more about The King of Scars book, but I decided not to since there might be people who are considering reading the book (you definitely should). I have heard that there will be spinoffs (I AM DESPERATELY IN NEED OF THEM). I will talk about that when the spinoffs come out. If they decide to cancel them (and break my heart into a million pieces while doing so), I will write another blog about this.
We all love Ben Barnes, but Kirigan’s scenes were really boring, I’m not gonna lie. In the last episode though when he reached to stop the nichevo’ya from killing Alina got me to forget everything he did for 2 seconds… And when the scene between Kirigan and Baghra in episode 6… I felt in my bones that he truly did not want anything to happen to her.
Now, let me tell you how episode 6 killed me in every way possible. First, they gave us that Kanej scene, when we knew it was not real. But it was still heart-melting… Second, the blade lady came from nowhere and kicked our powerful characters’ butts, but then we learned that she is a saint, so it’s not some random person. Third, Kaz was just about to say something meaningful for the first time in his life and Inej stopped him by quoting him: “Hope is dangerous. It clouds your judgment.”
Crows saving the day in the last episode was everything to me. But the fact that Inej really left… They had this conversation at the end of Season 1, too, but this time we really saw her leave. I can’t hide that I am happy for her for chasing her dreams though. Kaz had to experience her absence to convince her to come back. Also, Tolya and Inej… At first, I was so shocked, I thought I misread it, but Tolya did say “I owe you my life” when Inej saved her in Episode 6 (he didn’t say it to Wylan).
I just realized that I did not say anything about Jesper or Wylan. They were not supposed to figure out Jesper’s powers until later, but I kind of liked that they did. The scene between Jesper and his mother was really sweet. Also, they could not have cast a better Wylan.
All that said, I am dying to see the spinoffs.