How Shadow and Bone season 2's ending sets up an expanded Grishaverse
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Warning: This article includes major spoilers from Shadow and Bone season 2.
The custodians of the Grishaverse have big plans for the franchise, and some of the bigger beats begin to come to light with Shadow and Bone's season 2 finale.
Alina Starkhov (Jessie Mei Li) has finally banished the Shadow Fold and slain its maker, the Darkling, a.k.a. General Kirigan (Ben Barnes). But in major departures from the books, the happy ending is short lived. Many of the characters have embarked down divergent paths, and Alina's might be the darkest of them all.
Showrunners Eric Heisserer and Daegan Fryklind are still waiting to hear from Netflix whether they have the official go-ahead to proceed with the next phase of their growing TV franchise, but they sat down with EW to unpack how the season 2 ending is setting up a season 3 partly inspired by the book King of Scars, as well as a completely separate Six of Crows spin-off.
A new Shadow Summoner
courtesy netflix Ben Barnes' General Kirigan has seen better days in 'Shadow and Bone' season 2
Let's cut right to the chase and talk about the very last shot we get in Shadow and Bone season 2: Alina smirking, which normally is a good thing — but not in this context.
The coronation of King Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson) is interrupted by a Fjerdan Grisha assassin, whose powers have been tremendously amplified by a drug called jurda parem (more on that later). Everyone in the room collapses as they hack up blood, but Alina manages to kill their attacker. She summons the Cut but realizes only after the fact that she summoned shadow instead of light. As the Sun Summoner who just defeated the Darkling, that's not a good thing.
This aspect has its roots in the books, but with very different circumstances. Between the novels Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising, on which season 2 is largely based, Alina loses her Sun Summoner powers completely for a time after a fight with Kirigan. She also ends up gaining a piece of the Darkling's power and vice versa.
"We wanted to pivot, you know, keeping something but making it just radically different than expectation," Fryklind says.
This big change was also somewhat a business decision. Heisserer, half joking but half serious, adds, "This is the difference between running a show and writing a novel: you need to pay attention to who your stars are and if they're under contract. Of course, we didn't want to lose Jessie or Archie." (Archie Renaux stars as Mal.) "I wanted to make sure that they felt like they were important characters in the stories to come."
Alina and Mal end up marrying each other by the end of Ruin and Rising. Season 2, however, sends them off on separate paths. While Alina is realizing her newfound Shadow Summoning abilities, Nikolai names Mal the new Sturmhond. He takes the Hummingbird and hits the open ocean with Tamar (Anna Leong Brophy), Tolya (Lewis Tan), and Inej (Amita Suman).
A Six of Crows spin-off
Netflix The Crows gang in Netflix's 'Shadow and Bone' season 2
Let's circle back to the jurda parem. The drug is involved in the main storyline of Six of Crows, which is part of author Leigh Bardugo's duology of books expanding the Grishaverse. The story arc could now finally be adapted for the screen.
We learn from the season 2 finale that jurda parem is a highly addictive drug with the side effect of boosting a Grisha's power a thousand times over. The chemist who created the substance fled to Kerch but was captured by the Fjerdans, who are forcing him to stand trial. The fear is that Fjerda will now weaponize the drug and use it against its enemies. (Based on the season 2 finale, they already are.) That's why we see in the ending that the Crows have been hired to address the situation.
Heisserer confirms to EW that while the television scribes were developing Shadow and Bone season 2, he opened a separate writers' room to develop a Six of Crows spin-off series. At this stage, all eight of the season's episodes are written, and they are hoping Netflix will give them the green light. But it all depends on how well Shadow and Bone season 2 performs in the streaming ratings.
In terms of a timeline, the spin-off would line up with the ending of season 2. "A good chunk of what you see in the Crow's side story" would be happening simultaneously with the events of Nikolai's coronation, Heisserer confirms. He also clarifies that Suman's Inej would return for the spin-off. "Obviously, we're not gonna keep Inej out of that," he says. "We're gonna bring her back. So you understand then how many weeks it has been since she's been on the high seas and then returning to Ketterdam."
Read more about the Crows spin-off here.
Heisserer and Fryklind are also hoping to adapt the main events of Crooked Kingdom, the second book in the Crows duology, in some form. It's partly why they brought in Kaz's backstory with Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly) to the first half of season 2. "The only rule that we had internally was make sure we have something at least as strong, if not more exciting, for us to replace it whenever we move something around," Heisserer explains.
"Should we ever get to a Crooked Kingdom season, we will have something amazing to plug in," Fryklind teases.
Saints!
Netflix Jesse Mei Li as Alina Starkov in 'Shadow and Bone' season 2
Prior to the season 2 premiere, Heisserer told EW there was "a piece that's integral to the story" that Fryklind came up with. "I don't think the fans are gonna see that one coming 'cause it's a pretty deep cut," he teased at the time. That deep cut, the pair now confirm, was Sankta Neyar and her Neshyenyer sword.
In the books, Alina's Sun Summoning is the chief weapon against General Kirigan's nichevo'ya. In the show, it's not as effective at dispersing the shadow soldiers. Part of the reason is that the showrunners needed to find a way to incorporate the Crows back into the main storyline. "We got a few begs, I would say, from Netflix after seeing what worked in season 1," Heisserer explains. "That inclusion of the two groups together was a huge deal to them, it was a priority."
For inspiration, Fryklind turned to The Live of Saints, one of Bardugo's companion books that acts as a compendium of the triumphant tales of many saints of the Grishaverse. "Knowing where we're headed at the end of the season and into a hopeful season 3 of the Shadow and Bone mothership, it helps to know some of the saints," Fryklind remarks.
She came across one particular entry about Sankta Neyar, the patron saint of blacksmiths and a Grisha of the durast order. "There was a line that was about this blade that was so sharp it could cut shadow. And here we have these monsters: Kirigan has unkillable shadow monsters," Fryklind says. "So it just felt kismet."
Tuyen Do (Enola Holmes) appears as Sankta Neyar, who's leading a low-key life in Shu Han by the name of Ohval Saran. Under orders from Nikolai, Zoya (Sujaya Dasgupta) and Tolya task the Crows — Kaz (Freddy Carter), Jesper (Kit Young), Wylan (Jack Wolfe), Nina (Danielle Galligan), and Inej — with pulling off a heist to retrieve the Neshyenyer blade, which is unexpectedly protected by the saint who made it in the first place.
What is that bee all about?
Dávid Lukács/Netflix Inej (Amita Suman) and Zoya (Sujaya Dasgupta) in 'Shadow and Bone' season 2
Team Sun Summoner and Team Crows gather in the desert of what used to be the Shadow Fold to burn the remains of Kirigan's body, presumably so no Grisha could be tempted to use him as an amplifier. During the proceedings, a stray bee lands on Zoya's lapel and the Squaller promptly swats it away. It may seem like a random moment to highlight to anyone who hasn't read the books, but Heisserer and Fryklind confirm it foreshadows the events of King of Scars, a novel they are now looking to adapt in a potential season 3.
Together with Rule of Wolves, King of Scars is part of another Grishaverse duology written by Bardugo. Zoya and Nikolai are two characters that feature prominently.
The cover of King of Scars features imagery that alludes to specific saints that appear in the novel. The bees and rose flowers are a nod to Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses, who is famous in the world of Ravka for saving her town from raiders by using prayer to summon swarms of bees. "It is, for the book fans, a very pointed Easter egg that hopefully they notice and hopefully there's a squeal moment when they see it," Fryklind says of the bee on Zoya in the show.
Season 2's other big element that points to King of Scars is what Nikolai sees in the mirror as he readies for his coronation. His skin was pierced by a nichevo'ya in the battle against Kirigan's forces and now he's been infected by shadow. When he gazes into the mirror, he freaks upon seeing himself as a nichevo'ya — which links to the main plot of King of Scars.
The book sees Nikolai actually transforming into one of the nichevo'ya, but Fryklind explains, "We're more interested in the psychological aspect of being infected by this rather than the physical aspect. We're looking at an exciting next phase for this character, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde aspect."
Fryklind also notes something Zoya says when she's alone with Alina and Genya (Daisy Head): "Well, that one's a mess, but I could fix him," the Grisha utters as Nikolai walks away. "With luck, with the privilege of coming back for another season with the mothership, we'll be seeing a lot more of Zoya."
Expanding the books
courtesy netflix Mal (Archie Renaux) and Alina (Jessie Mei Li) set sail in 'Shadow and Bone' season 2
Based on where season 2 ends, the biggest implication for a potential third season is that Shadow and Bone can present brand-new stories from the Grishaverse that aren't from the source material at all. Heisserer confirms that's the goal should the show move forward.
"We did that a little bit with the prequel story for the Crows in season 1," he says. "And now we get to do that with some of the Shadow and Bone characters."
"Thankfully we're creating brand-new material for actors that we know and love and trust who will carry the water for us on this," he continues. "And it's weaving their story in with the King of Scars duology that we're already in love with, and what we think is going to come alive on screen from those. So it's a matter of stitching those in the way we've stitched in other characters in these first two seasons."
After their work on season 2, which heavily remixed elements from the books in unexpected ways, they have some confidence in that regard. Plus, they have the support of Bardugo herself.
When it came to the season 2 changes, Heisserer admits the author was a bit nervous about some of the bigger departures from the books. However, he says she came up with at least one of them. "Whether she recalls this or not now, I feel like it's going to end up in court records where Leigh's like, 'Did I?!' I don't think I did,'" Heisserer jokes. "We were really struggling to figure out how to build out the conflict between Kaz and Pekka in the early weeks of our season 2 writers' room."
He felt like the writers would veer too far away from the canonical events of the books that needed to incorporate or they were just treading water. "And then Leigh said, 'There's this whole storyline that I [have] between these characters,'" Heisserer recalls. That would be the Kaz-Pekka backstory laid out in Crooked Kingdom. "Sure enough, when we lifted that from Cooked Kingdom and put that in the first half of the season, everything suddenly came alive in the way that we wanted."
Even now, when the showrunners and writers hit a road block, they have Bardugo on speed dial. Heisserer remembers calling up the author while filming was underway in Budapest because he needed to fill out the front page of a prop Ketterdam newspaper. "I got a three-hour Ted Talk about the different religions, the different calendars, and this, that, and the other — and all of that then got translated into Kerch," he says. "Nobody's gonna notice, but we know it was there."
The future of the Grishaverse seems like it's in good hands.
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