Season 2 of "Shadow and Bone" Is Great Fantasy Television
After a rather lackluster first season, the Netflix fantasy series finally finds its footing.
I’ll admit to being a little underwhelmed by the first season of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, the fantasy series based on the novels of Leigh Bardugo. It felt far too similar to so many of the other sub-par genre shows out there, and while I enjoyed the series, I wasn’t champing at the bit to see it continue. However, I decided to give the second season a try, and I am very glad that I did. It is better than the first in almost every way, evincing a stronger grasp of story and character, better special effects, and a richer and more complex set of storylines for each of the people we met in the first season.
The story in the second season mostly picks up where the first left off. Kirigan has managed to escape from the Fold, and he now has shadow creatures to aid him in his efforts to bring about the end of Ravka as it exists and raise the Grisha up from their downtrodden status to the heights of power they deserve. Meanwhile, our heroes–Alina and Mal, the Crows, Nina and Matthias–all have their own struggles and journeys, and all have their own part to play in opposing Kirigan and both down the Fold and stopping Kirgan once and for all. Ultimately, they are successful in their efforts, though there are many losses and more than a little heartbreak.
Indeed, while this season is heavy on the action–with flying ships, shadow monsters, and spectacular Grisha-led duels and battles–it really soars when it allows us to spend time with the characters, diving deep into the rich psychologies and backstories that were largely only hinted at in the first season. To take just one example, we finally get some insight into what makes Kaz Brekker really tick, and we learn why he has such a vigorous and enduring hatred for Pekka Rollins (not that one needs much of a reason to hate a bastard like Rollins). While Kaz’s newfound romantic feelings for Inej at times feel a little forced, they also make sense, and they do much to sand off some of his sharper edges even if, by the end, he isn’t fully capable of opening up to her in the way that she needs from a partner.
Unsurprisingly, I found the budding romance between sharpshooter Jesper and budding alchemist Wylan. As readers of this newsletter know very well, I’m a sucker for a queer love story, particularly if it’s within the context of an epic fantasy. It certainly helps that both Kit Young (Jesper) and Jack Wolfe (Wylan) have amazing chemistry together, with the former’s haughty swagger juxtaposing nicely with the latter’s shyer, more withdrawn mannerisms. You can feel the romantic tension buzzing between the two of them, and they are arguably the most complementary couple in the entire series. I truly can’t wait to see what more the series finds for them to do, whether in a potential season three or in a spinoff focused exclusively on the Crows, particularly since they seem able to bring out the best in one another.
However, this isn’t to say that the Alina/Mal storyline doesn’t also get an upgrade, because it does. To be perfectly honest, I found their scenes in the first season to be some of the most difficult to watch, because they felt like such a retread of so many other YA fantasies out there, while the Crows felt irreverent and fresh and exciting. This season, though, there’s a heavier, weightier feel to their romance, particularly once it becomes clear that Mal is even more vital to the efforts to destroy the Fold than anyone had ever thought possible. In fact, we learn that Mal is the mystical Firebird, the being who can act as an amplifier for Alina’s already considerable magical abilities, though doing so will require his death, a sacrifice that she, for obvious reasons, does everything in her power to avoid.
Like so many other characters in recent fantasy–I’m thinking here of Lyra and Will in HBO’s His Dark Materials–with great power and responsibility come great sacrifices. Ultimately, Mal does sacrifice his life with Alina’s help, and her cry of anguish at his death, and her part in it, is sure to move even the most stonehearted of viewers to tears. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), he’s brought back from the other side, though this isn’t quite the blessing it appears to be. Rather than finally being able to be together, Alina and Mal both have to admit that they are on separate paths in their lives, and so they part on friendly terms, with the former taking up her position as the power-behind-the-throne and Mal setting out to be a privateer.
This is why the ending of the season is, in my opinion, so fantastic. It would have been easy for the series to simply allow Alina and Mal to ride off together into the sunset, content that they have made Ravka safe for Grisha and undone the damage wrought by Kirigan. However, each of them realizes that their lives can’t be what they were before this whole adventure began. Mal was supposed to die in order for Alina to fulfill her destiny and, now that he has been brought back from the other side, he has to figure out what to make of a life in which she is no longer his lodestar. Like the best of fantasy fiction, Shadow and Bone shows us that there is no victory without sacrifice and, just as importantly, that the world can never go back to what it was before the adventure began. There are, as Frodo remarks in The Lord of the Rings, some wounds that are simply too deep to ever fully be healed.
And then, of course, there’s Kirigan himself. If there was one thing besides the Crows that I loved in the first season, it was Ben Barnes’ performance as the big bad. He’s the perfect person to play a role like this, with his brooding good looks hiding a wounded soul. While it is true that Kirigan has completely given into the darkness lurking in his soul, it’s easy to see why this would be the case. Faced with the repression of the Grisha for centuries, forced to adopt a new identity time after time, disowned and disdained by his own mother (who has her own set of traumas to work through), is it any wonder he turned into the villain of his own story? And, what’s more, he has a point when he tells Alina that, however much she might want to build a new world unshackled from the terrors and mistakes and horrors of the old, there will always be those who want to bring her down.
Though the Kirigan storyline is satisfactorily resolved by the end, there are still quite a few seeds sown for potential future seasons. The foiled assassination attempt that marks Nikolai’s coronation suggests that the conflict with Fjerda is far from over, and that the belligerent residents of that nation will stop at nothing to see their opponents in Ravka brought low. There’s also Matthias, who is now being held in a formidable prison and forced to fight for his life. Though his romance subplot with Nina has always felt ancillary to the main action of the series, I do truly like their meeting of opposites dynamic, and so I hope that we get to see some resolution of this, particularly since they both seem like genuinely good people.
As readers of this newsletter know, I love speculative fiction that grapples with weighty philosophical issues, and this is one area where the second season of Shadow and Bone truly shines over the previous one. Among other things, the series uses the finale to really flesh out the aftermath of victory. Yes, Alina has managed to defeat Kirigan and destroy the Fold, but her work is far from over. Like the heroes of the best epic fantasies–I’m thinking in particular of The Lord of the Rings, of course–the real heavy work begins after the initial quest is finished. Not only does she have to say a (hopefully temporary) farewell to Mal; she also has to take up her place as one of the key figures in Ravkan politics. For his part, Mal also has to decide what he wants to be, now that he no longer has to twist himself into knots in order to serve Alina and her significantly grander destiny.
Even the Crows have their own weighty issues to deal with. Among other things, Jesper has to contend with the fact that he is a Grisha, as well as his residual grief over the loss of his mother, who sacrificed her own life to save that of another. There’s a sensitivity to Kit Young’s performance, and he frequently allows us to see the softness behind the bravado. These emerge most clearly in his interactions with Wyland, who he tends to treat like a fragile little bird. Kaz likewise has to make peace with his past–particularly his brother’s death and his residual guilt over it–if he is to have any hope of moving forward into a future, with or without Inej.
And then there’s the politics of this season as a whole. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Shadow and Bone is a conservative show, but it certainly does express a healthy dose of skepticism–one might even say cynicism–about the value of the kind of revolutionary political vision espoused and pursued by Kirigan and his acolytes. For them, the Grisha have for too long been regarded as a subaltern class and, since no one is inclined to make their lot any better, it’s up to them to try to reshape the world in their own image. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with revolutions both real and fictional, they ultimately become the very kinds of monsters they sought to defeat, and the series asks us as viewers to celebrate with Alina and her allies when they at last attain their hard-fought victory.
Now, it remains to be seen whether Alina’s stated mission to remake Ravka will bear fruit or whether, as was the case with Kirgan, she’ll find herself having to make moral compromises in order to bring it about. Hopefully, this is territory that will be further explored if the series is fortunate enough to get a third season (as of now, Netflix hasn’t yet decided on the show’s fate, waiting to see how well it performs before giving it the greenlight). If this season showed us anything, it’s that there is a rich philosophical vein to this story, one that is worthy of further elaboration.
The second season of Shadow and Bone also showed us that there is a great deal more to this sprawling world than we ever thought possible. Thankfully, the creators decided to give us a map, so that it was much easier to orient ourselves in this world (like far too many other fantasy series, Shadow and Bone’s first season did not include a map, which is, in my opinion, a necessary part of any fantasy show). It also gives us so many fascinating secondary characters whose storylines hint at much deeper lives. Whether it’s the fascinating (and very fun) twins Tamar and Tolya or the tragic Genya (whose beloved David is killed by one of Kirigan’s shadow monsters) these are more than just fantasy stock characters but instead fully-developed creations. More of them, please!
All of this is a long way of saying that I absolutely loved this season of Shadow and Bone. In an era when so much of Netflix’s content tends to be a flash or the pan or painfully unexceptional (or, in the case of The Witcher: Blood Origin, quite simply bad), it’s nice to see that there is still something worth staying subscribed for. Let’s just hope that they see the wisdom of making the most of the Grishaverse.