shadow and bone Season 2 may have just landed on Netflix, but showrunner Eric Heisserer has been telling news week about his plans for the future of the franchise.
The new episodes adapt the second and third books in Leigh Bardugo’s original titled trilogy siege and storm And fall and rise or you also accept items Six crows And Crooked Kingdombut leave out one important plot line from the beloved works.
Fans of Bardugo’s books will recognize that the show has one built Six crows Spin-off centered on the crows’ raid on the ice rink in Fjerda. The storyline features Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter), Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman), Jesper Fahey (Kit Young), Wylan Hendricks (Jack Wolfe), Nina Zenik (Danielle Galligan) and Matthias Helvar (Calahan Skogman). According to Heisserer, this is intentional.
The second season of the series ends with Kaz telling Jesper, Wylan and Nina about a new job they’ve been given, which will involve rescuing a Grisha from the impenetrable fortress of Fjerdan. The Grisha has developed a drug called Jurda Parem which increases a Grisha’s powers tenfold but is also very dangerous as seen in the finale.
“If we can prevail because there are a lot of mouths to feed, it’s best to allow us to do so Six crows as a standalone season and really spend time with those characters,” Heisserer said.
The Ravkan contingent, as Heisserer describes them, includes characters like Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson), Zoya Nazyalensky (Sujaya Dasgupta), Mal Oretsev (Archie Renaux), and others who stayed in Ravka.
The showrunner explained that Season 3 of shadow and bone largely contemporaneous with which would take place Six crows spin-off, and the last scene of the finale is of particular relevance.
He explained: “These storylines will at least overlap a bit because there’s a scene in season 2 that ends up essentially on the same night as Hringkälla [an annual event in Fjerda] Six crows will take place at that time.
“But then it goes from there, and the fun will be knowing when these characters can cross-pollinate again and when we can kind of do that Avengers unite all against a common, great enemy.”
“The Thanos of the Grishaverse is a well-kept secret that we look forward to if we ever get the chance,” Heisserer said, adding that the villain they’ve chosen will be one familiar to fans of the books will be with, but he would not elaborate further.
Season 2 of shadow and bone is also preparing to adjust the next season king of scars Duology from Bardugo’s franchise, centered on Nikolai’s rule over Ravka and his struggle with a dark secret.
The books also focus on Zoya, and Heisserer praises Dasgupta: “I hope she’s ready for this because she’s going to be a pillar of this story.”
Fans may also be wondering exactly how the Crows will get along without Inej, who in the show ends season two by heading out to sea to attack slave ships that may know her brother’s whereabouts.
Heisserer was quick to reassure viewers that the Wraith won’t be separated from the crew for long: “The scene on the Volkvolny [ship] with Inej chasing the slave ship happens many weeks before Kaz’ voiceover, so in case one Six crows Storyline Inej will be back with the team pretty quickly and we’ll get a sense of how the timeline has changed and what happened.”
Season 2 also did something fans might have been expecting: It used a big storyline Crooked Kingdomthe second book in the Six crows duology. This was Kaz’s revenge plan against Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly), who cheated on him and his brother Jordie as children and left them to die.
Heisserer explained that using the storyline was “the result of hundreds of hours of discussion with the author’s room” and was not a decision they made lightly.
“I don’t think I can really sum up all these hours of intense discussion and debate,” he said. “But I can give you the highlights, which is that we knew they would face the consequences of Pekka Rollins’ betrayal in Season 1, and we also knew they were going to have trouble with Dreesen [Sean Gilder]and all of that gave us the ingredients for the kind of consequences they had to face in season 2.
“For the kind of stories we’ve researched that have Kaz versus Pekka Rollins, we found after a lot of trial and error that we were basically just treading water. We just ran on the spot for these characters because we were worried about changing something later that would make us too late or too early in their development.
“We’ve also found that they’re held in place in such a way that they’re essentially on a break to jump into one Six crows Storyline meant the characters didn’t grow at all. There were no arcs and our poor actors would say, “Why? I’m the same person I am at the end of the season and at the beginning’, and you never want to hear that.”
He continued, “When we realized that we needed to pay off and move the story forward with Pekka and Kaz, and that it should mean something – and we also needed to explore Kaz’s trauma for a thematic unit [and] his backstory, which is also deeply connected to Pekka – it felt best for us to use a canon story that happens in Crooked Kingdom.
“But we only took this step after knowing what we would do in either case Crow And Crooked Kingdom stories if we were ever given the privilege of exploring them.”
It may not have been an easy decision for the writers, but they have already considered how she could shape the future of the characters in the franchise.
Heisserer admitted, “There was obviously that little panic in the back of our mind, ‘are we ever going to get there Crooked Kingdom? Maybe, maybe not.’ So this might be our only attempt at investigating that.
“But when we get there, oh my god, The Wrath of Kahn even [story of] Pekka from Hellgate [prison] and killing all the crows on a damn bend is going to be great.”
shadow and bone Season 2 is available now on Netflix.
