shadow and bone is officially back for its second season, and the epic fantasy does a great job bringing Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels back to life.
In Season 2, Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and Mal Oretsev (Archie Renaux) are on the run, but they are soon brought back into the fight to save Ravka. They team up with Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson) to find the two boosters Alina needs to increase her powers and defeat General Kirigan, aka The Darkling (Ben Barnes).
Meanwhile, the Crows – Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter), Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman) and Jesper Fahey (Kit Young) – with the help of Nina Zenik (Danielle), begin plotting revenge against Ketterdam crime boss Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly). Galligan) and Wylan Hendricks (Jack Wolfe).
The show adapts both siege and storm And ruin and rise, and it takes storylines from the Six crows Duology, but it also has several Easter eggs that are so subtle that even fans of the Grishaverse might not notice. Here’s everything you need to know.
Warning: This article contains some spoilers for Shadow and Bone Season 2
After Alina and her cohort’s battle against General Kirigan, aka Darkling (Ben Barnes), ends in the villain’s death, the characters stand up and stand guard while his body is incinerated in the remains of the Shadowfold.
While standing at the pyre with Alina and Genya Safin (Daisy Head), Zoya Nazyalensky (Sujaya Dasgupta) punches away a bumblebee that approaches her.
However, this is no ordinary bumblebee, but an Easter egg that will mark the show’s potential third season. The bumblebee is part of Elizaveta, or Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses, a saint living in the king of scars duology.
In the books, Elizaveta is trapped in the Shadow Fold alongside Saint Grigori and Juris, and she explains how she and her fellow Saints were there when the Darkling was burned. That blink-and-you’ll miss moment in the TV show is a clue.
At the start of the season, Kirigan confronts Alina and tells her how he’s lived a thousand lifetimes, had countless names, and had to reinvent himself after each rebirth, while trying to tell her that she should realize that they are alike.
The Darkling also explains that he was once a frightened little boy, and this is a reference to a titled short story written by Bardugo The demon in the forest.
The prequel, which was also released as a graphic novel, follows the Darkling as a child when he was almost killed by a girl he thought was his girlfriend.
The Grisha girl had realized that the Darkling had the ability to amplify powers and so wanted to kill him to use his bones as an amplification.
Another Easter egg, paving the way for a future third season, took place in the finale when Zoya and Genya met with Alina before Nikolai’s coronation.
They enter Alina’s room while Nikolai is talking to her, and as the prince leaves to leave, Zoya remarks that he is a “mess” but that she can “fix” him.
This is a subtle nod to the events of the king of scars Duology where Zoya helps Nikolai with a dark secret he has a hard time hiding.
Barnes spoke along news week about the events of the show’s new season and in particular about the way his character met his death.
The Darkling’s final words are different from Bardugo’s books, and that was because Barnes had suggested new lines that he felt better suited the character’s arc in the TV show.
Explaining why he made the suggestion, the actor revealed a key scene that doesn’t appear again in the finale, which would have paved the way for the shocking twist that Season 2 ends with.
About this change, he told News Week: “For me it was just about maintaining a tenderness in the moment because there is tenderness in the books that she is the only person who knows his real name, which I always thought was very beautiful.
“But that was something they shared very early on in season one. [The writers] thought of calling him the Darkling from the start, show your hand with the rogue aspect […] So that was just a different topic, but I wanted to keep a tenderness, so something that felt the same, that felt between them.
“And Eric [Heisserer, the showrunner] had written this paragraph about “making sure there’s nothing left of me,” and I thought that was a really beautiful realization, a kind of deathbed realization: “I admit that I blinked and took it too far, and maybe you can be the one to fix it your way. Maybe I was wrong.'”
“Then there’s this wonderful irony in the fact that he wasn’t at all wrong about her and where she might go,” Barnes continued. “I think you always have to hope that you can pursue your agenda without manipulation or violence, but some things are near impossible without them and I think he still helped make that happen.
“There’s this irony that they took a little bit of each other, that little bit of each other in season one when they had the amplifier ceremony, that little bit they kept of each other.
“I like to think that’s highlighted, the hopeful boy in him, being able to love, forgive and understand. She helped him understand his shortcomings in the end, but then he left with her a piece of him that he could never make her understand with words: that it will be impossible to achieve what you want to achieve without to show your almighty hand.”
