Season 2 of the fantasy hit is at its best when she forgets about her boring main characters

Season 2 Shadow and Bone – Legends of Grisha unleashes the ultimate battle between light and dark on Netflix: sun warrior Alina must defeat “the dark one” Kirigan by defeating his shadow corridor and shadow monsters. Sounds like exciting fantasy? It would be if the main characters of the series didn’t lose their appeal compared to a small gang of thieves. (Danger, Shadow and Bone season 2 spoilers.)

The true highlight of Shadow and Bone Season 2 are the crows

In Season 2 of Shadow and Bone, light guide Alina (Jessie Mei Li) and tracker Mal (Archie Renaux) carry the burden of the plot on their shoulders: To defeat General Kirigan (Ben Barnes) and destroy the darkness in the land, they embark on the search for more power multipliers that should increase Alina’s power. But even if their heroic journey takes them across the map of the continent, the main characters are on the spot in their character development. Because now that they have found each other as lovers and Alina accepts her powers, neither of them show a new side in Season 2. And that also reduces interest in their heroic deeds.

It looks completely different with the series return of the crows: the thieves from Ketterdam have as secondary characters have nothing to do and still score points with every appearance. As a world savior, Alina competes for the attention of the public. In the first 4 episodes of Season 2, the five criminals only pursue a personal vendetta. Still, it’s their names that stick in your mind:

Season 2 is a Battle of actors and sympathizers. One that Alina, Mal, and Kirigan can only lose against the crows. I find myself waiting longingly for the gang of thieves to appear in every episode. Shadow and Bone now has over 15 key characters in the cast, all vying for my attention. As with speed dating, they have to succeed in convincing me in just a few scenes. The six criminals manage this because they don’t tell me at length about their daily routine like Alina, but instead allow me a glimpse into their souls.

Why the crows in Shadow and Bone shine brighter than any sun warrior

Because the Season 2 takes advantage of the Crows’ “idleness” to shaping them into characters with rough edges. Instead of a journey through Ravka, the gang of thieves experience a journey inside. After all, series as narrative formats lasting several hours are made for this: to really get to know characters.

Take stone-cold mastermind Kaz Brekker as an example: actor Freddy Carter likes that “most satanic face since Jack Nicholson” have , but Shadow and Bone manages to hide him behind that intriguing facade charged with conflicting emotions. I shudder when the “bastard from the barrel” ruthlessly takes down a group of enemies with his walking stick and uses children buried alive in the cemetery as leverage against their parents. At the same time, I feel for him when the history of his walking disability slowly unfolds as a past trauma and reveals why human touch is so unbearable for him.

Heroine Alina can only dream of such complexity even when she unexpectedly directs shadows in the season finale. General Kirigan fares even worse, shedding his season 1 ambivalence like a snake’s skin. But the pattern of pure villain that emerges underneath is duller than before.

The other crows, on the other hand, have characteristics like Kaz, which sometimes present themselves as strengths and sometimes as weaknesses – be it Jesper’s denial of his Grisha power, Wylan’s illiteracy, Nina’s desperate love for the witch hunter Matthias and Inej’s religious struggle with her talent for killing. If everyone is fascinating on their own, then the air burns as soon as everyone meets with their ambivalent facets. A café scene full of slanted looks and raised eyebrows suddenly becomes more exciting than any destruction of the shadowy corridor.

Shadow and Bone meets Six of Crows: Netflix’s free riders are preparing their own series

The crow’s mission to find a magic sword for Alina in the second half of the season does not exist in the novels. The excursion to the neighboring country obviously only exists to give the crows something to do. And even this excursion is used to delve deeper into the desires and pasts of the thieves in a hallucinogenic gas chamber. It’s obvious that Shadow and Bone is itself more interested in the crows than anyone else. And this despite the fact that the criminals actually stole their place in the series.

Anyone familiar with Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books has long known that the gang of thieves does not appear in Alina’s story. Showrunner Eric Heisserer was a declared fan of the crow saga *. When Netflix approached him with a film adaptation of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, he initially turned it down. Only when the streaming service also secured the rights to the spin-off novels did they come to an agreement. Instead of waiting for a later appearance, the series integrated Kaz and Co. as free riders in season 1.

The big master plan shimmered through from the start, it could soon come true: if the 2nd season of Shadow and Bone is successful on Netflix, that will also come alongside season 3 Series spin-off Six of Crows. In the best-case scenario, this will be a win-win situation for both sides: Alina, as the shadow guide, can once again become the mistress of her own series and may even get real character development again. And the crows, already created in three dimensions, finally get their own real story adaptation of the novel when they break into the witch hunters’ fortress of Fjerdas.

I already know which of the two series I’m looking forward to more.

Neflix Fantasy in Podcast: What Wednesday Season 2 needs to do better

Wednesday is one of the most successful and popular series of recent years. A second season has already been confirmed by Netflix. Nevertheless, there is criticism – especially from the leading actress Jenna Ortega herself. The series was apparently shot under great time pressure. Hendrik Busch and Matthias Hopf discuss what needs to improve in season 2.

There are also shortcomings in terms of content: was the love triangle around Wednesday really appropriate? And does Wednesday even look like a series from master director Tim Burton Series?

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