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Shadow and Bone Season 2 Review

The second season of Shadow and Bone is an improvement upon the original. It is still difficult to follow, but hugely entertaining and well developed in its characters.

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“There is a cost, always, to making difficult choices

The key is making sure that cost is not regret“

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Let’s first start on the negative note. Once again, the show is quite difficult to follow for non-fans. It apparently adapts two books in this series, which must be maddening for fans of the source material, but extra frustrating for those of us who did not read the books as we cannot follow it properly. The show has a huge cast of characters and so many different subplots and threads that connect to each other, but at first feel disparate from each other. This all leads to a lot of confusion, especially in the first half of this season’s run.

The second half definitely improved on many things, though. For one, the disparate threads finally coalesced into a coherent whole with the exception of Nina and Matthias. I love these two characters as their romance was quite charming and one of the highlights of the first season, but unfortunately here they are sidelined and not connected to the main story whatsoever. What fared even worse in this subplot is the addition of the Pekka Rollins character into this mixture as he was an overly unrealistic villain.

But going back to the positives, the second half of this run became truly epic. The penultimate episode features basically an all-out war, but one that is magically-fueled, which as a huge fan of real magic in my fantasy fiction I highly appreciated. This is what I want to see from fantasy IPs – real magic and not just period pieces. This season delivered on that promise as it features a lot more VFX and action than its predecessor that somewhat lacked in those areas.

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Alina is just as annoying as she was before and in that powerful, ambiguous ending of the season it is revealed that she might go dark in the next season, which I am in favor of as the character already has some unlikable personality traits, so she would be perfect in the role of a villain. Her romance with Mal definitely took a lot of the screen time from other characters and it saw a predictable conclusion, but at least he was given a more heroic and proactive role to accompany hers. This is how you do male characters in today’s films and shows – make them heroic in their own right without making them puppets to the female heroes.

As for Kirigan, he’s just as menacing and memorable as he was before, but the problem here was that he met such an untimely, rushed end that frustrated me to no end. The final episode was overall quite anti-climactic, but it thankfully introduced new plot elements for the next season, which saved it. The penultimate episode was the highlight for me. I also really liked his mother as one of the most interesting side characters of the season.

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As for the Crows, they finally connected their subplot to the main storyline. They are the heart and soul of Shadow and Bone and all are well developed and interesting. Kaz got a very moving backstory that deepened his character, Inej is especially cool in her action scenes whereas Jesper and Wylan are a fun new couple who steal the show with their amusing dynamic. Nikolai is also superb and one of the most purely likable personalities on the show.