🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
The Shadow Fold falls at last — and so does the Darkling. But those are just two of, like, 50 crazy things that happen in the Shadow and Bone Season 2 finale, which includes some major developments in the story of Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and General Kirigan (Ben Barnes). It also introduces some significant concepts from the Shadow and Bone book series (does the word triumvirate ring a bell?) and includes the dispersal of the rest of the gang throughout the Grishaverse. Oh, and no big deal, but Alina uses the Cut — and it looks very different than what you’d expect from a Cut from the Sun Summoner.
“What is the Cut,” you ask? Still making sense of all of those epilogue-like endings? Unsure what jurda parem is and why its use causes an entire room of people to vomit blood and collapse? Read on to learn all about those things and to find out where your favorite characters end up in Shadow and Bone Season 2.
Alina and Mal (Archie Renaux) spent much of the season searching for the two amplifiers that would help harness the Sun Summoner’s powers to take down the Fold. (They already tracked down the stag amplifier in Season 1.) While they manage early on to find and kill the ice dragon Rusalye, aka the sea whip, it takes them until the end of the season to realize that the final amplifier, the firebird, is actually Mal. He — along with Baghra and the Darkling — is a descendant of the powerful Grisha Morozova, who originally created the amplifiers. In order to access the power of the firebird, Alina would have to kill Mal. Alina refuses to do so at first, but she ultimately does when she realizes it’s the only way to destroy the Fold.
After the Fold falls, Kirigan begs Alina to let him live. “There’s no light without darkness… let me carry the hatred of this world,” he implores. But once the Sun Summoner realizes that the Darkling can’t control his shadow monster army — or “any of it,” really — she determines that he has to die, too. And with him dies the nichevo’ya and the Fold itself.
Barnes tells Tudum that in preparing for his Shakespearean final scene, he tried to “squeeze some of the tenderness” from Alina and Kirigan’s relationship in the books. “There’s this misinterpretation of [their] magnetism,” Barnes says, explaining that trying to “find the humanity and those dark, murky gray areas that exist between them in those last moments was something I was very interested in.”
But, he adds, “It was also very hot.” Like, literally. Li says of her experience filming the emotional scene, “I don’t really remember much from that week. It was so hot. [I was] wearing black in the baking sun!”
After Alina harnesses the firebird power, she enlists Heartrender Nina (Danielle Galligan) to help heal Mal, who’s, you know, dead. This means he’s beyond healing, so Alina uses the unpredictable and powerful form of magic known as merzost to resurrect her love. Cool as that is to do, let’s not forget that merzost is the type of magic that Morozova used to disastrous effect and is what the Darkling used to create the Shadow Fold.
Prince (and soon to be king) Nikolai (Patrick Gibson) is fighting one of Kirigan’s shadow monsters when the Darkling is killed and the Fold falls. Later, while preparing for his coronation ceremony and after a tense encounter with the Apparat (Kevin Eldon), Nikolai feels a sharp pain in his shoulder where he was wounded by the nichevo’ya; he takes off his shirt, revealing a wound that’s pierced through his body and is pulsing with dark magic. When Nikolai looks at himself in the mirror, instead of his reflection, he sees a shadow monster. It seems that a piece of the Darkling’s magic is left inside Nikolai from the fight, a detail book readers may remember from Leigh Bardugo’s King of Scars novel.
“He feels and senses that there’s something off,” Gibson tells Tudum, but “he has a real obligation to keep up appearances at all times, just because of his position and who he is. And at the end, after having been impaled by one of the Darkling’s shadow monsters, there’s definitely some black magic gone into him.”
Nikolai’s costuming in the scene reflects his latest supernatural struggle. His coronation suit is embroidered with Ravka’s traditional double eagle symbol. But there’s also a sharp edge incorporated into the design, which is reminiscent of Kirigan’s kefta. Even Nikolai’s clothing can’t escape the Darkling.
Book readers will know the words jurda parem, but for the uninitiated, it’s an extremely addictive drug that enhances the power of Grisha by the power of 1,000. It’s integral to the events of Bardugo’s Six of Crows book.
In the final moments of the finale, a strung-out looking Fjerdan interrupts Nikolai’s coronation and strikes down everyone present, causing them to vomit blood and collapse. She’s clearly under the influence of jurda parem — but she’s no match for Alina, who uses the Cut to slice her in half.
The Sun Summoner might have some shadow inside her now, too, because the Grisha magic Alina summons for her Cut is definitely dark.
“Reading the script, I was like, ‘No way are they going there. They’re going there!’ That was really cool,” Li says. The practicalities of filming the scene were just as intense as the final product, too. “It was a very stressful day on set. It’s quite funny — in that slow-mo where I get up to do the Cut, it looks like my blood’s about to burst in my face.”
In the books, the triumvirate is a group of three people who lead the Ravkan Second Army after Alina resigns from the position. In the show, Alina recruits Zoya (Sujaya Dasgupta) and Genya (Daisy Head) to command the Grisha forces alongside her. Zoya is now in charge of Grisha training — now that Baghra is gone, “we need another spicy lady in that role,” Head tells Tudum — while Genya ensures the palace is a safe haven for all Grisha. “Genya will be very good at that,” says Head. And it’s nice for her to be able to concentrate on something new and productive, considering she’s now mourning the death of her love, David (Luke Pasqualino).
The Sturmhond lives on — Nikolai bestows the title upon Mal, who’s now the privateer in charge of Nikolai’s fleet. He sets off on the Hummingbird with Tamar (Anna Leong Brophy) and Tolya (Lewis Tan) at the helm and Nadia (Gabrielle Brooks) and Inej (Amita Suman) on board. Inej split from the Crows in order to hunt down the slaver who kidnapped her and her brother as children.
“The thing that shocked me the most when reading the script was probably that she leaves by the end of the season,” Suman tells Tudum. “Obviously that was quite strange, but also wonderful to see because that’s suggested at the end of Crooked Kingdom. So to do that part at this stage, I was like, ‘Oh hang on. I haven’t gone through everything in the books as of yet.’ But I like the fact that she’s finally gone to save her family.”
Kaz (Freddy Carter) and his crew — Jesper (Kit Young) and now Wylan (Jack Wolfe) and Nina — are back in Ketterdam at the rightfully renamed Crow Club when Kaz informs them of their newest heist. And it all has to do with jurda parem…
Nina has tried repeatedly to get her love Matthias (Calahan Skogman) free from the Kerch prison Hellgate, but her last attempt is her most futile yet. She has a pardon for Matthias in hand, but not only does Dime Lions leader Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly) see and ignore her, he also has her dragged out of the building kicking and screaming. She manages to catch Matthias’ attention, but is it too late to save him now that he’s fighting the guards?
Hard to say yet, but there’s one thing we know: It’s not too late for Pekka to have made a new enemy. “We officially have a motive with the Pekka hatred, which isn’t covered in the books,” Skogman says of his character’s vendetta against the Dime Lions leader that plays out in Bardugo’s books. “Now there’s a huge momentum for that revenge he’s going to want to seek on him.”
Additional reporting by Ariana Romero.
Shadow and Bone is streaming on Netflix.
