Shadow and Bone Season 2 Review: Crammed But Fun (Also WESPER)

 

Shadow and Bone season 2
Shadow and Bone. (L to R) Lewis Tan as Tolya, Anna Leong Brophy as Tamar, Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov, Archie Renaux as Malyen Oretsev, Patrick Gibson as Nikolai in episode 202 of Shadow and Bone. Cr. Dávid Lukács/Netflix © 2023
I don’t consider myself a book purist, and I actually liked the changes they made to the first season. But I feel like Shadow and Bone Season 2 tried to cram too much into one season. Not only did the second season finish the original trilogy, fitting Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising into the same amount of episodes they used to adapt Shadow and Bone, but it also contained quite a lot of the plot of Crooked Kingdom. Each episode was about fifteen minutes longer than in season 1, which helped, but I still wish they would have held something back. Still, Shadow and Bone Season 2 was a lot of fun, it handled the introduction of some fan-favorite characters very well, and it laid the groundwork for both a potential third season and spinoff.

I’ll admit that I was a little skeptical when I learned they planned to adapt both Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising in Shadow and Bone Season 2. I knew they intended to pull elements from the third book, but it wasn’t until the soundtrack listing and episode titles were released that I realized it was going to be the full plot. Fitting two books into the same amount of episodes that previously adapted one felt like a really big ask. And honestly, if it had just been those two books, I think they would have handled it nicely.

But because they introduced the Crows early, there had to be something for them to do. And so that meant they had to pull from the Six of Crows duology, using most of the plot of the second book to help deal with the mess waiting for Kaz, Inej, and Jesper back in Ketterdam. As they also planted the seeds for the Ice Court heist – the plot of Six of Crows – I’m interested to see how they intend to resolve that story in the planned spinoff, considering the vendetta against Pekka is how it happens in the books. And they rushed through that in about three episodes, kind of ruining a lot of the big moments from that plot, and what happened had no buildup, so the payoff wasn’t as satisfying.

What we got in Shadow and Bone season 2 was a mishmash of story arcs and timelines that put people in very different places than I expected them to be. Sometimes this worked in the show’s favor; sometimes it did not. I’m not going to argue with the decision, though, since Netflix has a penchant for cancelling shows after two seasons, and I’d rather we get a semi-definitive ending than a cliffhanger.

Overall, I enjoyed this season (especially the Jesper/Wylan bits). The score is fantastic (I’ve been listening to it for days). The costumes are gorgeous (oh my god, Mal’s leather jacket??? I died). They really nailed the casting for this show – Patrick Wilson (Nikolai/Sturmhond) and Jack Wolfe (Wylan) were two I thought were exceptionally well-cast. But, really, everyone nailed it out of the park this season; there was some amazing acting. (Ben Barnes when the Darkling killed Baghra? That was top-notch.)

Oprah handing out action sequences was something I loved – Jesper gunslinging, Inej’s rooftop fight (and Inej with a magic sword!), even Kaz going crazy with his cane, these were all things I needed to see. I also really liked the map animation they employed to show where everyone was in relation to each other. On a similar note, I really liked getting to see more of the world. Novyi Zem was not how I expected it (I always thought it would be more American West), and I’m glad they went to Shu Han even if I felt like their reason for doing so was kind of dumb.

I spent much of my season 1 review comparing the show to the books. You all have to know that it’s going to happen again in this review. Considering the changes they made, it will be virtually impossible for me not to comment on it.
Shadow and Bone season 2