As far back as August 2021, I watched the first season of the Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone and liked it. Now the second season is available, and though this is one of Netflix's more solid fantasy offerings (that I have seen, that is) I have to admit I'm a tad disappointed.
With the setup stage out of the way, I expected the second season to be better than the first. But after a spirited start with an enjoyable MacGuffin hunt, one of the main plotlines slowed down, while the other reached a questionable climax – and then slowed down too. The pace in the second half of the season was at times leaden, which is an unwelcome trend in newly-produced fantasy series.
Some problems from the first season which I had expected the second to get to grips with – like the story of the Crows from Ketterdam, a colourful band of rogues, and the one about sun-summoner Alina never integrating fully – remained. Even the first time around, I found the hour-long episodes a bit overlong, and now I noticed it even more. The series overall would have benefited from more and shorter episodes, where some scenes could easily have been sped up and/or trimmed down.
In some ways, though, things were changed up, but not always in a manner I liked. In the first season, I preferred the storyline involving the Crows to that of Alina, whose pining after her childhood friend Mal I found tiresome. This time around, I was less taken with the Crows. Not that there wasn't a lot going on with them at first, before they too were hit by mid-season inertia, but I didn't much care for their leader Kaz going full-out Monte Christo on his underworld rival Pekka Rollins.
It raises an interesting question, though: how dark can a protagonist we're expected to root for go? Kaz isn't meant to be a knight in shining armour, but nor is he meant to be a villain. Anti-hero is probably the best fit. But even anti-heroes are supposed to be distinguishable from villains.
I don't think it's just villain-loving souls like me who are fascinated by speculations on what villainous versions of our favourite heroes and heroines would be like. Writers are aware of it, but there's a reason plots advertised as exploring a hero's or heroine's dark side often turn out to be cop-outs, such as the seemingly villainous protagonist being under some spell, or just pretending to be bad, or being an evil doppelganger. Once a main player who's not supposed to be a villain has committed to the dark side, it's not so easy to pull them back again. "Good" characters rarely have the style and charisma of first-rate villains, but they are supposed to have the advantage of doing the right thing, or at least knowing what the right thing is. If they lose that advantage, what do they have left?
In Kaz's case, his behaviour reflects badly on his crew as well as they aren't really trying to hold him back. He starts off by blowing up his own club, now in Rollins's possession. That made me sit up and wonder "hello, isn't it likely people died because you wanted to make a point?", but the Crows never ask this question, though they are a little shaken by the destruction of property (Jesper laments his lost jackets).
The worst part of Kaz's plan, though, is that he uses the knowledge that Rollins has a small son against him. In a pivotal scene, he defeats Rollins by leading him to believe that Kaz has buried the boy alive and will only give away where he is in time for Rollins to save him if Rollins bends to his will. It's a deeply unpleasant scene, witnessed by Jesper, Kaz's best friend, and Nina, a relatively new recruit to the Crows. I expected one of them to give Kaz a piece of their mind afterwards and make it clear to him that he was out of line.
Nope, doesn't happen. Jesper is content as long as they don't really harm the boy, and also swallows Kaz's story of Rollins having "killed" his brother. The brother died of a disease carried in by one of Rollins's ships, which only makes him guilty of murdering Kaz's brother in Kaz's brain, but the Crow leader even gets away with a piece of his revenge motivation being wonky.
This is another problem with "the hero/heroine going dark" storyline. If the other good guys go along with it, then they too are compromised. I'm all for nuanced characterisations and stories not being about unblemished good vs irredeemable evil, but there is a line, in my opinion, which characters who aren't villains shouldn't cross – at least not without there being repercussions and regret. (Also, I believe at least some of my villain crushes would have balked at Kaz's tactics.)
Anyway, back to Alina. I had a lot more time for her part of the story this time around, mostly because of chief villain General Kirigan. Ben Barnes's Kirigan really grew on me during this season: he is darned attractive, and Alina plainly thinks so too. Her romance with Mal may still be a drag, and there isn't a lot of heat between her and a potential new love interest either (a dashing runaway prince who's taken up privateering – when Alina had to get engaged to him "for state reasons", I realised belatedly that the novelist Leigh Bardugo was probably a woman, which proved to be the case). But there's real chemistry between Alina and Kirigan. When other couple constellations where on screen, I tended to think "get a move on", but when Kirigan and Alina had one of their tête-à-têtes, the lack of pace didn't bother me one bit.
There are still things to enjoy in the series, then. As last time, I'm impressed with the world building, the costumes and settings are really appealing, Kirigan's a good villain, and Pekka Rollins isn't half bad either, though he sometimes seems to act like a bastard just for the heck of it. I found the juxtaposition of his Scottish accent and Finnish first name a nice touch: yeah, fantasy Finns are tough.
Alina's flirtation with dark forces, hinted at in the final scene, is more intriguing than Kaz's, and I have some hope that the writers will be able to make something out of it without ruining the character if there's a third season. But they'll have to watch out.
