Shadow and Bone (Season two)

If I thought season one of Shadow and Bone was ambitious, shoving two books into one, season two mixes in parts of three and plays with the plot from the original material too.

We can all think of shows that have tried that and struggled, if not fallen flat on their faces. Equally, there are shows that have made a success of that - adapting a story requires changes for the medium, yes, but in the case of TV for the episode and season length too.

Fortunately Shadow and Bone fits into the second group. There are some changes that we'll have to see how they play out but, by and large, they within this season. The characters remain recognisably the characters we had in the books (sometimes that’s not great, Bardugo was learning her craft when she wrote Shadow and Bone the series, particularly the first book, and it shows if you look at the books she wrote later and the characters in them) but, at the same time, in some ways it is good - we’ve got a lot going on here, fairly simple characters means we can see each of them, see them change, and see the plot move along without it feeling super busy or feeling like character X is getting short-changed. Nina and Matthias do a bit, because they’re even more shoehorned in to this plot line than they were in season one for various reasons. But, overall, it’s working, and working well.

I need to shout out whoever designed the maps used. I am, shock horror, not a huge fan of maps in fantasy novels in general. I’m sure they’re vital for the author, but as a reader, the writer should be telling the story in a way where the journey doesn’t need me to be looking at the map that often in my opinion. But in this show, they wanted to convey travel quickly, and shifting focus between the different groups. We have maps with Ravkan and Shu Han script, that then morph into English (at least here) so we can read them and then pan around so we can understand what’s going on. Not quite Indiana Jones with the plane on the map, but reminiscent of that, then the orthography changes back. It looked really pretty and it really worked well.

It’s going to be interesting to see what they do in season three, if there is a season three (I assume there will be). They’ve done most of the twists and turns that landed so nicely at the end of Siege and Storm to set up the events of both Ruin and Rising and the King of Scars series.

Overall I enjoyed this, and I’m hoping we get a season three, with less of a delay than we had between seasons one and two!

Bechdel Test: Pass. We’ve got a plethora of named female characters, and they mostly talk to each other. We are spared them going off on long quests with just a man this time. Some of the conversations are about men but a lot are not.

Ko Test: Pass. Alina, Tamar, Zoya, Nadia and Inej are all main cast WOC characters. Most of them are in in most, if not every episode. They almost all have a lot of speaking scenes in every episodes they’re in. Zoya and Nadia are the closest to not passing in their episodes, they’re a bit more peripheral in this season - they get squeezed a bit by time constraints.

Russo Test: Pass. From the moment Tamar struts onto screen she exudes masc lesbian energy. In season one, we’d seen Nadia flirting with Alina. By the end of the season two Nadia and Tamar are running off together holding hands. Jesper is described as bi, but we never see him really show interest in a woman (in the books or the TV show) and we see his relationship with Wylan start and become pretty solid over the course of the season. They are probably the main romantic couple of the season in terms of screen time serving their love story, although Alina and Mal get more total minutes together, and get a romance line to that too.