Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Shadow And Bone’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where Alina Continues To Battle The Advancement Of The Fold

One of the drawbacks to the “drop all the episodes at once” streaming model is that you could binge a season of a show then literally wait years for the next season. In the case of the Netflix fantasy series Shadow And Bone, it could have been almost two years since viewers watched the story of Alina Starkov, complete with a dense universe of competing interests and countries with odd names. Do the show’s writers take that into account for the second season?

SHADOW AND BONE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) opens her eyes and finds herself in a village, with people doing things that people do in a rural village.

The Gist: Suddenly, the sky turns dark, and the Sun Summoner finds herself battling The Fold once again as it consumes the village, with Shadow Summoner Aleksander Kirigan (Ben Barnes) coming out of it.

Then she wakes up on the deck of a ship, her best friend Malyen Oretsev (Archie Renaux) at her side. She’s been having a lot of dreams like this since leaving Ravka; the ship they’re on is headed to Weddle in Novyi Zem, where Mal promises that she’ll get some rest. She’s worried that they won’t get through immigration with their forged papers. But those worries are replaced when she talks to Ravkan refugees at customs and finds out that her dreams were real: The Fold is expanding and swallowing up more of her homeland.

Back in Ketterdam, the Crows have returned from their journey into The Fold, and they’re immediately arrested, accused of murder. Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman) avoids capture, but Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter) and Jasper Fahey (Kit Young) get cuffed.

However, someone has paid the Stadwich to divert the two so they can have talk. It’s Dreesen (Sean Glider), who paid them to bring back Alina, who now has a 20 million kruge bounty on her head. Of course, they had befriended Alina and went their separate ways at Ketterdam. But what Kaz figures out is that Dreesen is just a middleman; the man with him, a profiteer named Strumhond (Patrick Gibson) is really the one who wants Alina. He lets them go in exchange for info on where she is now.

Kaz and Jasper reconnect with Inej, who found out they were accused of killing someone who was killed by Pekka Rollins (Dean Lennox Kelly). One more thing, Pekka basically owns the entire town. When Pekka gets word that his Stadwich henchmen let Kaz escape, he kills one of them in order to set Kaz up for that murder, as well.

Kaz puts a plan in motion that requires spells from a spellmaker named Wylan Hendriks (Jack Wolfe) and a Heartrender; Inej finds Nina Zenik (Danielle Galligan), who was also held captive by the Fjerdans.

Meanwhile, as Alina and Mal try to figure out what’s going on with the Fold (and their feelings for each other), Mal is discovered by his old commander in Ravka, who is looking for him for desertion. They manage to escape with the help of some Grisha, and are granted passage on a ship they’re not familiar with. But when they get on board, they realize the captain didn’t let them on out of the goodness of his heart.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said when we reviewed Season 1, Shadow And Bone, based on the “Grishaverse” trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, reminds us of a Victorian version of Game Of Thrones. It’s certainly as dense as GoT.

Our Take: When we went back and read our Season 1 review, we realized we had the same issues with Shadow And Bone now that we had back then; it looks great, and the main characters are well-rounded and have pretty clear motivations. But the world of the Grishaverse is pretty impenetrable for those who aren’t intimately familiar with it, and the first episode of Season 2 doesn’t do anything to help refresh the memories of those who enjoyed Season 1.

Remember, Season 1 began streaming almost two years ago. If you watched it two years ago, you might have a very hard time trying to figure out where things left off, who is going where, and who the major players are.

In essence, the story is a triangle, with Alina and Mal on one side, the Crows on the second side and Kirgan (aka The Darkling) on the third side. Yes, Kirgan is still around, and he’ll loom large over how Alina operates this season as she tries to keep The Fold from completely consuming her homeland.

That triangle, though, gets obscured by location names and odd terminology that doesn’t need to be there, like Kaz telling his fellow Crows to “meet me in two bells”, instead of, you know, saying, “meet me in four hours.” With trying to figure out who is who, including the new people in the mix like Strumhond, the extraneous language that needs to be interpreted in the viewer’s brains just weighs them down with extra work they don’t need.

Suffice to say that, to make a coherent summary above, we had to watch the first episode twice. We were just that confused. Maybe, as the season goes on, we’ll settle back in and enjoy what’s going on as Kaz and company try to outrun Pekka and Alina tries to outrun the bounty on her head while Kirgan looms. But, boy, showrunner Eric Heisserer and his writing staff aren’t giving viewers much help to get there.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Alina and Mal meet the captain: Strumhond, who puts a gun down on the wanted poster depicting Alina and Kirgan.

Sleeper Star: Danielle Galligan is a spunky presence as Nina Zenik, and we hope to see her work extensively with the Crows this season.

Most Pilot-y Line: You’d think the Stadwatch officer talking to Pekka would have run when Pekka took out the gun. No, when Pekka tells the officer that the officers will go into a frenzy when they hear that Kaz “killed one of you with your own gun.” The officer just said, “But he hasn’t–” before getting shot. Not good.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We complain about how impenetrable the world of Shadow And Bone is, but we also know that the story is an enjoyable adventure. We just wish things were a hair easier to follow.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.