by Christian Bone
While the streaming graveyard is cluttered with one-season wonders from Netflix’s many attempts to find the next Game of Thrones, 2021’s Shadow and Bone actually managed to be one of the platform’s strongest fantasy genre efforts, remixing Leigh Bardugo’s best-selling (and genuinely brilliant) Grishaverse novels into a fresh concoction that pleased book readers and newbies alike.
That’s why it’s so crushing that the long-awaited second season drops the ball so hard. While the first run walked the careful tightrope of refining the source material into something new, the second throws as many ideas from the novels at the wall in the hopes that at least some will stick, burning through at least three books’ worth of material in the process. The result is an eight-episode season that is so overloaded with plot that much of it fails to land any dramatic weight.
The talented ensemble cast gives it their all, at least, with the Crows – Freddy Carter, Kit Young, and Amita Suman – continuing to be the standouts, although dishy Darkling Ben Barnes sadly gets more textbook villain material to work with this time around. Others, such as game newcomer Patrick Gibson, are left struggling to make the most of the meagre hands they’re dealt.
Netflix had the potential to launch a major new franchise with this one, but this frenetic and fumbled second album, which features too many controversial storytelling choices to count and a wild ending that seems like a deliberate attempt to court cancellation, may have given the streamer an excuse to execute yet another fan-favourite property before its time.
Shadow and Bone Season 2 is available on Netflix.
