Shadow and Bone season 2 wildly changes Mal and Alina’s story — for better or for worse?
The newest season of Shadow and Bone is full of some… big surprises, to say the least.
Put simply, the second season of Netflix’s YA adaptation doesn’t just adapt the next book in the series. No, it pulls from the next two books — along with some tangential adventures created just for the show, in order to give every part of the massive cast some screen time. It’s a lot of characters and a lot of plot, but we’re homing in on the heart of the show: Sun Summoner Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and tracker Mal Oretsev (Archie Renaux).
Their romance was a cornerstone of the books, but not without criticism from fans, who would’ve rather seen Alina smooch the brooding Darkling or the charming Nikolai instead of dealing with Mal’s jealous ass. The first season of the show ironed out some of the more contentious parts of Mal and Alina’s relationship, turning it into a deep friendship we could actually root for. But where does it go from here? How does season 2 handle this version of Mal and Alina? And does it work?
Three Polygon staffers sat down to talk about all the big changes to the Grishaverse’s most important — and somehow most controversial — couple.
[Ed. note: This post contains massive spoilers for the Grishaverse books and both seasons of Shadow and Bone.]
Nicole: Should we share which books we’ve read, or if we’ve read the books? I can go first: I’ve read the Six of Crows duology… twice. Love that series. Then I went back to read the original Grishaverse trilogy, starting with Shadow and Bone, which I thought was fine. I haven’t read any of the King of Scars books.
Petrana: Like many people, I also started with Six of Crows and its sequel, which rule. And then I went back to the main trilogy, which as Nicole said, is
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