Hello, bookworms!
Happy Thursaday, and happy "Pritt is going to complain about Shadow and Bone season 2 for the whole article" day to everyone who celebrates it. I'm joking… mostly.
It's been a while since I've last reviewed a TV series. If I am not mistaken, the last one was season one of One Of Us Is Lying, and that was kind of a disaster as well… Let's hope that Daisy Jones & The Six will change this trend for me, or I'll curl up in bed and cry.
Anyways, I always try to make my reviews spoiler free, but in this case it's almost impossible, so please only read this one if you've already watched Shadow and Bone S2 or if you don't mind spoilers, either because you're not watching it, or simply because you don't care.
Also, I think I am going to structure this review into paragraphs, same as I did back in 2021 when I was talking about the first season. That article is in Italian, but if you are interested in reading it, you can find it in the "TV Series" section here on the blog. But without any further ado, let's get the review of this *thing* started and over with!
The cast
I am only going to go over the cast of the first season very briefly: all my opinions about them are confirmed; my favourite actors to play their characters remain Kit Young and Amita Suman, but I appreciate all the other ones (aside from Ben Barnes, whom to be honest I have never liked as an actor and I don't care for him as the Darkling as well).
As far as the new cast members are concerned, I am a huge fan of Tolya and Tamar's actors, Lewis Tan and Anna Leon Brophy. They did a great job at portraying them, and I think they are the only thing I want to claim about this season… I also liked Jack Wolfe, despite him not being as I imagined Wylan to be. However, seeing as I'll never be satisfied when it comes to my favourite characters casting — unless you are an Heartstopper actor — I did not mind that much. I only wish they had dyed his hair, but alas.
The real problem in this series was Nikolai. More on this later, but I've never agreed with the casting choice, and I hoped to change my mind seeing Patrick Gibson actually playing. Let's just say I did not change my mind, and I'll forever stand with my Rudy Pankow as Nikolai Lantsov agenda. Nothing against Patrick himself, just not my kind of Nikolai.
The characters and plot
Now, this is where the problems began. I don't even know how to articulate the mess they did while writing the script for this season. On the one hand, I understand the fear of not knowing whether Netflix is going to renew the show and having to cram everything in 8 episodes, on the other hand, I would have done a completely different job, were it up to me.
Genya, the Darkling, Alina, Mall, Wylan and Pekka Rollins were all either watered down versions of themselves, or completely out of character, which in turn influenced their relationships with the other characters, making everything feel out of place and not in a good way. Also, some of the new characters were so useless I don't even know their name.
The changes in the plot were absurd. I am perfectly aware that when you are making an adaptation you have to make some changes, because what happens in books is not always translatable to screen, but the changes have to make sense and make the story feel smooth.
What happens in this case, for me, is that both the Crows and Alina's storylines lose of depth, and I felt myself getting distracted a lot. I was mostly bored, and I only kept watching because I was doing a marathon with Juls and we could comment together. I am 100% sure that had I been watching it on my own, I would have dropped the whole thing early on.
Also, I can excuse wanting to have the two storyline interact (in season 1 it was even fun, as far as I am concerned), but can we please talk about time passing at weird rates in this season? How could they move countries so fast is beyond me. Did the writers think they could get away with such lazy writing or am I missing something?
I honestly hope they are not going to renew the show for a third season, because they have ruined it and I don't think there's a way to keep going, unless they change everything about King of Scars/Rule of Wolves. I also honestly do not want to see the whole Wesper/Kuwei thing, now that they have made Wylan out of character and Wesper cringe. And what was that "Alina embraces darkness" ending? That was so horrible, I cannot think about it.
Costumes, hair, SFX and whatnot
I really need to know who was responsible of the choice of dressing Zoya in pink in the last episode. Who the hell thought it was a good idea? I mean, I am not an expert on color matching and color theory, but everyone could see that was not a sensible choice…
Overall, costumes and hair looked cheap and nothing truly fit the characters most of the times, if I have to be honest. They looked more like theatre costumes than they did TV.
I have no idea of the budget of the series, but if that's all they could manage, I'd assume they spent the entirety of it into paying Ben Barnes and Zoë Wanamaker, because they surely did not go into paying SFX or makeup experts. Those scars on the Darkling face will come visit me in my nightmares, they were truly terribly done. I still wonder how.
Overall
In general, I did not find this season entertaining. I've seen people saying that were it not an adaptation, they would have actually enjoyed it more or that, in spite of all the changes, they had fun and that's what matters for them. I envy those people, because I found the season to be lacking, both as an adaptation and as an "original" fantasy series. As I said, the whole thing was boring and too surface level for me to care for any of it, and I am disappointed. I've certainly watched worse series, but I even watched better things that had less budget.
I will be watching whatever sequel or spin-off they are making, if they end up getting renewed, because I've come this far at this point, but if my expectations for season 2 were low, they will be non existent for an hypotetical season 3 or spin off on the Crows.
That is going to be all for today. I will talk to you soon with a new bookish review this time!
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