How the Shadow and Bone trilogy actually ended 

If you just finished season 2 of Netflix’s Shadow and BoneYou might think to yourself. This was an incredible amount of work!.

It was indeed a lot. Unlike the first season, which mainly covered events from the first book of Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy trilogy, the second season finishes up the trilogy Some plotlines are added for other characters. To cover that much ground, certain plot points are dropped. Others have been skimmed and others reconfigured for the screen.

Any adaptation of a book won’t be entirely faithful to the page. However, when it comes down to Shadow and BoneThat ending was quite a departure from what the books had depicted.

[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for the end of Shadow and Bone season 2, as well as the Grishaverse books — only read if you watched the finale, or just want to be spoiled!]

the darkling standing with his arms outstretched, commanding his army

Image by Netflix

In the books, Alina and Mal go into the Fold, but the Darkling finds them and they don’t have a chance to execute their plan. Mal orders Alina to stabbing him. And she does, but unlike in the show, he’s not already dying when she does so. She loses the power that she felt surge into her. Suddenly, everyone around her bursts into light, and Alina realizes that the final amplifier multiplies the Sun Summoner’s power by thousands — literally, it multiplies itself into thousands of people all around her. The Fold is shattered and thousands of people are now lighting up like disco balls. Alina is no longer able to summon light, not only because of the Fold’s disappearance but also because Alina has lost the ability to create it. This means that he is now the only Grisha with these immense abilities.

Alina grabbed the exact same knife she used to kill Mal so that they were no longer bound by the psychic power link. She then attacked the Darkling with the blade. Alina asks him to give Mal a proper grave, so that nobody will destroy it. He then requests her last name. She does; he dies.

Miraculously Tamar and Tolya were able miraculously to revive Mal due to their combined badass Heartrender abilities and Mal being one resilient motherfucker.

The mechanics of defeating Darkling and defeating the Fold are important, but the most significant difference is the fact that Mal and Alina in books fake their death. “I died here. Do you understand?” Alina tells Tolya as they leave the remnants of the Fold. “This was my martyrdom.”

mal holding alinas hand up to his heart

Photo: Dávid Lukács/Netflix

Alina never explicitly says why she chooses this, but it’s pretty evident that she just wants this part of her life to be over. Alina never wanted to become a saint, but if she’s still around, it will make her a statue, which she will then be scrutinized for all she does. She lets those in her inner circle — Tamar, Tolya, Nikolai, Zoya, Genya, and David — all know about her decision and they help facilitate the lie. Mal and Alina tie up all their loose ends, including Genya’s fix-up to make Alina look like Alina. They then return to the orphanage they came from and live a peaceful, normal, yet full of love life.

…And they mostly disappear for three books, before appearing in Rule of Wolves To help Zoya & Nikolai, the second book of The Nikolai Duology.

The show, however, doesn’t write off Alina and Mal this way, presumably in order to keep them as active agents in a hypothetical third season. Mal also gets fatally injured when Alina is facing off against Darkling. He is already dead to enable her to take his firebird powers. She then stabs him to death and kills the Darkling. Mal is revived by Heartrender Nina, although it appears that Alina does so. merzost — or creation from nothing — to bring him back. When he returns, he’s lost some of his innate tracking ability and tells Alina that he needs to part ways with her, since he just doesn’t feel drawn to her anymore. He takes up Nikolai’s alter ego of the privateer Sturmhond and then sails off with Inej Ghafa of the Crows. Alina is presumably continuing her engagement with Nikolai. At his coronation, however, a drugged Fjerdan agent massacres a whole group of people, but Alina subdues her by using the power of shadow magic — uh oh, looks like she got the Darkling’s powers!

It’s a far cry from what happens in the books, which tie up Alina and Mal’s story in the trilogy and emphasize the happiness of a quiet, subdued life. The book’s ending is fitting with the theme that the series chose to concentrate on, which was odd. The books showed that a lot the tension between Mal, Alina and Ravka was caused by romantic jealousy. But the show choses to focus on the conflict between Alina’s drive to save Ravka, no matter the cost to herself, versus Mal just wanting her not to destroy herself in doing so.

But this way, they’re at the center of the action for whatever season 3 might possibly throw at them — even if it robs them of their happy, thematically tied-up ending.

Season 2 of Shadow and BoneNetflix now has it streaming.

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