I genuinely DON’T understand why they wasted so many of the Crow’s plot beats with no build-up if they were planning a spin-off. And WHY did they make Inej leave under such different circumstances while mashing together two different conversations between her and Kaz? Why speedrun her character leaving when they were so obviously setting up the Crows spin-off?
Honestly I thought it was such a mistake to even have them in the series they should have gotten their own show (that’s now not happening RIP) it was a misstep messed up the time lines and made it to where there was so much going on at once in a already full story
And getting rid of Tante Helene off screen! When she showed up in s1 and was very important in CK to have Inej bring her to justice and end her character arc. Smh
Also I don’t like how much they aged them up. The intriguing part about them (Kaz especially) was how young they were, and how messed up it was that these young kids had to turn into what they were. Also it was really bad ass how cool and intelligent they were. It didn’t have that same effect at all due to the age up. Also Kaz seemed more grumpy than serious, yk?
To be completely honest, I think they should’ve just adapted Six Of Crows, not SAB. I’m honestly so mad at the wasted potential given how great the cast are at portraying the characters, they’re just perfect. But that just means I’m more disappointed by what we lost due to Netflix’s incompetency
After the first season I read all the books. The SAB trilogy is kinda meh to begin with, but I alsolutely loved the SOC books. Felt like they weren't written by the same author.
So true. The whole timeline mash up already didn't work for me in season 1. Six of Crow is so good on its own, it would have been better if they just adapted that and stayed as true to the source material as possible.
I remember being so confused watching the show because I've read Shadow and Bone but not Six of Crows. I didn't know who the heck the random group of thieves were or why their story was more compelling than the one the show is supposedly about! 😂
They should’ve adapted six of crows but there’s still a bit of lore from shadow and bone that you need to know in order to understand six of crows. Having SOC be a spin off after 1 season kinda was the perfect plan, but they shouldn’t have meshed their story into the first season.
@@witchplease9695 I get that tbh, I'm so sick of whitewashing and I understand the importance of having dark skinned representationbut I feel like Kit Young's acting was so good that it didn't matter. He captured the characters' essence perfectly and that was the most important thing to me
Netflix had already bought the rights to Shadow and Bone when they contacted Heisserer, so it was either add The Crows in and do them both, or leave the project entirely.
Shadow and Bone is a classic chosen one /hero's journey fantasy book (even Leigh said so in an interview, I think). So naturally, all these studios trying to find the "next Happy Otter" would naturally pick up this story. The issue is The Dregs are so much more fun! Its was truly fun, novel, different - it's how Inej says in Crooked Kingdom: "What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway." If there is one story we love more than the chosen one, we love an underdog and the Dregs duology was everything but they never recognised that
Speaking of wringing magic from the ordinary - the Dregs is a heist story in a world where magic exists, instead of a story of a magical hero. Again, Netflix dropped the ball because they were trying to make the next "Throne of Games" and pretty much all of season 1 of GoT was not magic but good character-based storytelling. Netflix wanted to show us magic - the Fold, the Darkling. The Sun-summoning. They wanted to establish the magic and the setting but the characters just didn't have enough bones to carry that through while the Dregs (even without Wylan) just simply were the more fun, more developed characters who stole the show.
@@bookswithellak Timeline isoff. Eric approached them with Six of Crows first. Then Netflix was like oh we want to create a universeso we acquired the rights to S&B and the Crows. Netflix wanted the next game of thrones/witcher fantasy franchise.
@@ClairedeLunes Heisserer tweeted at Leigh Bardugo and then Netflix called him up a year later about SaB because of his interest. He’s said this in multiple interviews. Do your research.
One of the things I didn't like about Netflix's S2 ending was how they changed defeating The Fold. In Netflix's version, Alina defeats it on her own. In the book series, after she obtains the last amplifier, she loses her powers and it gets distributed to other people who use it together to defeat the fold. In I way I found this more meaningful because it gave the message that this much power should not be held by a single person (and that this was reason The Fold was created.
Oh wow that sounds SO much better. I never read books, but that sounds so much better than what show did. The change the show made seems like big change for future story/plotlines
@@sarhahillsburg5142The entirety of how season 2 plays out completely changes the trajectory series, especially with the damn ending. That’s why it infuriates me
This!!! And, correct me if I’m wrong (I don’t remember the books that much), Darkling’s reason for the fold was because he wanted more power and control.
Among other many things (wdym Nina 'always wanted to be a healer', since when) I will never forgive Netflix for making Kaz just take over some group of randos instead of fighting his own gang members for his rightful place. And the whole Inej storyline is just insulting with all that shying away and glossing over the horror she's been through. It's even more painful to watch considering how amazing the cast was. There was no salvaging the SoC timeline from the mess they've made but I still hate that the actors didn't get to play those characters more since they were so good.
That part confused me SO much. I hadn't realised in the first season that he wasn't already second in comand of The Dregs becaiuse he had the Crow Club. How did he have one without the other? It doesn't make sense. Then suddenly he needs more people so he just goes and has some fisticufs & gets a gang. Really stupid.
Also wdym Nina never tells Zoya, nik, or alina about west ravka the place she was spying on! She never mentions general zlatan's secession, how he partnered with Fjerdans and sold grishas like herself, and how they were planning an attack on the old king and alina (though she likely wouldn't know about alina but would know zlatan would destroy anything that kept the east ravkans stable and threatened his power in the west).
I think something else that happened is Kaz became the main character of the six of crows side of the show. While he's definitely a main character, some would argue more so than many of the other crows. The books have multiple povs for a reason. Inej, jesper, wylan, mathias, and nina are all also main characters, but the show put every single one of their stories on the back burner. It's so sad. All of the characters were robbed, and by extension, so was Kaz because they're all big parts of his life and him working through things like trust.
I completely agree, this was actually a point I forgot to mention in this video but wrote down in my notes. It's especially evident in the scene where Tolya and Zoya speak with the Crows about retrieving the Neshyenyer. It didn't feel right that Jesper, Nina, and Wylan were on the sidelines waiting for orders from Kaz and then agreed to them just like that.
I genuinely don’t understand why they didn’t just adapt Siege and Storm for season 2 like they did with S1, it just made everything so clunky and far too quick
Yep. This made for really poor set up --> which led to an even worse pay off on the S&B storyline. Also, removing alina's empathy and darklina's complex relation helped ruin s2.
@@user-qw2nn9lk7z post season 1, the actors jessie and ben revealed they were excited to work together and explore their complex relationship for seasons to come. Plural. Many seasons. Then Erick rushed and ruined the whole trilogy smh. By all of Eric's interviews, it seems like he was ONLY interest in the crows and saw sab as something to get over faster. Being told he could write the spinoff basically gave him the thought that he had to rush/ruin the trilogy because leigh bardugo said multiple times you cannot have jurda parem and the darkling at the same time. Eric rushed on purpose to get the soc spinoff right away. Instead of carefully doing a s2 that would appeal to general audiences and cover S&S, he ruined it all
@@ClairedeLunesAbsolutely, I've always known he just wanted to do SoC but had to do Grisha for the worldbuilding. That's why they shoehorned the Crows in they just couldn't wait for a spin-off. I still think there were ways to keep them in the show without ruining literally all of Crooked Kingdom. I can't stress how absolutely ridiculous and stupid it was to randomly have half of that book happen simultaneously as Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. What would they have done after the Ice Court heist ? There was no coming back from that. What a messy salad.
@@gracie9658 right!? And what would be the high stakes for the heist? The ice court heist worked so well because every good heist story has really high stakes and motivations behind it. Now, Inej is already free and in her own ship starting her journey. It's not the end-all high stakes of her doing this to gain her freedom. Kaz already defeated Pekka and used up the very important backstory/revenge plot that had fit so well in CK as the end of his journey. Jesper already has full control and is open about being a grisha - unlike in Soc where being in the heist is what pushed him to slowly open up to others about his true self and start practicing his abilities apart from just bullets. And don't get me started on the sweet, slow-burn wesper changed to a one night - well at least they were together but...
@@ClairedeLunes Literally all of their reasons to do the heist in the first place, and most of their character development were solved by the end of the show. Except for Nina and Matthias (my poor boy, they did him SO dirty and now he is stuck in Hellgate forever...). They would have no real reason to take the job other than for a challenge ? And money I guess but as you said no real stakes. Basically they replaced the heist and its stakes with getting Alina in season 1... Also imagine them having Jurda Parem and that weird evil Alina thing they were going for at the end ? Maybe we were spared. I'm sorry I could rant about this all day. We will never have a satisfying adaptation of anything, they always mess up in the end.
Season 2 hurt my heart. It was so pacey and honestly by the end of it, i cared so little about Alina and Mal, and the only characters I genuinely wanted to see more of were the crows and Tolya and Tamar. I say this as a huge Mal stan from the first season and also because I cared enough for Alina and Nikolai in the second book. Also, the Mathias redemption arc was one of my favourite bits of Crooked Kingdom, and it was just so sad how the second season treated his bit. Mathias showed us people could change, humans can rise above our fears and hatred and it was all lost.
I never read the books, but I was so pleasantly surprised that I loved the main plot with the “Main Girl” just as much as the B-plot. Too often shows do the main girl in the Young Adult genre dirty, and write the side characters infinitely better - but I was captivated the entire time. Even the classic miscommunication trope between Mal and Alina was done well enough that I was invested and not just annoyed. Their connection felt real to me. Then season 2 happened and all tension and chemistry just deflated. I felt like I wanted to get Alina’s scenes over with and get back with the B-characters (which was also less compelling at that point,) which was so sad. I thought Netflix actually did something with season 1 😢
They made Mathias little more than a SoC extra instead of being one of the 6. This destroys the last two books because why is Nina so driven by what happened to such an unimportant character in Netflix's version?
Another disappointing change to the crows story was when Kaz spread the fake plague to Pekka Rollins' establishments. In the show, Rollins has acquired the menagerie, he owns it, so Kaz sending the plague there is just another part of his revenge. But in the book, Rollins has no association with it, but Kaz takes the place down anyway, for Inej. Kaz is known for only caring about himself, money and revenge (and the crows, but he wouldn't admit that), but he consistently sacrifices all of these things for Inej. He puts his leg through intense pain to get her to the boat, he buys her a boat with his own prize money and goes out of his way to take down the menagerie. This (along with him buying her a boat) is one of my favourite Kanej moments and I was sad to see it go. It's such a beautiful moment were you realise how much he actually cares about her and what she's been through when he's previously not seemed to.
as someone who didnt read the books i thought the chemistry between alina and darkling in first season was just so electric and it was so dissapointing how little that was in season two
Yeah. I am darklina shipper and I loved the casting for Alina and Darkling. Even enjoyed the changes for Malina(giving more development and chemistry than the books had). But unfortunately in season 2, S&B characters are wasted alongside SOC due the fast pace and lack of tension
THIS! And seeing the writers admit they removed any and all undertones of their romance for s2 is the reason i could not finish the s2. Darklina MADE the grishaverse become famous. There's a reason for that - it attracts general audiences! If they had combined darklina + better crow integration wewould have had a s3, s4, and s5
Having read and watched this story, I cannot fathom why anyone would ship them after the Darkling's evil comes to light. He tortured Alina, murdered so many people, and hurt everyone close to Alina. He is completely irredeemable in my eyes, and personally I'm actually very happy they removed all notion of romance between them. He never really loved her, just saw her as a means to an end, and she was naive and malleable. I think that ending all the tension between them was integral to showing Alina's character growth as someone who is forced to grow up and learn very quickly.
One of the things that really pisses me off with the Crows storyline is that the Crows aren't in the Dregs. Kaz isn't a Lieutenant for Per Haskell and that damages not only his relationship with everyone but also take the impact of him besting his own gang in a fight. And this could be easily fixed in season 2 with a scene between Haskell and Kaz, where Haskell says that Kaz is going behind his back again and something like "this is the last warning" Then, instead of Helleen's death you could acuse them of literally anything else (given Kerch is known for putting money above lives, it would even serve as a way to deepen the universe in the show) and put the stadwatch on their backs. I think they went with "killing" Helleen to add Inej's freedom to Kaz' motivation, but it damaged Inej's characther SO MUCH Also, the scene where Kaz ASKS FOR INEJ TO BE THERE and then she DOESN'T, when in the books she was there? Like???? And in the end, the crows were so underused in the battle against the Darkling. We have moments were Kaz is just standing there, doing nothing. It was rushed. I got the impression they wanted to put everything in a season fearing the cancellation... But knowing they didn't is er...
What went wrong, the same thing as LoTR and WoT and Witcher and every other adaptation of recent years. We get showrunners who have no respect for the source material. I used to get excited when a beloved IP was announced for a show, now I get the wrong type of chills. Kinda hoping they don't do Malazan at this point.
Any time someone mentions source material, I know they haven't read the material, and it's coded for there are too many gays, women, women of color, and men of color. The only people of colour you guys accepts in fantasy are the slave kind.
Any faith I had in the adaptation went out the window the moment the Darkling asked Alina to call him by his real name in like the second episode. I know the author mentioned she wanted to tone down the romance between them in the show due to the age gap but the moment when he asks her to call him Aleksander in the books was just one of my favorite things ever written and it shows a brief sliver of humanity still left in him. It even gets called back in the last sentence of book three and it felt like a punch in the gut.
All the characters were aged up in the show. The actors themselves were near 30 when they filmed. And I follow Leigh and try to read all her interviews I don't recall she ever mentioned that - she did mention trying to change some S&S and R&R plot points but not the romance
After the success of the first season, the Crow's spinoff should have been greenlit and the two stories should've split off. They could have still intertwined them a bit with small cross-overs and surprise cameos. Air the second season of S&B and shortly after premire the Crow's spin-off. Do justice to both storylines and sets of characters. Cramming all of those plot points in season 2 from like 4 different books and in ONLY 8 EPISODES was absurd and it didn't do justice to anything at all. The cast was amazing and its a damn shame it all ended up going down in flames. Just another tragic Netflix series to add to the graveyard. Smh
And seeing the writers and Eric make the absolute worst PR interviews pre-release was such a facepalm moment! Eric and co succeded in alienating half the fanbase, insulting the fanbase, and anger everyone when they said they were doing like 5 books in 8 episodes. SMH at Eric, Netflix had offered him 10 episode seasons and he refused (collider interview from s1). If he'd accepted 10 ep we could have had filler episodes or more episode with just important dialogue/interactions
@@GothPaoki s1 data was kept hidden from the publbic, Netflix only started releasing data in the next year. But the s1 numbers were enough to get a renewal by summertime. S2 numbers, which were published and analyzed by ppl who make it their living to report on this, said s2 numbers were BAD and to make matters worse the CVE completion rate was abysmal the first few weeks. General audiences did not like s2 like they did s1 - or skipping al the bland and boring malina part (which many did in s2) helped lower our chances for the spinoff.
Tbh every post I saw from the writers was talking about how good the soc spin off would be, while neglecting shadow and bone, they had obvious restrictions, but sab being cancelled also was their own doing. I couldn't even watch the whole thing because even if the crows scenes were better than the sab ones, they were also a mess
Not just were they only exclusively talking about SoC, but the few interviews they did where they mentioned S&B it was some of the worst, most anti-marketing bizaree thing I have ever seen. Insulting half the fandom before it even aired.
@@ClairedeLunesmost of the writers except for Daegon(sp?) were literally saying ‘watch S&B s2 so we can get SoC s1’ FROM DAY ONE. Heiseich(sp?) was constantly talking about SoC scripts being in the bag, too. Certain promises like ‘Alina’s heritage will be explored’ were totally left by the wayside. Later twitter interactions, especially with Strain, made it very clear they had no idea what S&B s3 would even be. It was absolutely a mess, and anyone who followed any of the promotional materials expected TGT to be the focus and SoC to be the salt/spice like they were in s1. The Crows fans, at least where I saw, were trying to carry the spin off hype, but it didn’t happen.
@@kahare9565 Those interviews with the writers and thewir sociaal media replies were so unprofessional and cringy. Never, ever alienate half the fanbase. They KNEW general audiences wanted to see more of Alina and the darkling, they KNEW those two are the attention grabbers for the trilogy, they KNEW alina's journey and her complex emotions are what made the story compelling. Instead, they removed the complexity and removed her empathetic side - just re-reading the monologue in R&R made so many people cry at the death scene!! And even in RoW she literally says "It's not tooo late for you" and these words haunt him later and are possibily what makes him chose to help Nikolai and Zoya win the battles in the end. Instead....they shoved all complexity aside and were dashing through alina's story as quickly as they could to get to MORE KAZ! I'm sorry but flashbacks and backstory for the Crows should have been made in theor spinoff! So that people picking up the spinoff firsthand will understand or they'd have to re-harsh it all over again!
Netflix needs to stop trying to wrap any and every show into 8 episodes no matter what. And I agree with you, they never wanted more than three seasons. I was surprised they didn’t end it after a third season especially since they added so many new people.
depends on budget. sometimes they HAVE to end it in 8 episodes no matter what. the more settings, the more realistic the clothing, the more actors, the more well known the actors....etc drains a budget a lot and magic art effects especially sucks the money fast. You want a show to continue more than 8 episodes, talk to your friends and make them watch because everything corporate decides on is numbers. not enough numbers means it will be too pricey. I happened see a job for netflix I could do and it was hundreds of thousands of dollars salary. Holy hell. almost wish i applied for it, but decided against that stress. We are no longer in the era of popularity being built up slowly. it needs to make money NOW or it gets canned. They have about 17million in regular debt. interest debt, contract debt, etc all ads up to several millions of dollars. YOu can read Netflix financial report yourself. 33 million revenue in 2023. at least 20 million of that is paying off investors, employees, etc. Then they have to keep a free cash flow to start other projects etc. You want more than 8 episodes? You want them to take this more seriously than only considering big hits? tell everyone and their mother to get a separate netflix account and tell everyone to actually start watching these shows. and keep rewatching. It's literally the only way. Digital streaming services lose more money for the company nowadays than they used to.
@@ClairedeLunes !!!!! omg!!! i did not know this! I will have to look up the interview to see why he turned it down because 8 episodes just doesn't work!
@@AllThingsShaunda He said it was because of budgets. They would have gotten the same budget for 8 or 10 episodes. But like....any smart showrunner could and would have just added more budget-friendly scenes! Have the scene of Alina telling Genya about her past (deleted in s1) and add more talking/monologue scenes from the little palace and the crow crew hanging out!
i felt like season 2 especially made it clear to me that the creator and people working on the show seemed to favour the crows so much more and left alina and her story on the back burner even though it's supposed to be her show !!!!! it pissed me off so bad
Amen. And they made sure to remove all complexity from Alina's character too. Removing the mercy monologue at the end was just a spiteful move. Jessie would have nailed it
i prefer the Shadow and Bone storyline of Season 1 over the book and also liked what they did with the crows, but I didn't like anything about season 2. the speed was insane but the changes to the story hurt physically and I could barely get myself to finish the show.
As much as I loathe it, I "understand" the cancellation of Shadow and Bone *but* I do not understand why they didn't move forward with the Six of Crows spin-off. Smaller cast (all of which perfectly cast and loved as such by the fandom) and less VFX would have made it a significantly cheaper show to produce. Not to mention there was already funds sunken into the writing which they will never recover now. But also: while season 2 made several missteps that would give a season 3 an uphill battle to recover, the SoC spin-off is separate enough that what comes before doesn't really matter. They can start a new story and still have most of the duology plot to draw from. Anyone who thinks the duology has been "too pillaged by season 2" for a spin-off to still work, baffles me honestly. The show used maybe 5%. People need to reread the "I buried him" scene because it's truly a minor plot point in every sense of the word but people act like they "used up" the climax of the CK plot. edit to add: sorry I got on my soapbox there and forgot to be a person. I should also add that I really enjoyed your video. You have a very pleasant voice and I enjoyed listening to your takes. Keep it up!
Thank you, I’m so glad you enjoyed! My theory with the Six of Crows spin-off cancellation is that Netflix were really invested in the “cross-overs” between the two storylines and for some ridiculous reason, they didn’t see the worth/appeal of the SoC story when they didn’t have the original show for them to make a big comeback to in later seasons. I completely agree that it would’ve stood on its own perfectly fine from what they were setting up. It’s so sad that the duology’s potential on screen might go to waste.
Neither my partner or I have read the books. We both thought Alina and Mal were wet dishrags but the Crows, Nina, Mathias and the Prince carried it. We want a season three not for Alina, but the others.
And the worst thing is the writers and eric heisserer said if they had s3 they would continue to shove the boring wet cardboard ship down the audience's throats. Alina would just be sidelined...again. And it would all be pure fanfiction by writers who very clearly care more about the crows than S&B
The ending of Ruin and Rising was the best part of the trilogy and they axed it to make Alina potentially evil. Just horrible decision making there for the sake of continuing the crossover between the various parts of the Grishaverse. If that's all Netflix was willing to give us, its just as well it was canceled.
I hated so much that they pushed the last two sab books into one season. I was genuinely so excited for the second season but when it came out I was immensely disappointed. I was also excited for a six of crows spin-off but they ruined everything by squishing everything into one season. The cast is so damn fucking good, like I genuinely love the cast, they’re all so talented and fit their roles perfectly, so sad they didn’t get to explore their roles further. And I’m so mad they didn’t make Alina’s hair white
@@katdiggory5501 even Jessie mei li was pissed too. Jml dyed their hair platinum blonde after shooting was over as a giant middle finger to whoever that white hair would not look good on her. Jml proved then wrong! They rocked that color
What I loved about S1 is how I felt they understood the crows as characters so well they managed to blend them in a story where they don’t originally exist and make them true to the books (for the most part). But S2 is so full of so much content that everyone kind of loses their essence a bit
One thing i disliked about season 2 was how they sidelined Alina in her own story, i believe the show wouldve done better if they had kept the crows in the background like they had done in the first season. Its a shame that we lost this amazing cast. Edit: this comment was made before watching your video and i will update it afterwards
I hear what you're saying about Mal being the most human, grounded part of the books, but idk, he always rubbed me the wrong way (and not just because he was the *other guy* for alina), I feel like he fundamentally holds her back at every turn, and her relationship with him ultimately causes her to lose her power, which was shown time and time again to be a really good, healthy thing for her. I just think Leigh didn't do a good job of writing the alina/darkling/mal relationships, but she really stepped up her game with kanej, halek, zoyalai, and wesper
I agree. While they did make show mal better, I could not stand misogynistic bool mal, in the end the charcter still holds alina back. I wanted to have seen more scenes with just alina. Not her and mal
what went wrong? trying to write a story inspired by russian culture while knowing nothing about russian culture is what went wrong. imagine naming a magician class "john" and then write about it, expanding your "johnverse"... male surnames and female surnames are switched around.... etc
The random Grisha using Bagrah's bones to amplify them was very stupid in my opinion because as you pointed out... ONLY THE GRISHA THAT KILLS THE AMPLIFIER CAN USE IT'S BONES! 🤦🏼♀️
Season two was so disappointing to me that I forgot most of it. It was so full of everything that I don’t remember what events did happen, and what events didn’t.
As someone who never read the books, I was intrigued by Ben Barnes’s character so I gave the show a shot. Honestly, he was the only thing worthwhile about it. I didn’t give enough of a crap about any of the other characters to continue with the second season. Now, knowing how the books end, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.
Well in Ruin and Rising, alina uses up all the amplifiers and he has an existential crisis. Alina uses the knife for a mercy k1ll, going on and on about how the stag represented mercy. It was really touching actually. She knelt down, held him, comforted him, and cried over him when he passed. Not the s2 jab and stoic face with no lines. The writers messed up. Then in later books he gets resurrected (don't ask). But then gets turned into a tree (don't ask)
@@Sunshine-od2cd but then gets turned into a tree (don't ask) 🤣 🤣 Rules of Wolves is NOT canon in my eyes. It's like Leigh Bardugo was taking mushrooms or something how could she mess up the magical system SO MUCH. PS: LB was a huge Dany anti in Game of Thrones but then turns Zoya into a cheap imitation of Dany that can turn into a dragon. 🤦♂
In my humblest opinion, they should've just done SOC adapted on screen or both SAB and SOC running as SEPARATE shows alongside each other. Especially since the actors were perfect but also, the timeline got messed up by combining them together
That was exactly my reaction to the S2 of S&B ! I was so annoyed when I watched it and so surprised that I just found positive reviews on this. Not one plotpoint felt earned or impactful. by the way: good job with your first videos. was really surprised after watching your video, that your channel is pretty small. looking forward to new content from you 😊
" positive reviews" needs to be in quotation marks. The critics gave middling reviews with high scores. The few who gave both high score and sang praises were very close friends with the writers, showrunners, or heavily invested in the SoC BOOKS so wanted to give them as much of a chance fo the spin-off (fair after that trainwreck of a s2). One of the critics even admitted on X that (paraphrasing because I can't recall the exact quote off my head (i could try to find it if you want?) "I'm under embargo but just know that [SoC] means a lot to me "
They often make the same mistakes with fantasy adaption, they don't understand fantasy worlds. Mostly it's a bunch of modern day teenagers behave as modern day characters while wearing cosplay, no immersion, weak worldbuilding. I don't know the books but got interested in the original world via Season 1, S2 was somehow a boring soap with too many plots and no direction.
I still can't believe they added so many good thing in s1 like the secession plot with Zlatan. And s2 completely ignored that! It was a major political point and would have made the show closer to a Game of Thrones. But they wanted Nina to forget about being a spy, forget about West Ravkans betraying her and selling her to Fjerdans, and instead we can just point at one guy Darkling and say look "bad guy." It was so shallow and felt like Disney Movie not a fantasy series
I loved the first season, and read all of the books because of it. The first season captured all the beautiful nuance of Leigh Bardugo’s characters. Season 2 was an absolute disaster, and I can’t even bring myself to watch it all the way through. I loved the cast, it’s a darn shame.
I watched s1 before I read the books, so while I enjoyed the Crows, what I was REALLY invested in was Alina’s journey to discovering and controlling her power, her friendship with Mal, and the Darkling’s spiral into madness as he lost her. S2 was just… so strange, and unfulfilling. Alina got completely sidelined - I read she actually had less screen time than Kaz, which is insane as she’s the main character, Mal was one dimensional, seeming to serve no purpose except to be someone Alina could yell at, and Aleksander turned into a total villain instead of someone working for a good cause who got pushed too far.
I hate it when people rush plots. I've never read the books but I know when a movie looks like it's rushing. I held back on reading the book because I knew I'd be disappointed with the show if I did that and I thought I'll take the show as it was. S1 was good but s2 felt so rushed and lacking in elements of adventure and bond formations
It was so noticeable that the showrunners didn't care for Alina's story in S2. Netflix also cancelled because they got a mediocre product. Casual viewers didn't watch for the Crows. They watched for Alina and her story.
I didn’t know anything about the Grishaverse before watching season 1 and I absolutely loved it. Season 2 was so bafflingly bad, but the fandom was still trying so hard to campaign for the show because they wanted the SoC spin-off. A very confusing time cause I felt like the fans kinda had to hold back their criticisms cause they were afraid of the show being cancelled. I was kinda looking around being like “yea.. that was bad, right??”.
I always wondered why they didn’t just adapted six of crows on its own😭 like it’s a perfect b Ok to adapt with the perfect cast, and also passionate people who would have loved to work on it. It’s such wasted potential and we may never get an adaptation at this rate
Your first sentence hit me like a freight train! As someone whose favourite books include the Wheel of Time series and the Silmarillion (both of which have imo been ruined by Amazon aside from the 1st Age of the Silm which Bezo couldn't get his grubby hands on yet), this is exactly how I feel about live-action adaptions now instead of excitement. Ironically I enjoyed S & B's adaptation much more than the book (don't hate me), but that was the 1st season, the 2nd season got progressively off balance and weird which is such a shame.
The crows needed to be a spin off. I didn't like that season because the two storylines had nothing to do with each other. And the stakes for Alina and the crows were wildly different. She was going to save the world and everything the crows did was on a personal level.
Great video! I can’t speak about the ‘shadow and bone’ part, but I am a big fan of the crows’ duology, and I agree with everything you said about it I didn’t hate the things they used from CK, but I also think that it made those plot lines have a lot less weight than they should’ve had I honestly think they should have done two separate shows after season 1 (maybe even from the beginning, but I can understand wanting to adapt both series at the same time in order to bring all the fans in) Overall (and this goes for the whole cast) I think it’s truly a pity to see such a great casting go to waste, and I’m really sad with how everything ended up going with the show
The simplest answer is views and completion rates. Sab performed on the same level as Winx season 2 - which was also cancelled. They needed to have gotten more views and more ubique ppl to fully finish the shows. There were many of my friends who stopped around episode 2 in season. I don't blame them, this season didn't feel like s1
I never read the books, so judging purely on how the characters were in the show, Alina was the weakest and most annoying character of the entire cast. I found the Crows and the Darkling far more interesting. I even had a theory that the Darkling's mother was actually the villain and that she was grooming Alina to be her next protege because her son had slipped her grasp and stopped obeying her. But like I said, that's my uneducated perspective. Great video.
You should've been in the writers' room tbh, because what you said is far more interesting than the dude in black with dark magic is obviously the villain, and we must kill him at any cost type of plot
Baghra should've been the big bad guy at the end, she never cared about anyone but herself, she especially didn't give a single crap about the fate of the world or even of the grisha, unlike her SON, who spent his entire existence fighting for his people. Alina should have realized that and it could have created a REALLY compelling dymanic between them as they try to come to an understanding about how to protect the grisha and create a better world. I'm not saying they had to be romantic with each other in the end, or even necessarily friends, but maybe allies against Baghra. It would have been really cool to see them combine their powers against hers, and maybe Aleksander goes into a sort of self-exile when the war is done because there's no way the people of Ravka would have accepted him as an ally to the Sun Summoner/new king, and he and Alina ultimately part on good terms, and he can go in peace, knowing that he did what he set out to do, create a world where his people could be safe. I don't know if that would have worked out with all the other details of the story/characters, but it's been a while since I've read these books and at this point I don't have the energy to go back and read them again😅
Using Bagra to make a bunch of amplifyers flew in the face of the Grishaverse rules. The person who killed her could have ma AN amplifyer & taken it for themself or put it on someone else (like Darkling did with the stag). You can't just parcel it out & make tons of them or that would have been done with the stag.
The writer christina strain was bragging about adding that just to ruin the fan-favorite character. It is 100% out of line with canon books, season 1 magical lore setup, and was added just as a way to invalidate Demon in the Woods and darkling's personal trauma. She HATES him. It's completely unprofessional and jeopardized the future of the shows
16:06 That's not how the tether works. "The connection between us, an answering echo at the other end of an invisible tether" It's a pull, a connection. They can sense each other's emotions but to actually show up to one another they have to be drawn by the pull, they have to be consciously or subconciously calling to one another and answering back. "I felt it then, the vibrationalong that invisible tether. I pushed away from it. I would not go to the Darkling now but still I knew wherever he was he was grieving."
I love that we can tell how much you love the series and the world, and that you aren’t just shitting on the show for content! But beyond that, really well-done analysis - the show had a lot of issues from the start for me esp. with the attempt to combine the Crows with the S&B storyline, but it definitely felt more balanced than whatever s2 is, and you pointed out the issues so perfectly.
thank you sooo much for talking about this, i was so upset with what season two did with the story, especially with the important story beats with the crows being thrown in out of nowhere, and it feels like nobody online has been talking about it 😭 i thought i went crazy and i was the only one who watched season two but i suppose the internet had silently agreed to never talk about it and i can absolutely understand why.
I didn’t even finish season 2 because it annoyed me so much. I love season 1, and I love the cast but I could not stand the changes that they were making.
I also enjoyed the first season, and couldn’t stand season 2. I hated everything about decisions made about condensing so much of the story into so few episodes. I also wanted to see a split in the show and have SoC and SaB in two separate shows. Quite frankly, I’m glad they cancelled it because the choices made for season two ruined all possible outcomes for season 3 or a SoC spin off.
yeah i seriously love both book series and the first mistake they made imo was combining them. will always mourn the lost opportunity of a soc show with that cast AHH IT'S NOT FAIR
I had not read the books prior to seeing the show. The thing that made me fall in love with the first season was the crows, nina and matthias, and alina and the darkling being foils. I thought this all would be explored more and in a cohesive way in season two but it was the opposite. I also wasn't a fan of the ending of season 2. The I looked up how the shadow and bone books ended and I feel that was even worse. Also I think Matthias dies and I just can't handle that
I didn't read the books before watching season 1 and stayed away from any spoilers from them so I'd watch the show as its own thing. I can say as someone going into the story blind, I can tell you that season 2 felt completey divorced from the story they were setting up in season 1. It felt like I had missed a season and even the season on its own felt like I was missing episodes as plot points seem to come out of nowhere. Hearing later that the show tried to marry two separate stories made it all make sense. I would say it worked in season 1, but unfortunately it seems season 1 was building to a story other than the one in the books. Making season 2 feel like a completely seperate story from season 1, not a follow up.
I think you're pointing at major problems of season 2. And even if the SoC books are my favorite, I'm really disappointed about what they made of the SaB trilogy. And I think that one of the worst thing they did is making Alina a kind of superhero, driven by some kind of duty that no one knows where it's coming from. In the books, her character (and Mal's I must agree on that) is much more complex. She fights with lots of contradictory thoughts, values and goals. And this is really what her relationship with the Darkling is about. And OMG the Darkling's character is such a waste... I mean he's both horrifying and very touching in the books I think. And as you mentioned, his character, Alina AND Mal question what we see as power, what it means to have so much power, the consequences of discrimination and hatred, of faith and worship.. I mean the policial, religious and moral reflexions brought by the books are just completely absent. And I think that's what makes great fantasy.. Netflix policy kills art and depth. I'm so annoyed !
Sadly, for once it wasn't Netflix policy's fault. It was Eric and the writer's decision to remove complexity from alina and to "remove all undertones of romance" for darklina (jml quote). It was sad. The internal struggle over power was a major part of her character. And the beautiful book de4th scene made ppl cry because Alina went on about how the stag represetned MERCY and that was the reason she stabbed the darkling - mercy. not hate
Hey, just wanted to explain the amplifier/Bagra's bones thing. You actually do not have to kill an amplifier creature in order to wear their bones! In the books, the Darkling talks about how him and Bagra are living amplifiers so their bones will increase other Grisha's powers. Its also why I think he asks Alina to burn his body, because he is afraid of what people will do to him.
@@bookswithellak No. That is not what the books say. The books explain how there are living amplifiers, but these can be grisha or humans (this is how they test to see if someone is grisha). But simply touching a human amplifier only boosts your powers a bit and only while you touch them. Both s1, the trilogy, and even the badly written KoS books all say that for a grisha to truly gain the power of the amplifier they MUST either k the living amplifier OR that amplifier grants them their powers AS THE AMPLIFIER ITSELF IS DY1ING. That's why in s1 Alina gets the stag's powers - the dy1ng stag choose her to be the new vessel for it's power. The Baghra's bones was not only a thoughtless retcon of S1 thought it was a gross retcon just to mock Demon in the Woods and invalidate the trauma of Aleksander. It went completely against all magical rules (even KoS cough dragon). Some drama must have gone down in the writers room because I have NEVER seen writers hate and destroy certain characters so much.
Actually, you are wrong. Living amplifiers as in humans and not animals running in the wild. Also, the books made it very clear that you must kill the amplifiers to obtain that power. That's how Ilya Morozova made them. Even Baghra made it clear that the amplifiers are meant to be worn. The whole connection with amplifiers thingy is made for Alina to keep her "special" status as the main character.
@ClairedeLunes OMG I never thought about how the Baghra amplification in the show undermines what happened with the darkling in his childhood 😢 Now, I'm almost livid
@@Chasingdreams25 Yep both season 1 and the books very explicitly states you HAVE TO either get rid of the living amplier yourself to absorb the full power or have the amplifier give their power to you as they are perishing (the stag). The living amplifier can only give a small fraction of its power to a grish while alive - and only by direct touch to the living part.
It really would have been better not to mix Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows. Eight episodes are already so little time to allow characters to develop. Both cast of characters deserved more time to tell their story and especially, they deserved not to be set up against each other. What really soured me against the second season was the amount of "I'm only watching for the crows, Alina and her story is boring, the crows needed more screen time, ecc." Both deserved more screen time.
Alina's story wasn't suppose to be boring, but the writers removed most of the complex parts of it, shoved malina down everyone's throat (sorry they bore the general audience), and sidelined her. Her story could have been so much better!
I hate so much the second season that I would be happier if they cancelled the show before it. They cut everything that matter as characters development. All the character drama was gone. One does not took a series that have great character and try to rely only in the epic elements of it universe, because being like it, no matter what happen to the character, because we don't care about them anymore. First season was a great adaptation. Even though I don't like the decision of using the crows, because there's a lot to unpack about them, they character story is everything for the crow universe, and we get only a taste of their charisma, but even so, it was great. Second season was so rush and bad made that I don't get why they bother doing it. Genya in the church is the most heart breaking scene of the saga, and we don't have it. We don't have Braghra as a character too, and she is complex and awesome. We don't have Sturmhond and barely have Nikolai , and the thing annoyed me the most is how nichevo'ya was NOTHING in the show. In the book is it a creepypasta creature. Siege and Storm have so much darkness. Darkling was finally showed as something scary, and even so, charming. I don't know... I got really upset and pissed for them adapting like they did, with no love, just rushing to ending concluding 3 books and a half (because the crows) in 8 episodes. Disrespectful!
I wish they had done series for shadow and bone and then a couple of films for six of crows and crooked kingdom because realistically they feel like they should be two separate things
If the powers that be can’t get the live action reinstated, I’d personally love to see these stories (particularly SoC & CK) realised with animation, perhaps in the stylisation of Arcane. It would take longer to deliver perhaps but I believe that would be the best way to represent the vast and rich world of the Grishaverse to its full potential. The end product could be accurate and satisfying. It would also not suffer from issues such as actors aging out of roles. I was so disappointed with Season 2, its’ rushed pace and botched stitching of stories/pacing…such a shame because season 1 was superb on so many levels.
Post s1 Ben Barnes and Jessie Mei Li: We're really excited to explore these characters and their complex relationship in the seasonSSSSSS to come (emphasis added) S2: ............ producers/writers: let's insult a major part of the fanbase that's been here since 2010, made the trilogy skyrocket to international fame, and pulled in general audience views for s1 aaaaaand not do any of that ..... at all.....not even a little. No complexity at all. yeah that'll get us views! the writers really love the crows and it shows. But their care for the trilogy just wasn't there.
watching s1 interviews and comparing them to s2 actor's/writers interviews.... even THEY all knew that s2 wasn't good and it had high chances of getting the axe.
Add this too. The interviews with the writer named Eric, were like : -Can you tell us more about S&B S2? -Yeah sure, so like... We've finished writing the scripts for SoC spin-off even tho we didn't get the green light for it yet because it all depends on the views of this season so make sure you watch it. And it's gonna be amazing, I promise.
@@Chasingdreams25 Eric and Co had ZERO plans to continue Alina's story. They were told hey maybe write the spinoff and took that as the greenlight to destroy the entire grishaverse to get there faster
Thank you for explaining this so well! I admit haven't read the books as of yet. Something I will rectify soon. I loved the first season and thought it quite good since it felt a lot more authentic than many other attempts on fantasy series (e.g. The Wheel of Time is downright horrible!!!). Also: having such a diverse cast & characters felt really refreshing. Watching the second season, I was so disappointed, and now knowing that they jammed 3 books into one season kind of explains it. There is so much going on and at the same time so little in terms of character development. I would have loved to see this cast getting to explore there respective stories in more depth. I love video essays, too and people like you putting so much effort into it. Love from Hamburg
I HATED how they erased Zoya's character arc in the series. She's such an interesting, compelling character and to strip her of her depth is such a disservice.
you summed it up pretty nicely, however, i do think that a renewal of this series might not be possible considering how the morale of the showrunners was absolutely destroyed by the cancellation. and also, the actors are moving on to other things, some might not even be down to resigning the project with the uncertainty looming over everyone's head. i do want to see a 3rd season with this cast so badly, but i also think it is just no longer possible. the momentum is lost.
I firmly thought they were going to make this work, but when I watched the trailers and the first episode, I was so dissapointed. It was just very... childish. I'm going to say what I remember from the things that I noticed, and I don't want for people or fans to take this as a personal attack to anyone, it is just an opinion. The performances of some of the actors where, sometimes, either lacking feeling, or being overly done, the thing is they were not consistent. I loved the first images of Jessie Mei-Li because she actually fit the image that I had for the character, but some scenes came out looking very weird, I remember the scene where she is showing her powers at this party and I couldn't help but to cringe at that scene. Maybe it was too soon for her to get a lead role in a TV show, because that repeats itself several times in both seasons. She is not a bad actress, but her performace feels too rookie for a major production. (I add here, I forgot to say that they did her dirty with the writting, so I think she did the best she could with that too) Ben Barnes was good, but towards the end of the first season his character began to look like a cartoon. I don't remember much of his acting during the second season honestly, but he was perfect for the role; it was the direction what I believe brought his acting down. Archie, Amita, Freddie and Kit were spot on with the little opportunity they gave their characters to grow. Archie was so good in the first season, I can't stop saying that. I won't talk about his acting on the second season because it was all a mess for everybody 😂 But Zoë Wanamaker's performance was the best, and she didn't even have a lead role. The rest of the cast didn't leave a lasting impression in me overall. My dad and I watched this together and he did not pass beyond the third episode. I repeat, it felt kind of childish. I still read the first book nowadays, and think of the story as a very dark and somber one, of course full of fantasy, but the main plot is more serious than witty. If you look for the directors of the two seasons, some of them had in fact worked with fantasy shows prior to this, but most of them hadn't, and the messy result of it might've had something to do with that. Added to the fact that they decided to join two book series in one. And I will not go deeper into the aspects of the story that they left out or rushed. Or the fact that they made Six of Crows the main story when they show is called "Shadow and Bone". The costumes were amazing, and the locations were wonderful too. The CGI was meh. I liked the combat scenes, they were well choreographed and the actors put a lot of themselves into it. I feel like this show would've done so much better if it focused only on the "Shadow and Bone" trilogy, directed it towards a more mature audience and not just teenagers, had a better casting, and probably made with all of it six episodes instead of eight. I was so sad when I watched the second season. I knew right away it was going to be cancelled.
I 100% agree. I was literally talking about this with a friend last week but NETFLIX messed it up so bad. I can’t even blame the writers when they did so WELL with season 1. I was scared at first but season 1 was so damn good it gave me so much HOPE. I rewatched so many times but now I can’t even touch the show because it gets me mad that they purposely messed it up so bad??? The trilogy and duology holds a special place in my heart and it saddens me because the cast so good too? Everyone loved the work and they got along so well…
I haven't read the books but the first season of the show made me want to. It was a good season. Solid and I was really excited for season 2. I watched it when it aired and was terribly disappointed. Season 2 had pacing issues. There were so many things happening. So many rushed plotlines. It felt like the show was desperate to cram a lot of things within the season. The weaving of the stories isn't smooth and not as exciting as s1 built it up for. It was miles away from season 1 and that made me kinda sad. Of course, I don't know exactly how bad it is from the books but trust me, as a tv show viewer only, it was bad.
It's so interesting hearing non-readers' perspectives! I think adaptations have to be able to stand on their own as a good TV show, regardless of how faithful they are to the books, so I'm not surprised Season 2 didn't achieve that.
I think they either should've only adapted SoC or kept the Crows secondary characters with only prequel stuff for season 1-2 while focussing on the plot of S&B and then switched the focus over to them for season 3-4 with the aftermath of the events in Ravka being shown as a smaller secondary plot this time. The Crows could've been connected to the whole plot in smaller ways. Maybe Inej discovers rumours about jurda parem early on, Sturmhond could appear in season one without it being revealed who he really is, Alina and Mal could hide out in Ketterdam instead of Novyi Zem, etc. I think Nikolai's real father actually lived in Ketterdam, so maybe the Crows discovered something about it and Sturmhond is trying to find him too and make sure that information stays buried or something. That way Kaz could've also figured out that Nikolai and Sturmhond are the same person and kept the information as leverage with it only being revealed to the audience when Alina finds out. I think utilising Sturmhond in season 1 could've been a key way to connect the plots. Yes, we would've had to wait until season 3 for Wylan to appear and all the Crows to come together, but instead they could've shown Kaz building up the Dregs, shown Kaz' hatred of Pekka without knowing where it stems from, Inej at the menagerie being recruited by Kaz, and how Jesper and Inej became the people in the Dregs Kaz trusted the most because especially with Jesper it was never revealed in the books. There is so much backstory potential for the Dregs without revealing things like Jesper being a grisha or Kaz' trauma already. I also think Nina should've started out as a minor character in season 1 who lives in the Little Palace and is devoted to Zoya. Then she could've been sent on a secret mission by her in season 2 after Zoya became disillusioned with the Darkling, which is how she ends up being captured by Matthias. It would've fit her patriotic character better and would've also given us a character who literally transitions from the Little Palace to Ketterdam just like the focus of the plot does. It would've also meant that because Matthias would've only been introduced in season 2, his prison time could've happened mostly off screen between seasons 2 and 3. I think there was lots of potential for prequel stuff that would've worked well and while I generally liked season 1 anyway, the fact that they literally started out with Jesper, Kaz, and Inej and we didn't get to find out more about how that trio came to be when the Dregs have to many members was such a wasted opportunity. And then season 2 was just such a slap in the face that I don't even want them to be renewed or get a spin-off now because all the important moments have been included in cheapened ways already.
One of my main problems with merging the two shows, is that it just doesn't feel right that the Crows have the backing of kings and saints, even indirectly. They loose their underdog status. Take Nina and Matthias, for example: In the books, there was no way she could get a letter from the king to get him out of Hellgate. It just felt so hopeless. They were children, and they had nobody to turn to for help, so they had to rely on each other, which is what made it so powerful. In the show, it just doesn't hit the same.
lol except those writers literally said they would rather write six of crows and wrote a whole season only for it to get canned. the show was number one but for about a week before it fell to number 2.
I love videos like this because I can listen to them while doing chores, ... I absolutely loved season 1 but season 2 was just so rushed. It was a shame.
Sesson 2 was sadly a speedrun through the plots of several books with not enough care for the original writing. It broke my heart but I still hoped there would be a third season and a spin-off. Sadly it wasn't enough
When I found out it was Leigh who suggested that they used Crooked Kingdom plot points in s2 I was even more confused than by watching it haha. You'd think that as an author she would be the first person to advocate for the big emotional journeys to keep the same beats, right? So the characters can have their full developmental arcs? But she said herself that the writters came to her and said: "listen we don't know what to do with the crows in the first half of the season without compromising them meeting Alina at the end again or entering the ice court heist plot too soon.", and she turned and said: "you can use these and these and these parts of crooked kingdom with no problem to the story". And here's a perfect example of why I don't think it's always for the best that the author is super envolved, especially one that don't understand anything about tv making (I know, I'm the only one in this earth that thinks so). These writters are clever, they are intelligent, they could've come up with something different on their own and I doubt they would've dare to go so far without endulgence when the crows were the ones they were obsessed about. Honestly, maybe it's not something that most people would agree with, but: I really think if they wanted to do just the crows' story from the get go, they could've, it could absolutely work, how many grishaverse fans started by reading SoC first? I know a bunch. They didn't needed Alina if they didn't wanted her, they could explain the events of the Ravkan Civil War or about the Sun saint through pieces of dialogue and that's it, people don't have trouble understanding a book withouth knowledge of the trilogy, why would they have in a show where everything is so visual? A mural of Alina, a dialogue between Nina and Inej and bam done. Then, if it was succesful they could've announced the trilogy as a "prequel" show since these are so famous now days. None of these people were passionate about shadow and bone the way they were about the crows and it shows. I completly understand the rushing of the trilogy considering the second book is more slow and could've made a boring season for tv, also they were fearful of cancelation as Christina (one of the writters) mentioned so much on her twitter, on interviews, etc, and then they wouldn't be able to finish the story at all. But that's why I also think that book series like this need to come with a full package contract when the network is forced to finish the main story no matter what. Writters can't have much freedom when they never know if the show they're working on can last for 10 seasons or be cancelled 2 weeks after it's released. It's not realistic for creative work and "seeds" to be planted for the future.
Just because I’m curious, do you have a source for Leigh’s involvement with season 2 and the writers asking her for advice? Leigh said in an interview that she “was going to take a step back from the adaptation process and be a little bit less hands-on”. She was also initially hesitant with the two stories being made into one show on the first place.
@@bookswithellak. She took a step back, yes. She didn't go to shootings or post-production like she did for s1, nor was in every meeting from the writters room. But she still read all the scripts,and gave consultation and feedback for them. Honestly, I saw her talking about using crooked kingdom plots on her instagram stories when s2 dropped, I don't know if there's a interview about it, but maybe fandom pages on twitter have prints? They usually do.
omg the ending was SO BAD >.< and they ruined it so they can bank on it more with expanding in another direction and for what? So they can cancel it. Hope someone was fired (not really but fined at least... demoted.)
Tbh mixing Shadow and bones and Six of crows was the mistake. The casting was flawless, the budget was ok (at least it didnt look lik syfy or cw show, it had nice locations and scenarios). But the decision to mix two sagas, that werent on the same timestamp, provocated multiple changes in characters arcs, plots, how some couples were dealt with (fast, instead of slow burn for crows couples). A pity the audience was fine, enough to be renewed, but netflix didnt had any confidence SINCE PREPRODUCTION. Ok. Enough of blaming netflix, they have 99% of blame. But 1% of blame I will have to admit....the writing of both seasons were too abrupt due the fact of mixing two book sagas, like if you put House of the dragon in the middle of Game of thrones lmao.
i hated how they COMPLETELY stripped kanej of all their insane depth in s2. like how they put other characters in place on inej in scenes? jasper in the carriage, nina in the pekka rollins scene. and kaz LETTING them hear his backstory with jordie??? book kaz would sooner swan dive off a cliff before EVER letting ANYONE but inej see him weakened or shaken up. and the fact inej really didn’t feel like his ominous second shadow drove me mental :(( we didn’t see the way she’s always following kaz and keeping an eye on him, even when he tells her not to. oh, and don’t get me started on them CUTTING kaz GIVING KANEJ HER FREEDOM, by not having him BUY HER THE BOATTT
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I genuinely DON’T understand why they wasted so many of the Crow’s plot beats with no build-up if they were planning a spin-off. And WHY did they make Inej leave under such different circumstances while mashing together two different conversations between her and Kaz? Why speedrun her character leaving when they were so obviously setting up the Crows spin-off?
Yeah I will never forgive them for utterly butchering her character arc for the sake of making Kaz's an even bigger focus than it already was...
Honestly I thought it was such a mistake to even have them in the series they should have gotten their own show (that’s now not happening RIP) it was a misstep messed up the time lines and made it to where there was so much going on at once in a already full story
And getting rid of Tante Helene off screen! When she showed up in s1 and was very important in CK to have Inej bring her to justice and end her character arc. Smh
LITERALLY. Like at that point almost nothing was left for their actual book ://
Also I don’t like how much they aged them up. The intriguing part about them (Kaz especially) was how young they were, and how messed up it was that these young kids had to turn into what they were. Also it was really bad ass how cool and intelligent they were. It didn’t have that same effect at all due to the age up. Also Kaz seemed more grumpy than serious, yk?
To be completely honest, I think they should’ve just adapted Six Of Crows, not SAB. I’m honestly so mad at the wasted potential given how great the cast are at portraying the characters, they’re just perfect. But that just means I’m more disappointed by what we lost due to Netflix’s incompetency
After the first season I read all the books. The SAB trilogy is kinda meh to begin with, but I alsolutely loved the SOC books. Felt like they weren't written by the same author.
So true. The whole timeline mash up already didn't work for me in season 1. Six of Crow is so good on its own, it would have been better if they just adapted that and stayed as true to the source material as possible.
100%, Shadow and Bone was the weaker series and SOC was so much tighter with its storytelling. The mashup was a mistake.
I remember being so confused watching the show because I've read Shadow and Bone but not Six of Crows. I didn't know who the heck the random group of thieves were or why their story was more compelling than the one the show is supposedly about! 😂
They should’ve adapted six of crows but there’s still a bit of lore from shadow and bone that you need to know in order to understand six of crows. Having SOC be a spin off after 1 season kinda was the perfect plan, but they shouldn’t have meshed their story into the first season.
"What went wrong"? Only the casting went right.
They had SO much to work with
@@bookswithellak Exactly!
Absolutely
The cast was great but not perfect. Jesper was whitewashed (he had dark skin in the books) and Nina was plus sized.
@@witchplease9695 I get that tbh, I'm so sick of whitewashing and I understand the importance of having dark skinned representationbut I feel like Kit Young's acting was so good that it didn't matter. He captured the characters' essence perfectly and that was the most important thing to me
If the showrunner wanted six of crows… why didn’t he just skip shadow and bone and make six of crows?
Netflix had already bought the rights to Shadow and Bone when they contacted Heisserer, so it was either add The Crows in and do them both, or leave the project entirely.
Shadow and Bone is a classic chosen one /hero's journey fantasy book (even Leigh said so in an interview, I think). So naturally, all these studios trying to find the "next Happy Otter" would naturally pick up this story. The issue is The Dregs are so much more fun! Its was truly fun, novel, different - it's how Inej says in Crooked Kingdom: "What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway." If there is one story we love more than the chosen one, we love an underdog and the Dregs duology was everything but they never recognised that
Speaking of wringing magic from the ordinary - the Dregs is a heist story in a world where magic exists, instead of a story of a magical hero. Again, Netflix dropped the ball because they were trying to make the next "Throne of Games" and pretty much all of season 1 of GoT was not magic but good character-based storytelling. Netflix wanted to show us magic - the Fold, the Darkling. The Sun-summoning. They wanted to establish the magic and the setting but the characters just didn't have enough bones to carry that through while the Dregs (even without Wylan) just simply were the more fun, more developed characters who stole the show.
@@bookswithellak Timeline isoff. Eric approached them with Six of Crows first. Then Netflix was like oh we want to create a universeso we acquired the rights to S&B and the Crows. Netflix wanted the next game of thrones/witcher fantasy franchise.
@@ClairedeLunes Heisserer tweeted at Leigh Bardugo and then Netflix called him up a year later about SaB because of his interest. He’s said this in multiple interviews. Do your research.
One of the things I didn't like about Netflix's S2 ending was how they changed defeating The Fold. In Netflix's version, Alina defeats it on her own. In the book series, after she obtains the last amplifier, she loses her powers and it gets distributed to other people who use it together to defeat the fold. In I way I found this more meaningful because it gave the message that this much power should not be held by a single person (and that this was reason The Fold was created.
Oh wow that sounds SO much better. I never read books, but that sounds so much better than what show did. The change the show made seems like big change for future story/plotlines
@@sarhahillsburg5142The entirety of how season 2 plays out completely changes the trajectory series, especially with the damn ending. That’s why it infuriates me
Personallyyyyy I’m livid about how they changed Alina’s arc and overall story
This!!! And, correct me if I’m wrong (I don’t remember the books that much), Darkling’s reason for the fold was because he wanted more power and control.
@@xFolkmoreI was so excited that Alina dumped Mal!
Among other many things (wdym Nina 'always wanted to be a healer', since when) I will never forgive Netflix for making Kaz just take over some group of randos instead of fighting his own gang members for his rightful place. And the whole Inej storyline is just insulting with all that shying away and glossing over the horror she's been through. It's even more painful to watch considering how amazing the cast was. There was no salvaging the SoC timeline from the mess they've made but I still hate that the actors didn't get to play those characters more since they were so good.
I completely agree about the Dregs takeover, it’s such a pivotal moment in the books that needed to be set up with a lot more care.
That part confused me SO much. I hadn't realised in the first season that he wasn't already second in comand of The Dregs becaiuse he had the Crow Club. How did he have one without the other? It doesn't make sense. Then suddenly he needs more people so he just goes and has some fisticufs & gets a gang. Really stupid.
Also wdym Nina never tells Zoya, nik, or alina about west ravka the place she was spying on! She never mentions general zlatan's secession, how he partnered with Fjerdans and sold grishas like herself, and how they were planning an attack on the old king and alina (though she likely wouldn't know about alina but would know zlatan would destroy anything that kept the east ravkans stable and threatened his power in the west).
He also is considerably less smart in the show compared to the books 🙃🥲
I think something else that happened is Kaz became the main character of the six of crows side of the show. While he's definitely a main character, some would argue more so than many of the other crows. The books have multiple povs for a reason. Inej, jesper, wylan, mathias, and nina are all also main characters, but the show put every single one of their stories on the back burner. It's so sad. All of the characters were robbed, and by extension, so was Kaz because they're all big parts of his life and him working through things like trust.
I completely agree, this was actually a point I forgot to mention in this video but wrote down in my notes.
It's especially evident in the scene where Tolya and Zoya speak with the Crows about retrieving the Neshyenyer. It didn't feel right that Jesper, Nina, and Wylan were on the sidelines waiting for orders from Kaz and then agreed to them just like that.
The sidelining of Inej’s story particularly hurt me 😢
It's because the showrunner, Eric, self-inserts himself as Kaz. He completely ignored the crow's balance
I genuinely don’t understand why they didn’t just adapt Siege and Storm for season 2 like they did with S1, it just made everything so clunky and far too quick
Yep. This made for really poor set up --> which led to an even worse pay off on the S&B storyline. Also, removing alina's empathy and darklina's complex relation helped ruin s2.
@@user-qw2nn9lk7z post season 1, the actors jessie and ben revealed they were excited to work together and explore their complex relationship for seasons to come. Plural. Many seasons. Then Erick rushed and ruined the whole trilogy smh. By all of Eric's interviews, it seems like he was ONLY interest in the crows and saw sab as something to get over faster. Being told he could write the spinoff basically gave him the thought that he had to rush/ruin the trilogy because leigh bardugo said multiple times you cannot have jurda parem and the darkling at the same time. Eric rushed on purpose to get the soc spinoff right away. Instead of carefully doing a s2 that would appeal to general audiences and cover S&S, he ruined it all
@@ClairedeLunesAbsolutely, I've always known he just wanted to do SoC but had to do Grisha for the worldbuilding. That's why they shoehorned the Crows in they just couldn't wait for a spin-off. I still think there were ways to keep them in the show without ruining literally all of Crooked Kingdom. I can't stress how absolutely ridiculous and stupid it was to randomly have half of that book happen simultaneously as Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. What would they have done after the Ice Court heist ? There was no coming back from that. What a messy salad.
@@gracie9658 right!? And what would be the high stakes for the heist? The ice court heist worked so well because every good heist story has really high stakes and motivations behind it. Now, Inej is already free and in her own ship starting her journey. It's not the end-all high stakes of her doing this to gain her freedom. Kaz already defeated Pekka and used up the very important backstory/revenge plot that had fit so well in CK as the end of his journey. Jesper already has full control and is open about being a grisha - unlike in Soc where being in the heist is what pushed him to slowly open up to others about his true self and start practicing his abilities apart from just bullets. And don't get me started on the sweet, slow-burn wesper changed to a one night - well at least they were together but...
@@ClairedeLunes Literally all of their reasons to do the heist in the first place, and most of their character development were solved by the end of the show. Except for Nina and Matthias (my poor boy, they did him SO dirty and now he is stuck in Hellgate forever...). They would have no real reason to take the job other than for a challenge ? And money I guess but as you said no real stakes. Basically they replaced the heist and its stakes with getting Alina in season 1...
Also imagine them having Jurda Parem and that weird evil Alina thing they were going for at the end ? Maybe we were spared.
I'm sorry I could rant about this all day. We will never have a satisfying adaptation of anything, they always mess up in the end.
Season 2 hurt my heart. It was so pacey and honestly by the end of it, i cared so little about Alina and Mal, and the only characters I genuinely wanted to see more of were the crows and Tolya and Tamar. I say this as a huge Mal stan from the first season and also because I cared enough for Alina and Nikolai in the second book. Also, the Mathias redemption arc was one of my favourite bits of Crooked Kingdom, and it was just so sad how the second season treated his bit. Mathias showed us people could change, humans can rise above our fears and hatred and it was all lost.
I never read the books, but I was so pleasantly surprised that I loved the main plot with the “Main Girl” just as much as the B-plot. Too often shows do the main girl in the Young Adult genre dirty, and write the side characters infinitely better - but I was captivated the entire time. Even the classic miscommunication trope between Mal and Alina was done well enough that I was invested and not just annoyed. Their connection felt real to me.
Then season 2 happened and all tension and chemistry just deflated. I felt like I wanted to get Alina’s scenes over with and get back with the B-characters (which was also less compelling at that point,) which was so sad. I thought Netflix actually did something with season 1 😢
Also my favorite thing to say when explaining this show to my friends is “I guess that guy is stuck in the hell prison forever now” R.I.P.
They made Mathias little more than a SoC extra instead of being one of the 6. This destroys the last two books because why is Nina so driven by what happened to such an unimportant character in Netflix's version?
Another disappointing change to the crows story was when Kaz spread the fake plague to Pekka Rollins' establishments. In the show, Rollins has acquired the menagerie, he owns it, so Kaz sending the plague there is just another part of his revenge. But in the book, Rollins has no association with it, but Kaz takes the place down anyway, for Inej.
Kaz is known for only caring about himself, money and revenge (and the crows, but he wouldn't admit that), but he consistently sacrifices all of these things for Inej. He puts his leg through intense pain to get her to the boat, he buys her a boat with his own prize money and goes out of his way to take down the menagerie. This (along with him buying her a boat) is one of my favourite Kanej moments and I was sad to see it go.
It's such a beautiful moment were you realise how much he actually cares about her and what she's been through when he's previously not seemed to.
as someone who didnt read the books i thought the chemistry between alina and darkling in first season was just so electric and it was so dissapointing how little that was in season two
Yeah. I am darklina shipper and I loved the casting for Alina and Darkling. Even enjoyed the changes for Malina(giving more development and chemistry than the books had). But unfortunately in season 2, S&B characters are wasted alongside SOC due the fast pace and lack of tension
me with the books! Darklina just makes more sense in book and the show.... We can't win lmaoooo
THIS! And seeing the writers admit they removed any and all undertones of their romance for s2 is the reason i could not finish the s2. Darklina MADE the grishaverse become famous. There's a reason for that - it attracts general audiences! If they had combined darklina + better crow integration wewould have had a s3, s4, and s5
Same! That’s what drew me to the show in the first place.
Having read and watched this story, I cannot fathom why anyone would ship them after the Darkling's evil comes to light. He tortured Alina, murdered so many people, and hurt everyone close to Alina. He is completely irredeemable in my eyes, and personally I'm actually very happy they removed all notion of romance between them. He never really loved her, just saw her as a means to an end, and she was naive and malleable. I think that ending all the tension between them was integral to showing Alina's character growth as someone who is forced to grow up and learn very quickly.
One of the things that really pisses me off with the Crows storyline is that the Crows aren't in the Dregs. Kaz isn't a Lieutenant for Per Haskell and that damages not only his relationship with everyone but also take the impact of him besting his own gang in a fight. And this could be easily fixed in season 2 with a scene between Haskell and Kaz, where Haskell says that Kaz is going behind his back again and something like "this is the last warning"
Then, instead of Helleen's death you could acuse them of literally anything else (given Kerch is known for putting money above lives, it would even serve as a way to deepen the universe in the show) and put the stadwatch on their backs. I think they went with "killing" Helleen to add Inej's freedom to Kaz' motivation, but it damaged Inej's characther SO MUCH
Also, the scene where Kaz ASKS FOR INEJ TO BE THERE and then she DOESN'T, when in the books she was there? Like????
And in the end, the crows were so underused in the battle against the Darkling. We have moments were Kaz is just standing there, doing nothing. It was rushed. I got the impression they wanted to put everything in a season fearing the cancellation...
But knowing they didn't is er...
The crows shouldn't have fought the darkling to begin with
What went wrong, the same thing as LoTR and WoT and Witcher and every other adaptation of recent years. We get showrunners who have no respect for the source material. I used to get excited when a beloved IP was announced for a show, now I get the wrong type of chills. Kinda hoping they don't do Malazan at this point.
Any time someone mentions source material, I know they haven't read the material, and it's coded for there are too many gays, women, women of color, and men of color. The only people of colour you guys accepts in fantasy are the slave kind.
The casting was amazing, everything else was a disaster. I would LOVE a full cast audiobook production of SoC.
Ooooo oooo I want it! Yes! That would ba amazing!
Oh my goodness that would heal me so much.
The only way we're ever getting a faithful book adaptation. I'd listen to the whole trilogy and soc again of the cast did it
@@Sunshine-od2cd But with proper accents
Any faith I had in the adaptation went out the window the moment the Darkling asked Alina to call him by his real name in like the second episode. I know the author mentioned she wanted to tone down the romance between them in the show due to the age gap but the moment when he asks her to call him Aleksander in the books was just one of my favorite things ever written and it shows a brief sliver of humanity still left in him. It even gets called back in the last sentence of book three and it felt like a punch in the gut.
All the characters were aged up in the show. The actors themselves were near 30 when they filmed. And I follow Leigh and try to read all her interviews I don't recall she ever mentioned that - she did mention trying to change some S&S and R&R plot points but not the romance
After the success of the first season, the Crow's spinoff should have been greenlit and the two stories should've split off.
They could have still intertwined them a bit with small cross-overs and surprise cameos.
Air the second season of S&B and shortly after premire the Crow's spin-off. Do justice to both storylines and sets of characters.
Cramming all of those plot points in season 2 from like 4 different books and in ONLY 8 EPISODES was absurd and it didn't do justice to anything at all.
The cast was amazing and its a damn shame it all ended up going down in flames. Just another tragic Netflix series to add to the graveyard. Smh
Yes they totally should have had them just cameo in each others respective shows
And seeing the writers and Eric make the absolute worst PR interviews pre-release was such a facepalm moment! Eric and co succeded in alienating half the fanbase, insulting the fanbase, and anger everyone when they said they were doing like 5 books in 8 episodes. SMH at Eric, Netflix had offered him 10 episode seasons and he refused (collider interview from s1). If he'd accepted 10 ep we could have had filler episodes or more episode with just important dialogue/interactions
That's kind of thing issue. Season 1 wasn't a success..
@@GothPaoki s1 data was kept hidden from the publbic, Netflix only started releasing data in the next year. But the s1 numbers were enough to get a renewal by summertime.
S2 numbers, which were published and analyzed by ppl who make it their living to report on this, said s2 numbers were BAD and to make matters worse the CVE completion rate was abysmal the first few weeks. General audiences did not like s2 like they did s1 - or skipping al the bland and boring malina part (which many did in s2) helped lower our chances for the spinoff.
Tbh every post I saw from the writers was talking about how good the soc spin off would be, while neglecting shadow and bone, they had obvious restrictions, but sab being cancelled also was their own doing. I couldn't even watch the whole thing because even if the crows scenes were better than the sab ones, they were also a mess
Not just were they only exclusively talking about SoC, but the few interviews they did where they mentioned S&B it was some of the worst, most anti-marketing bizaree thing I have ever seen. Insulting half the fandom before it even aired.
It was not a good look.
@@ClairedeLunesmost of the writers except for Daegon(sp?) were literally saying ‘watch S&B s2 so we can get SoC s1’ FROM DAY ONE. Heiseich(sp?) was constantly talking about SoC scripts being in the bag, too. Certain promises like ‘Alina’s heritage will be explored’ were totally left by the wayside. Later twitter interactions, especially with Strain, made it very clear they had no idea what S&B s3 would even be. It was absolutely a mess, and anyone who followed any of the promotional materials expected TGT to be the focus and SoC to be the salt/spice like they were in s1. The Crows fans, at least where I saw, were trying to carry the spin off hype, but it didn’t happen.
@@kahare9565 Those interviews with the writers and thewir sociaal media replies were so unprofessional and cringy. Never, ever alienate half the fanbase. They KNEW general audiences wanted to see more of Alina and the darkling, they KNEW those two are the attention grabbers for the trilogy, they KNEW alina's journey and her complex emotions are what made the story compelling. Instead, they removed the complexity and removed her empathetic side - just re-reading the monologue in R&R made so many people cry at the death scene!! And even in RoW she literally says "It's not tooo late for you" and these words haunt him later and are possibily what makes him chose to help Nikolai and Zoya win the battles in the end.
Instead....they shoved all complexity aside and were dashing through alina's story as quickly as they could to get to MORE KAZ! I'm sorry but flashbacks and backstory for the Crows should have been made in theor spinoff! So that people picking up the spinoff firsthand will understand or they'd have to re-harsh it all over again!
Netflix needs to stop trying to wrap any and every show into 8 episodes no matter what. And I agree with you, they never wanted more than three seasons. I was surprised they didn’t end it after a third season especially since they added so many new people.
depends on budget. sometimes they HAVE to end it in 8 episodes no matter what. the more settings, the more realistic the clothing, the more actors, the more well known the actors....etc drains a budget a lot and magic art effects especially sucks the money fast. You want a show to continue more than 8 episodes, talk to your friends and make them watch because everything corporate decides on is numbers. not enough numbers means it will be too pricey.
I happened see a job for netflix I could do and it was hundreds of thousands of dollars salary. Holy hell. almost wish i applied for it, but decided against that stress.
We are no longer in the era of popularity being built up slowly. it needs to make money NOW or it gets canned. They have about 17million in regular debt. interest debt, contract debt, etc all ads up to several millions of dollars. YOu can read Netflix financial report yourself. 33 million revenue in 2023. at least 20 million of that is paying off investors, employees, etc. Then they have to keep a free cash flow to start other projects etc.
You want more than 8 episodes? You want them to take this more seriously than only considering big hits? tell everyone and their mother to get a separate netflix account and tell everyone to actually start watching these shows. and keep rewatching. It's literally the only way. Digital streaming services lose more money for the company nowadays than they used to.
Netflix offered Eric 10 episode seasons. Eric turned that down (collider interview during s1)
@@ClairedeLunes !!!!! omg!!! i did not know this! I will have to look up the interview to see why he turned it down because 8 episodes just doesn't work!
@@AllThingsShaunda He said it was because of budgets. They would have gotten the same budget for 8 or 10 episodes. But like....any smart showrunner could and would have just added more budget-friendly scenes! Have the scene of Alina telling Genya about her past (deleted in s1) and add more talking/monologue scenes from the little palace and the crow crew hanging out!
With good camera work and script, film makers can make magic happen in a simple room.
I was in shock when I realized that they crammed that much in to the second season. It felt like such a betrayal.
It was a betrayal for everyone.
i felt like season 2 especially made it clear to me that the creator and people working on the show seemed to favour the crows so much more and left alina and her story on the back burner even though it's supposed to be her show !!!!! it pissed me off so bad
Amen. And they made sure to remove all complexity from Alina's character too.
Removing the mercy monologue at the end was just a spiteful move. Jessie would have nailed it
i prefer the Shadow and Bone storyline of Season 1 over the book and also liked what they did with the crows, but I didn't like anything about season 2. the speed was insane but the changes to the story hurt physically and I could barely get myself to finish the show.
"speed was insane but the changes to the story hurt physically and I could barely get myself to finish the show." - exactly the same for me
Only thing I really liked about it was them giving Baghra a little more time to shine (both her good and bad sides)
@@mggardiner4066 Not really, they removed the side of her that told alina she still loved her son and it wasn't too late for him.
As much as I loathe it, I "understand" the cancellation of Shadow and Bone *but* I do not understand why they didn't move forward with the Six of Crows spin-off.
Smaller cast (all of which perfectly cast and loved as such by the fandom) and less VFX would have made it a significantly cheaper show to produce. Not to mention there was already funds sunken into the writing which they will never recover now.
But also: while season 2 made several missteps that would give a season 3 an uphill battle to recover, the SoC spin-off is separate enough that what comes before doesn't really matter. They can start a new story and still have most of the duology plot to draw from.
Anyone who thinks the duology has been "too pillaged by season 2" for a spin-off to still work, baffles me honestly. The show used maybe 5%. People need to reread the "I buried him" scene because it's truly a minor plot point in every sense of the word but people act like they "used up" the climax of the CK plot.
edit to add: sorry I got on my soapbox there and forgot to be a person. I should also add that I really enjoyed your video. You have a very pleasant voice and I enjoyed listening to your takes. Keep it up!
Thank you, I’m so glad you enjoyed! My theory with the Six of Crows spin-off cancellation is that Netflix were really invested in the “cross-overs” between the two storylines and for some ridiculous reason, they didn’t see the worth/appeal of the SoC story when they didn’t have the original show for them to make a big comeback to in later seasons.
I completely agree that it would’ve stood on its own perfectly fine from what they were setting up. It’s so sad that the duology’s potential on screen might go to waste.
Inej as a character and the actress were exactly what I pictured when reading the book
Neither my partner or I have read the books. We both thought Alina and Mal were wet dishrags but the Crows, Nina, Mathias and the Prince carried it. We want a season three not for Alina, but the others.
And the worst thing is the writers and eric heisserer said if they had s3 they would continue to shove the boring wet cardboard ship down the audience's throats. Alina would just be sidelined...again. And it would all be pure fanfiction by writers who very clearly care more about the crows than S&B
The ending of Ruin and Rising was the best part of the trilogy and they axed it to make Alina potentially evil. Just horrible decision making there for the sake of continuing the crossover between the various parts of the Grishaverse. If that's all Netflix was willing to give us, its just as well it was canceled.
I hated so much that they pushed the last two sab books into one season. I was genuinely so excited for the second season but when it came out I was immensely disappointed. I was also excited for a six of crows spin-off but they ruined everything by squishing everything into one season. The cast is so damn fucking good, like I genuinely love the cast, they’re all so talented and fit their roles perfectly, so sad they didn’t get to explore their roles further. And I’m so mad they didn’t make Alina’s hair white
alina not having white hair slightly ticked me off, but with the way they ended season one, there wasn’t rlly a way to incorporate it into the series
@@milajvde yeah true but I was so excited, so that’s just a fan girl fan girling haha
@@katdiggory5501 even Jessie mei li was pissed too. Jml dyed their hair platinum blonde after shooting was over as a giant middle finger to whoever that white hair would not look good on her. Jml proved then wrong! They rocked that color
What I loved about S1 is how I felt they understood the crows as characters so well they managed to blend them in a story where they don’t originally exist and make them true to the books (for the most part). But S2 is so full of so much content that everyone kind of loses their essence a bit
One thing i disliked about season 2 was how they sidelined Alina in her own story, i believe the show wouldve done better if they had kept the crows in the background like they had done in the first season. Its a shame that we lost this amazing cast.
Edit: this comment was made before watching your video and i will update it afterwards
I really have a bad taste in my mouth for the Netflix exclusive decision makers at this point…
I hear what you're saying about Mal being the most human, grounded part of the books, but idk, he always rubbed me the wrong way (and not just because he was the *other guy* for alina), I feel like he fundamentally holds her back at every turn, and her relationship with him ultimately causes her to lose her power, which was shown time and time again to be a really good, healthy thing for her. I just think Leigh didn't do a good job of writing the alina/darkling/mal relationships, but she really stepped up her game with kanej, halek, zoyalai, and wesper
I agree. While they did make show mal better, I could not stand misogynistic bool mal, in the end the charcter still holds alina back. I wanted to have seen more scenes with just alina. Not her and mal
@@Sunshine-od2cd SAME!!
@@SallyB_23 makes me sad. We could have had both the spinoff and s3 if the writers had done darklina instead of malina.
what went wrong? trying to write a story inspired by russian culture while knowing nothing about russian culture is what went wrong. imagine naming a magician class "john" and then write about it, expanding your "johnverse"... male surnames and female surnames are switched around.... etc
The random Grisha using Bagrah's bones to amplify them was very stupid in my opinion because as you pointed out... ONLY THE GRISHA THAT KILLS THE AMPLIFIER CAN USE IT'S BONES! 🤦🏼♀️
Christina Strain, one of the writers, was boasting on social how she added that scene just to spit on Demon in the Woods and Darkling fans.
Season two was so disappointing to me that I forgot most of it. It was so full of everything that I don’t remember what events did happen, and what events didn’t.
As someone who never read the books, I was intrigued by Ben Barnes’s character so I gave the show a shot. Honestly, he was the only thing worthwhile about it. I didn’t give enough of a crap about any of the other characters to continue with the second season. Now, knowing how the books end, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.
valid
How do they end?
Well in Ruin and Rising, alina uses up all the amplifiers and he has an existential crisis. Alina uses the knife for a mercy k1ll, going on and on about how the stag represented mercy. It was really touching actually. She knelt down, held him, comforted him, and cried over him when he passed. Not the s2 jab and stoic face with no lines. The writers messed up.
Then in later books he gets resurrected (don't ask). But then gets turned into a tree (don't ask)
@@Sunshine-od2cd but then gets turned into a tree (don't ask) 🤣 🤣
Rules of Wolves is NOT canon in my eyes. It's like Leigh Bardugo was taking mushrooms or something how could she mess up the magical system SO MUCH.
PS: LB was a huge Dany anti in Game of Thrones but then turns Zoya into a cheap imitation of Dany that can turn into a dragon. 🤦♂
@@ClairedeLunes rule of Wolves is a fever dream fanfic in my mind. Too many retcons
In my humblest opinion, they should've just done SOC adapted on screen or both SAB and SOC running as SEPARATE shows alongside each other. Especially since the actors were perfect but also, the timeline got messed up by combining them together
That was exactly my reaction to the S2 of S&B ! I was so annoyed when I watched it and so surprised that I just found positive reviews on this. Not one plotpoint felt earned or impactful.
by the way: good job with your first videos. was really surprised after watching your video, that your channel is pretty small. looking forward to new content from you 😊
thank you so much for your comment!! this means a lot :)
" positive reviews" needs to be in quotation marks. The critics gave middling reviews with high scores. The few who gave both high score and sang praises were very close friends with the writers, showrunners, or heavily invested in the SoC BOOKS so wanted to give them as much of a chance fo the spin-off (fair after that trainwreck of a s2). One of the critics even admitted on X that (paraphrasing because I can't recall the exact quote off my head (i could try to find it if you want?) "I'm under embargo but just know that [SoC] means a lot to me "
They often make the same mistakes with fantasy adaption, they don't understand fantasy worlds. Mostly it's a bunch of modern day teenagers behave as modern day characters while wearing cosplay, no immersion, weak worldbuilding. I don't know the books but got interested in the original world via Season 1, S2 was somehow a boring soap with too many plots and no direction.
I still can't believe they added so many good thing in s1 like the secession plot with Zlatan. And s2 completely ignored that! It was a major political point and would have made the show closer to a Game of Thrones. But they wanted Nina to forget about being a spy, forget about West Ravkans betraying her and selling her to Fjerdans, and instead we can just point at one guy Darkling and say look "bad guy." It was so shallow and felt like Disney Movie not a fantasy series
I loved the first season, and read all of the books because of it. The first season captured all the beautiful nuance of Leigh Bardugo’s characters. Season 2 was an absolute disaster, and I can’t even bring myself to watch it all the way through. I loved the cast, it’s a darn shame.
I watched s1 before I read the books, so while I enjoyed the Crows, what I was REALLY invested in was Alina’s journey to discovering and controlling her power, her friendship with Mal, and the Darkling’s spiral into madness as he lost her.
S2 was just… so strange, and unfulfilling. Alina got completely sidelined - I read she actually had less screen time than Kaz, which is insane as she’s the main character, Mal was one dimensional, seeming to serve no purpose except to be someone Alina could yell at, and Aleksander turned into a total villain instead of someone working for a good cause who got pushed too far.
I hate it when people rush plots. I've never read the books but I know when a movie looks like it's rushing. I held back on reading the book because I knew I'd be disappointed with the show if I did that and I thought I'll take the show as it was. S1 was good but s2 felt so rushed and lacking in elements of adventure and bond formations
It was so noticeable that the showrunners didn't care for Alina's story in S2. Netflix also cancelled because they got a mediocre product.
Casual viewers didn't watch for the Crows. They watched for Alina and her story.
I didn’t know anything about the Grishaverse before watching season 1 and I absolutely loved it. Season 2 was so bafflingly bad, but the fandom was still trying so hard to campaign for the show because they wanted the SoC spin-off. A very confusing time cause I felt like the fans kinda had to hold back their criticisms cause they were afraid of the show being cancelled. I was kinda looking around being like “yea.. that was bad, right??”.
I always wondered why they didn’t just adapted six of crows on its own😭 like it’s a perfect b
Ok to adapt with the perfect cast, and also passionate people who would have loved to work on it. It’s such wasted potential and we may never get an adaptation at this rate
Your first sentence hit me like a freight train! As someone whose favourite books include the Wheel of Time series and the Silmarillion (both of which have imo been ruined by Amazon aside from the 1st Age of the Silm which Bezo couldn't get his grubby hands on yet), this is exactly how I feel about live-action adaptions now instead of excitement. Ironically I enjoyed S & B's adaptation much more than the book (don't hate me), but that was the 1st season, the 2nd season got progressively off balance and weird which is such a shame.
The crows needed to be a spin off. I didn't like that season because the two storylines had nothing to do with each other. And the stakes for Alina and the crows were wildly different. She was going to save the world and everything the crows did was on a personal level.
Great video!
I can’t speak about the ‘shadow and bone’ part, but I am a big fan of the crows’ duology, and I agree with everything you said about it
I didn’t hate the things they used from CK, but I also think that it made those plot lines have a lot less weight than they should’ve had
I honestly think they should have done two separate shows after season 1 (maybe even from the beginning, but I can understand wanting to adapt both series at the same time in order to bring all the fans in)
Overall (and this goes for the whole cast) I think it’s truly a pity to see such a great casting go to waste, and I’m really sad with how everything ended up going with the show
Thank you!
I agree, and I feel for the cast and crew who did the best with what they had. I’ll miss the show and those characters on screen so much!
There are worst shows on Netflix that goes up to season 5. I don’t know why they had to cancel this show.
The simplest answer is views and completion rates. Sab performed on the same level as Winx season 2 - which was also cancelled. They needed to have gotten more views and more ubique ppl to fully finish the shows. There were many of my friends who stopped around episode 2 in season. I don't blame them, this season didn't feel like s1
Middle. Books are always the slowest in series I hope they could find someone to sell the series too or give us a final movie for it
i would love for another streaming service to pick it up !!
I never read the books, so judging purely on how the characters were in the show, Alina was the weakest and most annoying character of the entire cast. I found the Crows and the Darkling far more interesting. I even had a theory that the Darkling's mother was actually the villain and that she was grooming Alina to be her next protege because her son had slipped her grasp and stopped obeying her. But like I said, that's my uneducated perspective.
Great video.
I likewise haven't read the books (yet) and had a very similar take to yours.
You should've been in the writers' room tbh, because what you said is far more interesting than the dude in black with dark magic is obviously the villain, and we must kill him at any cost type of plot
Baghra should've been the big bad guy at the end, she never cared about anyone but herself, she especially didn't give a single crap about the fate of the world or even of the grisha, unlike her SON, who spent his entire existence fighting for his people. Alina should have realized that and it could have created a REALLY compelling dymanic between them as they try to come to an understanding about how to protect the grisha and create a better world. I'm not saying they had to be romantic with each other in the end, or even necessarily friends, but maybe allies against Baghra. It would have been really cool to see them combine their powers against hers, and maybe Aleksander goes into a sort of self-exile when the war is done because there's no way the people of Ravka would have accepted him as an ally to the Sun Summoner/new king, and he and Alina ultimately part on good terms, and he can go in peace, knowing that he did what he set out to do, create a world where his people could be safe. I don't know if that would have worked out with all the other details of the story/characters, but it's been a while since I've read these books and at this point I don't have the energy to go back and read them again😅
You’re great! I love the mic with the fairy wand 😂 hope you get more audience growth
Thank you so much!
Using Bagra to make a bunch of amplifyers flew in the face of the Grishaverse rules. The person who killed her could have ma AN amplifyer & taken it for themself or put it on someone else (like Darkling did with the stag). You can't just parcel it out & make tons of them or that would have been done with the stag.
The writer christina strain was bragging about adding that just to ruin the fan-favorite character. It is 100% out of line with canon books, season 1 magical lore setup, and was added just as a way to invalidate Demon in the Woods and darkling's personal trauma. She HATES him. It's completely unprofessional and jeopardized the future of the shows
16:06 That's not how the tether works. "The connection between us, an answering echo at the other end of an invisible tether" It's a pull, a connection. They can sense each other's emotions but to actually show up to one another they have to be drawn by the pull, they have to be consciously or subconciously calling to one another and answering back. "I felt it then, the vibrationalong that invisible tether. I pushed away from it. I would not go to the Darkling now but still I knew wherever he was he was grieving."
Yeah, the effed the connection so bad in S2.
@@Chasingdreams25 It would have been iconic if they had bothered to do it
I love that we can tell how much you love the series and the world, and that you aren’t just shitting on the show for content! But beyond that, really well-done analysis - the show had a lot of issues from the start for me esp. with the attempt to combine the Crows with the S&B storyline, but it definitely felt more balanced than whatever s2 is, and you pointed out the issues so perfectly.
thank you sooo much for talking about this, i was so upset with what season two did with the story, especially with the important story beats with the crows being thrown in out of nowhere, and it feels like nobody online has been talking about it 😭 i thought i went crazy and i was the only one who watched season two but i suppose the internet had silently agreed to never talk about it and i can absolutely understand why.
I didn’t even finish season 2 because it annoyed me so much. I love season 1, and I love the cast but I could not stand the changes that they were making.
I also enjoyed the first season, and couldn’t stand season 2. I hated everything about decisions made about condensing so much of the story into so few episodes. I also wanted to see a split in the show and have SoC and SaB in two separate shows. Quite frankly, I’m glad they cancelled it because the choices made for season two ruined all possible outcomes for season 3 or a SoC spin off.
yeah i seriously love both book series and the first mistake they made imo was combining them. will always mourn the lost opportunity of a soc show with that cast AHH IT'S NOT FAIR
I had not read the books prior to seeing the show. The thing that made me fall in love with the first season was the crows, nina and matthias, and alina and the darkling being foils. I thought this all would be explored more and in a cohesive way in season two but it was the opposite. I also wasn't a fan of the ending of season 2. The I looked up how the shadow and bone books ended and I feel that was even worse. Also I think Matthias dies and I just can't handle that
Its a classic rush-job problem, I was pretty pleased with S1, but S2 was disappointing...
I didn't read the books before watching season 1 and stayed away from any spoilers from them so I'd watch the show as its own thing. I can say as someone going into the story blind, I can tell you that season 2 felt completey divorced from the story they were setting up in season 1. It felt like I had missed a season and even the season on its own felt like I was missing episodes as plot points seem to come out of nowhere.
Hearing later that the show tried to marry two separate stories made it all make sense. I would say it worked in season 1, but unfortunately it seems season 1 was building to a story other than the one in the books. Making season 2 feel like a completely seperate story from season 1, not a follow up.
I think you're pointing at major problems of season 2. And even if the SoC books are my favorite, I'm really disappointed about what they made of the SaB trilogy. And I think that one of the worst thing they did is making Alina a kind of superhero, driven by some kind of duty that no one knows where it's coming from. In the books, her character (and Mal's I must agree on that) is much more complex. She fights with lots of contradictory thoughts, values and goals. And this is really what her relationship with the Darkling is about. And OMG the Darkling's character is such a waste... I mean he's both horrifying and very touching in the books I think. And as you mentioned, his character, Alina AND Mal question what we see as power, what it means to have so much power, the consequences of discrimination and hatred, of faith and worship.. I mean the policial, religious and moral reflexions brought by the books are just completely absent. And I think that's what makes great fantasy.. Netflix policy kills art and depth. I'm so annoyed !
Sadly, for once it wasn't Netflix policy's fault. It was Eric and the writer's decision to remove complexity from alina and to "remove all undertones of romance" for darklina (jml quote). It was sad. The internal struggle over power was a major part of her character. And the beautiful book de4th scene made ppl cry because Alina went on about how the stag represetned MERCY and that was the reason she stabbed the darkling - mercy. not hate
Hey, just wanted to explain the amplifier/Bagra's bones thing. You actually do not have to kill an amplifier creature in order to wear their bones! In the books, the Darkling talks about how him and Bagra are living amplifiers so their bones will increase other Grisha's powers. Its also why I think he asks Alina to burn his body, because he is afraid of what people will do to him.
Thanks so much for explaining that!
@@bookswithellak No. That is not what the books say. The books explain how there are living amplifiers, but these can be grisha or humans (this is how they test to see if someone is grisha). But simply touching a human amplifier only boosts your powers a bit and only while you touch them. Both s1, the trilogy, and even the badly written KoS books all say that for a grisha to truly gain the power of the amplifier they MUST either k the living amplifier OR that amplifier grants them their powers AS THE AMPLIFIER ITSELF IS DY1ING. That's why in s1 Alina gets the stag's powers - the dy1ng stag choose her to be the new vessel for it's power.
The Baghra's bones was not only a thoughtless retcon of S1 thought it was a gross retcon just to mock Demon in the Woods and invalidate the trauma of Aleksander. It went completely against all magical rules (even KoS cough dragon). Some drama must have gone down in the writers room because I have NEVER seen writers hate and destroy certain characters so much.
Actually, you are wrong. Living amplifiers as in humans and not animals running in the wild. Also, the books made it very clear that you must kill the amplifiers to obtain that power. That's how Ilya Morozova made them. Even Baghra made it clear that the amplifiers are meant to be worn. The whole connection with amplifiers thingy is made for Alina to keep her "special" status as the main character.
@ClairedeLunes OMG I never thought about how the Baghra amplification in the show undermines what happened with the darkling in his childhood 😢 Now, I'm almost livid
@@Chasingdreams25 Yep both season 1 and the books very explicitly states you HAVE TO either get rid of the living amplier yourself to absorb the full power or have the amplifier give their power to you as they are perishing (the stag). The living amplifier can only give a small fraction of its power to a grish while alive - and only by direct touch to the living part.
It really would have been better not to mix Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows. Eight episodes are already so little time to allow characters to develop. Both cast of characters deserved more time to tell their story and especially, they deserved not to be set up against each other. What really soured me against the second season was the amount of "I'm only watching for the crows, Alina and her story is boring, the crows needed more screen time, ecc." Both deserved more screen time.
Alina's story wasn't suppose to be boring, but the writers removed most of the complex parts of it, shoved malina down everyone's throat (sorry they bore the general audience), and sidelined her.
Her story could have been so much better!
I hate so much the second season that I would be happier if they cancelled the show before it. They cut everything that matter as characters development. All the character drama was gone.
One does not took a series that have great character and try to rely only in the epic elements of it universe, because being like it, no matter what happen to the character, because we don't care about them anymore.
First season was a great adaptation. Even though I don't like the decision of using the crows, because there's a lot to unpack about them, they character story is everything for the crow universe, and we get only a taste of their charisma, but even so, it was great.
Second season was so rush and bad made that I don't get why they bother doing it.
Genya in the church is the most heart breaking scene of the saga, and we don't have it. We don't have Braghra as a character too, and she is complex and awesome. We don't have Sturmhond and barely have Nikolai , and the thing annoyed me the most is how nichevo'ya was NOTHING in the show.
In the book is it a creepypasta creature. Siege and Storm have so much darkness. Darkling was finally showed as something scary, and even so, charming.
I don't know... I got really upset and pissed for them adapting like they did, with no love, just rushing to ending concluding 3 books and a half (because the crows) in 8 episodes. Disrespectful!
I wish they had done series for shadow and bone and then a couple of films for six of crows and crooked kingdom because realistically they feel like they should be two separate things
What went wrong? When the writers think they are better than the book authors and make up their crappy story, EVERYTHING goes wrong!
I saw a couple of episodes and could not continue. I agree that s2 did not pick up the storyline threads that I was waiting to see at the beginning.
If the powers that be can’t get the live action reinstated, I’d personally love to see these stories (particularly SoC & CK) realised with animation, perhaps in the stylisation of Arcane.
It would take longer to deliver perhaps but I believe that would be the best way to represent the vast and rich world of the Grishaverse to its full potential. The end product could be accurate and satisfying. It would also not suffer from issues such as actors aging out of roles.
I was so disappointed with Season 2, its’ rushed pace and botched stitching of stories/pacing…such a shame because season 1 was superb on so many levels.
I don't use social media so I'm literally just finding out it was cancelled now :( the heck
Post s1 Ben Barnes and Jessie Mei Li: We're really excited to explore these characters and their complex relationship in the seasonSSSSSS to come (emphasis added)
S2: ............ producers/writers: let's insult a major part of the fanbase that's been here since 2010, made the trilogy skyrocket to international fame, and pulled in general audience views for s1 aaaaaand not do any of that ..... at all.....not even a little. No complexity at all. yeah that'll get us views!
the writers really love the crows and it shows. But their care for the trilogy just wasn't there.
watching s1 interviews and comparing them to s2 actor's/writers interviews.... even THEY all knew that s2 wasn't good and it had high chances of getting the axe.
Add this too. The interviews with the writer named Eric, were like :
-Can you tell us more about S&B S2?
-Yeah sure, so like... We've finished writing the scripts for SoC spin-off even tho we didn't get the green light for it yet because it all depends on the views of this season so make sure you watch it. And it's gonna be amazing, I promise.
@@Chasingdreams25 Eric and Co had ZERO plans to continue Alina's story. They were told hey maybe write the spinoff and took that as the greenlight to destroy the entire grishaverse to get there faster
I have never read the books and i liked the season 01. Thats season two was ...i have no words for it. It was nothing short of an abomination
Thank you for explaining this so well! I admit haven't read the books as of yet. Something I will rectify soon. I loved the first season and thought it quite good since it felt a lot more authentic than many other attempts on fantasy series (e.g. The Wheel of Time is downright horrible!!!). Also: having such a diverse cast & characters felt really refreshing. Watching the second season, I was so disappointed, and now knowing that they jammed 3 books into one season kind of explains it. There is so much going on and at the same time so little in terms of character development. I would have loved to see this cast getting to explore there respective stories in more depth. I love video essays, too and people like you putting so much effort into it. Love from Hamburg
mum wake up books with ella k uploaded!
Hahahah ur the best
They should have just adapted Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom!!
I HATED how they erased Zoya's character arc in the series. She's such an interesting, compelling character and to strip her of her depth is such a disservice.
you summed it up pretty nicely, however, i do think that a renewal of this series might not be possible considering how the morale of the showrunners was absolutely destroyed by the cancellation. and also, the actors are moving on to other things, some might not even be down to resigning the project with the uncertainty looming over everyone's head. i do want to see a 3rd season with this cast so badly, but i also think it is just no longer possible. the momentum is lost.
I hope one day the six of crows will receive the tv show they deserve, the story adapts itself so well to the screen
Why does Netflix do these things. I legit almost cried because they canceled it after I read them all.
I firmly thought they were going to make this work, but when I watched the trailers and the first episode, I was so dissapointed.
It was just very... childish.
I'm going to say what I remember from the things that I noticed, and I don't want for people or fans to take this as a personal attack to anyone, it is just an opinion.
The performances of some of the actors where, sometimes, either lacking feeling, or being overly done, the thing is they were not consistent. I loved the first images of Jessie Mei-Li because she actually fit the image that I had for the character, but some scenes came out looking very weird, I remember the scene where she is showing her powers at this party and I couldn't help but to cringe at that scene. Maybe it was too soon for her to get a lead role in a TV show, because that repeats itself several times in both seasons. She is not a bad actress, but her performace feels too rookie for a major production. (I add here, I forgot to say that they did her dirty with the writting, so I think she did the best she could with that too)
Ben Barnes was good, but towards the end of the first season his character began to look like a cartoon. I don't remember much of his acting during the second season honestly, but he was perfect for the role; it was the direction what I believe brought his acting down.
Archie, Amita, Freddie and Kit were spot on with the little opportunity they gave their characters to grow. Archie was so good in the first season, I can't stop saying that. I won't talk about his acting on the second season because it was all a mess for everybody 😂
But Zoë Wanamaker's performance was the best, and she didn't even have a lead role. The rest of the cast didn't leave a lasting impression in me overall.
My dad and I watched this together and he did not pass beyond the third episode. I repeat, it felt kind of childish.
I still read the first book nowadays, and think of the story as a very dark and somber one, of course full of fantasy, but the main plot is more serious than witty. If you look for the directors of the two seasons, some of them had in fact worked with fantasy shows prior to this, but most of them hadn't, and the messy result of it might've had something to do with that. Added to the fact that they decided to join two book series in one.
And I will not go deeper into the aspects of the story that they left out or rushed. Or the fact that they made Six of Crows the main story when they show is called "Shadow and Bone".
The costumes were amazing, and the locations were wonderful too. The CGI was meh. I liked the combat scenes, they were well choreographed and the actors put a lot of themselves into it.
I feel like this show would've done so much better if it focused only on the "Shadow and Bone" trilogy, directed it towards a more mature audience and not just teenagers, had a better casting, and probably made with all of it six episodes instead of eight.
I was so sad when I watched the second season. I knew right away it was going to be cancelled.
I 100% agree. I was literally talking about this with a friend last week but NETFLIX messed it up so bad. I can’t even blame the writers when they did so WELL with season 1. I was scared at first but season 1 was so damn good it gave me so much HOPE. I rewatched so many times but now I can’t even touch the show because it gets me mad that they purposely messed it up so bad???
The trilogy and duology holds a special place in my heart and it saddens me because the cast so good too? Everyone loved the work and they got along so well…
I haven't read the books but the first season of the show made me want to. It was a good season. Solid and I was really excited for season 2. I watched it when it aired and was terribly disappointed. Season 2 had pacing issues. There were so many things happening. So many rushed plotlines. It felt like the show was desperate to cram a lot of things within the season. The weaving of the stories isn't smooth and not as exciting as s1 built it up for. It was miles away from season 1 and that made me kinda sad. Of course, I don't know exactly how bad it is from the books but trust me, as a tv show viewer only, it was bad.
It's so interesting hearing non-readers' perspectives!
I think adaptations have to be able to stand on their own as a good TV show, regardless of how faithful they are to the books, so I'm not surprised Season 2 didn't achieve that.
As someone who read the books like The Grisha Trilogy and Loves the Crows Duology. I never finished the se and season because it was so bad.
The all Mal thing at the end was what went wrong from my POV
I think they either should've only adapted SoC or kept the Crows secondary characters with only prequel stuff for season 1-2 while focussing on the plot of S&B and then switched the focus over to them for season 3-4 with the aftermath of the events in Ravka being shown as a smaller secondary plot this time. The Crows could've been connected to the whole plot in smaller ways. Maybe Inej discovers rumours about jurda parem early on, Sturmhond could appear in season one without it being revealed who he really is, Alina and Mal could hide out in Ketterdam instead of Novyi Zem, etc. I think Nikolai's real father actually lived in Ketterdam, so maybe the Crows discovered something about it and Sturmhond is trying to find him too and make sure that information stays buried or something. That way Kaz could've also figured out that Nikolai and Sturmhond are the same person and kept the information as leverage with it only being revealed to the audience when Alina finds out. I think utilising Sturmhond in season 1 could've been a key way to connect the plots.
Yes, we would've had to wait until season 3 for Wylan to appear and all the Crows to come together, but instead they could've shown Kaz building up the Dregs, shown Kaz' hatred of Pekka without knowing where it stems from, Inej at the menagerie being recruited by Kaz, and how Jesper and Inej became the people in the Dregs Kaz trusted the most because especially with Jesper it was never revealed in the books. There is so much backstory potential for the Dregs without revealing things like Jesper being a grisha or Kaz' trauma already.
I also think Nina should've started out as a minor character in season 1 who lives in the Little Palace and is devoted to Zoya. Then she could've been sent on a secret mission by her in season 2 after Zoya became disillusioned with the Darkling, which is how she ends up being captured by Matthias. It would've fit her patriotic character better and would've also given us a character who literally transitions from the Little Palace to Ketterdam just like the focus of the plot does. It would've also meant that because Matthias would've only been introduced in season 2, his prison time could've happened mostly off screen between seasons 2 and 3.
I think there was lots of potential for prequel stuff that would've worked well and while I generally liked season 1 anyway, the fact that they literally started out with Jesper, Kaz, and Inej and we didn't get to find out more about how that trio came to be when the Dregs have to many members was such a wasted opportunity. And then season 2 was just such a slap in the face that I don't even want them to be renewed or get a spin-off now because all the important moments have been included in cheapened ways already.
One of my main problems with merging the two shows, is that it just doesn't feel right that the Crows have the backing of kings and saints, even indirectly. They loose their underdog status. Take Nina and Matthias, for example: In the books, there was no way she could get a letter from the king to get him out of Hellgate. It just felt so hopeless. They were children, and they had nobody to turn to for help, so they had to rely on each other, which is what made it so powerful. In the show, it just doesn't hit the same.
You've literally put my thoughts into words oh my goodness
lol except those writers literally said they would rather write six of crows and wrote a whole season only for it to get canned. the show was number one but for about a week before it fell to number 2.
I love videos like this because I can listen to them while doing chores, ...
I absolutely loved season 1 but season 2 was just so rushed. It was a shame.
Sesson 2 was sadly a speedrun through the plots of several books with not enough care for the original writing.
It broke my heart but I still hoped there would be a third season and a spin-off. Sadly it wasn't enough
This is the reason I am terrified of any possible adaptation of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall universe.
When I found out it was Leigh who suggested that they used Crooked Kingdom plot points in s2 I was even more confused than by watching it haha. You'd think that as an author she would be the first person to advocate for the big emotional journeys to keep the same beats, right? So the characters can have their full developmental arcs? But she said herself that the writters came to her and said: "listen we don't know what to do with the crows in the first half of the season without compromising them meeting Alina at the end again or entering the ice court heist plot too soon.", and she turned and said: "you can use these and these and these parts of crooked kingdom with no problem to the story".
And here's a perfect example of why I don't think it's always for the best that the author is super envolved, especially one that don't understand anything about tv making (I know, I'm the only one in this earth that thinks so). These writters are clever, they are intelligent, they could've come up with something different on their own and I doubt they would've dare to go so far without endulgence when the crows were the ones they were obsessed about.
Honestly, maybe it's not something that most people would agree with, but: I really think if they wanted to do just the crows' story from the get go, they could've, it could absolutely work, how many grishaverse fans started by reading SoC first? I know a bunch. They didn't needed Alina if they didn't wanted her, they could explain the events of the Ravkan Civil War or about the Sun saint through pieces of dialogue and that's it, people don't have trouble understanding a book withouth knowledge of the trilogy, why would they have in a show where everything is so visual? A mural of Alina, a dialogue between Nina and Inej and bam done. Then, if it was succesful they could've announced the trilogy as a "prequel" show since these are so famous now days. None of these people were passionate about shadow and bone the way they were about the crows and it shows.
I completly understand the rushing of the trilogy considering the second book is more slow and could've made a boring season for tv, also they were fearful of cancelation as Christina (one of the writters) mentioned so much on her twitter, on interviews, etc, and then they wouldn't be able to finish the story at all. But that's why I also think that book series like this need to come with a full package contract when the network is forced to finish the main story no matter what. Writters can't have much freedom when they never know if the show they're working on can last for 10 seasons or be cancelled 2 weeks after it's released. It's not realistic for creative work and "seeds" to be planted for the future.
Just because I’m curious, do you have a source for Leigh’s involvement with season 2 and the writers asking her for advice?
Leigh said in an interview that she “was going to take a step back from the adaptation process and be a little bit less hands-on”. She was also initially hesitant with the two stories being made into one show on the first place.
huh? i read the complete opposite, that she stepped back from getting involved in the show in s2. she was involved in s1 and it was actually good.
@@bookswithellak. She took a step back, yes. She didn't go to shootings or post-production like she did for s1, nor was in every meeting from the writters room. But she still read all the scripts,and gave consultation and feedback for them.
Honestly, I saw her talking about using crooked kingdom plots on her instagram stories when s2 dropped, I don't know if there's a interview about it, but maybe fandom pages on twitter have prints? They usually do.
When they tracked that mythical beast they didn't even know existed based on some poop they found it was over for me.
omg the ending was SO BAD >.< and they ruined it so they can bank on it more with expanding in another direction and for what? So they can cancel it. Hope someone was fired (not really but fined at least... demoted.)
New fear: they'll fail upwards and ruin another IP adaptation
I really hope not. But...sadly that's Hollywood
Great takes! I enjoyed and was impressed with your knowledge of the book and your opinion on what should have been in show. Keep making videos. 🤗👏🏿
Thank you!! I’m so happy you enjoyed it :)
@@bookswithellak I'm so glad to see a video od a new booktuber pop off like this! do you do your own editing for the videos? It's great.
This was great commentary, please make more videos! I'm always looking for creators like this.
oh hell yeah, one of the things I can DEFINITELY agree with you on 1000% is that MAL SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD😂
Tbh mixing Shadow and bones and Six of crows was the mistake.
The casting was flawless, the budget was ok (at least it didnt look lik syfy or cw show, it had nice locations and scenarios). But the decision to mix two sagas, that werent on the same timestamp, provocated multiple changes in characters arcs, plots, how some couples were dealt with (fast, instead of slow burn for crows couples).
A pity the audience was fine, enough to be renewed, but netflix didnt had any confidence SINCE PREPRODUCTION.
Ok. Enough of blaming netflix, they have 99% of blame. But 1% of blame I will have to admit....the writing of both seasons were too abrupt due the fact of mixing two book sagas, like if you put House of the dragon in the middle of Game of thrones lmao.
i hated how they COMPLETELY stripped kanej of all their insane depth in s2. like how they put other characters in place on inej in scenes? jasper in the carriage, nina in the pekka rollins scene. and kaz LETTING them hear his backstory with jordie??? book kaz would sooner swan dive off a cliff before EVER letting ANYONE but inej see him weakened or shaken up. and the fact inej really didn’t feel like his ominous second shadow drove me mental :(( we didn’t see the way she’s always following kaz and keeping an eye on him, even when he tells her not to.
oh, and don’t get me started on them CUTTING kaz GIVING KANEJ HER FREEDOM, by not having him BUY HER THE BOATTT
What went wrong is where they left the second season. Maybe it follows the books, but everything went dark without leaving any hope.
I wish they had just made a show on SOC because the entire book already read like a TV show :/