Shadow and Bone Season 2 Could Be Bigger Than The Original Book Trilogy

Spoilers for Shadow and Bone season 1 are ahead. So you've finished the first season of Shadow and Bone? As you begin to mourn the loss of your favourite adventurers, hot evil wizards, and get ready to return to the mundane realities of our world, you're probably wondering what's going to happen next. Well, while the show hasn't been picked up for a second season yet, there are two key options: the obvious — Mal and Alina's journey continues — and another that we're going to dig into here. It all revolves around the scheming cuties of Ketterdam known as the Crows. 

Netflix's adaptation of Shadow and Bone actually tackles two books from Leigh Bardugo's sprawling Grishaverse series. It takes its name from the first novel in her first fantasy trilogy, but builds in characters and settings from Bardugo's follow up duology Six of Crows. Jesper Fahey (Kit Young), Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman), and Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter) aren't in the Shadow and Bone trilogy at all, instead being introduced as an entirely new and mostly separate crew in the fantasy heist novels that followed the first three books. Their home of Ketterdam also debuted there, but in the Shadow and Bone series we get to see these worlds collide. 

While Mal (Archie Renaux) and Alina (Jessie Mei Li) continue their quest for freedom from the Darkling, there's a good chance the second season of the series — or even a potential spinoff —could centre around the Crows and the iconic heist that they take on in the pages of Six of Crows. The final moments of the episode show Jesper, Inej, and Kaz on a boat. They're joined by Nina Zenik (Danielle Galligan), who has just saved the life of her enemy-lover Matthias Helvar (Calahan Skogman) by selling him to bounty hunters who catch slavers. Though their stories couldn't have been further apart in the first season of the show, in the books Nina is a key part of the Crows' team, and we get a hint that she's going to join them in the finale when they say that they need a Heartrender; the exact kind of Grisha skill that Nina has. 

So what is the heist that the crew embark on in Six of Crows? Well, it's a key stepping stone to building out a larger conflict for the Grisha and to introducing some fan favourite book characters. With Nina on board, Kaz's team of teenage crooks are hired to break into the Fjerdan military stronghold known as Ice Court to break out a Shu scientist Bo Yul-Bayur, who has created a drug, Jurda Parem, which is incredibly addictive to Grisha and makes their powers multiply to massive and dangerous effect. We met the Fjerdans during Shadow and Bone; they're violent witch hunters (Drüskelle) who captured Nina and used to count Matthias as one of their number until he fell for the witch he was meant to be hunting. While in Six of Crows, Matthias has been in prison for months before the Crows break him out to utilize his knowledge of the Fjerdan Ice Court, here it seems like that could happen far faster. 

Depending on the popularity of the series, there's a chance that the Crows could get their own series, or their heist could be wrapped into the second season like it was in season 1. Either way, it's likely they'll come up against the drug known as Jurda Parem, and will be embarking on a heist with Nina — and a new addition in book character Wylan Van Eck — to break into the impenetrable Ice Court. (After they've broken Matthias out from jail first, of course.)

The Crows have long been the favoured characters of the Grishaverse, so it would make sense to give them an adventure all their own.