Season 2 of Shadow and Bone ends with a major promise to fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse: The Ice Court Heist is coming.
The Ice Court Heist is the major set piece of Bardugo’s Six of Crows, a novel about six criminal underdogs known as the Crows going on a near-impossible mission. The goal? To rescue the chemist behind the volatile drug jurda parem from Fjerda’s most secure stronghold.
‘Shadow and Bone’ showrunner Eric Heisserer breaks down Season 2’s biggest changes from the books
Shadow and Bone introduces jurda parem in a chilling finale scene, when a Grisha sent by Fjerdans attacks the Ravkan court during Nikolai’s (Patrick Gibson) coronation. Because she is using jurda parem, her Heartrending abilities become even more deadly, resulting in a near massacre. As that bloody scene plays out, we hear Crow leader Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter) telling his associates that their next heist will be “the most lucrative job we’ve ever taken.” He lays out the entire situation with jurda parem and the kidnapped chemist, teeing us up for Season 3 of Shadow and Bone — or the Six of Crows spin-off confirmed to be in development by showrunner Eric Heisserer.
However, the most important element of the sequence juxtaposing Kaz’s voiceover with the coronation scene is not the “what” but the “when.” In a phone interview with Mashable, Heisserer admitted, “There are a few scenes in the last bit of [the Season 2 finale] where we play with time a little bit.”
He added, “For instance, the voiceover of Kaz’s could actually be several weeks, or even a few months after the scene of Inej [Amita Suman] and Mal [Archie Renaux] and the other crew of the Volkvolny in pursuit of a slaver ship, and it could be that the next time that you see the Crows come together that same episode, you will see all six of them.”
The biggest hint at Shadow and Bone‘s time manipulation comes in the scenes leading up to Nikolai’s coronation. There, multiple people address how he’s staged the event on the same day as Hringkälla, a notable Fjerdan festival. For Six of Crows readers, the mention of Hringkälla sets off major alarm bells: This is the day the Crows conduct the Ice Court Heist. But if Kaz is only just now delivering news of the job to the Crows, does that mean they won’t be heisting on Hringkälla?
That question is based on the assumption that Kaz’s voiceover and the coronation are happening at the exact same time. However, Heisserer heavily hinted that that was not the case.
“The voiceover is happening during the coronation, which is happening at the same time as Hringkälla,” he said. “However, it’s quite possible — as in, it is totally possible — that Kaz is speaking to his Crows weeks before Hringkälla. It could very well be that while everybody’s getting slaughtered at the coronation…our Crows are breaking into the Ice Court.”
This twist wouldn’t mark the first time Shadow and Bone has played with time. At the very end of the first-ever episode, we learn that Alina’s (Jessie Mei Li) discovery of her Sun Summoning powers occurs two weeks before the Crows’ storyline we watch play out in the same episode. The resurfacing of a similar trick here serves as a reminder: As we get into Six of Crows territory, it’s best to stay on your toes. Just like one of Kaz’s sleight-of-hand card tricks, the timeline of Shadow and Bone may not always be what it seems.
Shadow and Bone Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
