It’s been a little over a week since the second season of Shadow and Bone dropped on Netflix. and now that pretty much everyone has had a chance to see all eight episodes, there’s only one question lingering in the minds of fans: Are we getting a season 3 of Shadow and Bone or what?!
This article contains spoilers for the entire second season of Shadow and Bone. Be warned.
Is there material for a third season of Shadow and Bone?
The season 2 finale ended on quite the cliffhanger with Alina (Jessie Mei Li) wielding a Cut that was most definitely not made of her usual light powers against one of the guests at Nikolai (Patrick Gibson)’s coronation. The episode also spent quite some time hinting at what could be major plot points in a possible upcoming season, from Nikolai’s merzost-inflicted wound to the Grisha triumvirate and the rising of a new drug called jurda parem.
All of this is to say that there’s plenty of material for the showrunners to draw from—after all, the Shadow and Bone series has so far leaned heavily only the first of Leigh Bardugo’s installments in the Grishaverse, the homonymous Shadow and Bone trilogy.
This new second season was adapting most of the events from Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising, the second and third books in the trilogy. Maybe they merged things together a bit too much, but that is directly tied to the issue of the show getting a third season or not. There are two more duologies in the Grishaverse—Six of Crows and King of Scars—that continue the story, with plenty of interesting storylines and plot twists that we saw referenced in the final episode of season 2.
Is there a season 3 of Shadow and Bone?
Sadly, whether or not we will get to see those storylines adapted to television remains up in the air. No announcement has been made so far about Shadow and Bone getting renewed for further seasons, and that’s sadly a Netflix MO we’ve seen at play already.
Netflix had already taken some time to announce that Shadow and Bone was returning for a second season after its very successful first season aired in April 2021. The official renewal arrived in June of 2021, a cool three months after the fandom had started campaigning for it—and even then, we didn’t get our hands on these new eight episodes until March 2023, even though COVID-related issues must have definitely played a part in the long wait.
So we might not know what will happen to Shadow and Bone for a while. Netflix has been known for canceling shows left and right, even leaving popular and well-reviewed titles—looking at you, The Sandman—stuck in limbo for quite some time.
The streaming service will probably look at the viewing numbers that Shadow and Bone earned in the 28 days immediately following its release to make a final decision—which is why the people involved in the show have been stressing to fans the importance of engaging with season 2 in this first month. It has been doing well so far, but we can’t consider ourselves in the clear until we get an official announcement from Netflix (I say, with a visible twitch in my eye).
What’s this about a Six of Crows spinoff?
There has also been some talk about a possible Six of Crows spinoff that has understandably raised some eyebrows in the fandom—what with the Crows being some of the most popular characters in the entire Grishaverse, and their duology (Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom) being considered one of the best out of all the major novels in the saga.
It’s probably one of the main reasons the characters were included in Shadow and Bone from the start, even though in the book series they don’t come into play until Six of Crows—and they don’t have as many interactions with the Ravka group as we’ve seen them have in the show.
Still, the Crows have a whole well-defined plot waiting for them—one that Kaz Brekker, played by Freddy Carter, hints at in the season 2 finale by mentioning “the most lucrative job we’ve ever taken”—and the Shadow and Bone showrunners have been hard at work on that.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Eric Heisserer revealed that this spinoff actually already has a script. “I was busy with the writers’ room for Six of Crows. We are ready to launch that as its own story. The eight-episode scripts are phenomenal and I’m really proud of my team for those”.
The idea that emerges from the Entertainment Weekly interview seems to be to run both Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows as two parallel shows, giving the Crows more breathing room and letting the viewers really dive deep into their backstories with a separate show while continuing the story of Ravka and its people in the “main show.”
Still, everything depends on Netflix and whether or not it will give the green light to Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, or both. So all we can do for now is stream and make our voices heard on social media platforms.
(featured image: Netflix)
