The second season of “Shadow And Bone – Legends Of The Grisha” is available on Netflix in its entirety with all eight episodes and already has one or two surprises for fans. Showrunner Eric Heisserer even teased how the Grishaverse will continue on the second season’s launch day: Not only is Season 3’s “Shadow And Bone” a possibility, but a “Six Of Crows” spin-off centered around it Gang from Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter) – the scripts are already there.
But now let’s look at the mysterious bee in episode 8 of the second season of Shadow And Bone. And of course that means: Spoiler alert for both the finale itself and season 3. Said Bee is on Zoya Nazyalensky’s (Sujaya Dasgupta) sleeve as she attends General Kirigan’s (Ben Barnes) cremation in the former Shadow Hall along with Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and a few others.
Should actually the bee may be an easter egg placed out for connoisseurs of the book templates Leigh Bardugo to provide a clue to the future of Kirigan, aka The Dark One. The future of the person who was just killed and cremated…? That’s right. Because in the “Grisha” novels, the Darkling is actually brought back, but in a different form than before – namely in the body of Yuri Vedenen.
Saint Elizaveta, patron saint of gardeners
Responsible for this is the Grisha Sankta Elizaveta or Lizabeta, one of Ravka’s saints, who was trapped in the shadowy corridor along with two other saints, Sankta Grigori and Sankta Juris. Elizaveta is the patron saint of gardeners and bees always fly after her. According to legend, she once performed a miracle with the help of bees – so the bee on Zoya’s sleeve is a clear indication that we can expect to see Sankta Elizaveta in Season 3 of Shadow And Bone – Legends of Grisha (or in a spin-off?).
The novel King of Scars: Throne of Gold and Ashes, the first of two Nikolai Lantsov books (Netflix’s Shadow And Bone series world), combines the stories from all of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books into one universe, but also changes many elements ) steals the remains of the Dark One’s corpse from Sankta Elizaveta. Although Kirigan has been burned in the series so nothing can be done to his body at the moment, maybe there is still something left, or Elizaveta used a trick, for example swapping the corpse…
“King Of Scars”: Nikolai wants to get rid of demons – and Kirigan returns
Elizaveta believes that the Dark One is the true ruler of Ravka. She gains the trust of King Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson) and Zoya (which is why the bee landed on Grisha’s sleeve as a harbinger of all things), who in “King Of Scars” are looking for a way to free Nikolai from the shadow monsters . which we saw on him in the season 2 finale. Elizaveta claims a ritual called to know that Nikolai is getting rid of the Nichevo’ya – but in reality it is the ritual of bringing back the dark one…
So that probably wasn’t quite the dark’s reign of terror. If and how it relates to the “Shadow And Bone” universe Netflix will continue, we’ll probably find out in a few weeks when the ratings for Season 2 are evaluated. Showrunner Eric Heisserer has already revealed that the order for the “Six Of Crows” spin-off will depend on the success of the current season.