Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse is set to make its home on Netflix come Friday, April 23 with Shadow and Bone. The Netflix original series will spin the YA best seller for a new audience and reintroduce fans to the universe with a few twists, including characters from Six of Crows, the thrilling heist spin-off of the Shadow and Bone trilogy.
Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Nina, and Matthias will enter the series years before they’d done so in the Grishaverse, placing them firmly in a story they’d heard whispers of but had not participated in. This change to Bardugo’s universe is an addition showrunner Eric Heisserer is excited for fans to see.
However, it comes with the reality that the Crows will likely not be receiving their own series. Instead, the characters and events part of the Six of Crows duology will be blended into Shadow and Bone. When the series was first announced, it was made apparent that the Netflix deal included both the original trilogy and its spin-off.
As such, the seedy world of the Ketterdam underbelly will be sharing screen time with the Ravkan war effort. It’s a balance Heisserer told TV Guide, “required building some story — a prequel worth of story for some characters — so that we don’t break anything in Leigh Bardugo’s timeline.”
Six of Crows is part of the Shadow and Bones series
While this is sure to be a disappointment to fans who are only interested in the Crows, Heisserer’s reasoning for combining the two stories lied in a wider audience reach.
Speaking to Collider, Heisserer said:
I think if you just do one you’re getting a smaller slice of your audience. I’m essentially making a show where people are gonna be like, “I don’t like this character, but I love these two.” And I’m alright with that.
However, this doesn’t mean the Six of Crows story will simply be playing in the background of Alina’s journey as the Sun Summoner.
While Shadow and Bone will certainly be genre-hopping thanks to the series taking on two huge narratives, characters from both book series will hold equal weight in the show as it will be split between different points of view. Though we should note that season 1 is more of an introduction to who the Crows are, not the first step into the story fans of the duology know and love.
Shadow and Bone has reportedly already been renewed for a season 2, so if the first season was the Crow’s prequel then we suspect the show’s sophomore season will start branching into more of their story, even if it doesn’t launch viewers into the events of their books just yet.
Next: Will Leigh Bardugo write a third Six of Crows book?
