Netflix’s Shadow and Bone show is a bit of an odd adaptation. It’s based on Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse trilogy, which includes Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. That tells the tale of Sun Summoner Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), who battles the power-mad Darkling (Ben Barnes) over the fate of the country of Ravka.
But the first and second seasons of the Netflix show also include characters borrowed from another Bardugo series: Six of Crows. The two books in that series follow a group of mercenaries from the city of Ketterdam. Characters like Kaz (Freddy Carter), Inej (Amita Suman) and Jesper (Kit Young) appear on the show, but much of what they’re doing is made up for TV rather than drawn directly from the Six of Crows books.
So will Netflix ever directly adapt the events of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom? If showrunner Eric Heisserer has his way, yes. In fact, he hired a co-showrunner for Shadow and Bone season 2 — Daegan Fryklind — so he had time to plan a Six of Crows spinoff.
Want a Shadow and Bone spinoff about the Crows? Watch Shadow and Bone season 2
“One of the reasons, not all of them, that I got the privilege of working with Daegan Fryklind as co-showrunner in season 2 is that I was busy with the writers’ room for Six of Crows,” Heisserer told Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
If they’ve already written scripts, they’re pretty deep into planning. That said, whether the spinoff goes ahead depends on if people watch the mothership show. “But of course, it’s about how well season 2 numbers do,” Heisserer said. “And if so, then Daegan and I will continue to carry the mantle of both shows…To be able to give their own real estate so they have elbow room allows us to go deeper on some of these character arcs.”
If all goes well, the idea would be to run Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone simultaneously. But will all go well? That depends on the viewers, although so far the notices for season 2 have been pretty decent:
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