Last week, we learned that Netflix was canceling Shadow and Bone, its fantasy series based on the novels by Leigh Bardugo. That also means we’ll never see the planned Six of Crows spinoff, adapted from another of Bardugo’s books. While the Shadow and Bone series focused on Alina Starkov and her epic war against the Darkling, Six of Crows is about the Crows, a motley crew of thieves, spies and gunslingers (all with hearts of gold, of course) who must break into a heavily fortified fortress to rescue a scientist. Some fans were even more excited for this show than for another season of Shadow and Bone.
Executive producer Eric Heisserer was definitely psyched. In fact, early on in the post-production for Shadow and Bone season 2, he and his team put together a sizzle reel showing off what a Six of Crows show might look like. Now that it’s not happening, Heisserer shared that sizzle reel with fans on the /Grishaverse subreddit. Take a look:
All of this is Crows-specific footage from Shadow and Bond, but it gives you an idea of the tone the Six of Crows show would have gone for.
Six of Crows would have been “the best season yet”
According to Heisserer, the team whipped up this sizzle reel to help sell the idea of the show to Netflix, who hadn’t ordered the series despite the scripts already been written. Heisserer thinks the Six of Crows show would have been “the best season yet, because Leigh’s novel ported over so cleanly into eight episodes with fantastic cliffhangers and character spotlights.”
"The footage isn’t all color corrected, and VFX is missing in several shots — as I said, it was early on — plus there are a couple of shots we were later forced to cut from the finale when we were still in spin-off limbo, but this is an example of the constant campaign our team waged to keep the dream alive."
It’s interesting to hear that Netflix was apparently hesitant about ordering a Six of Crows show even at this early stage. This would have been before the writers and actors strikes disrupted productions in Hollywood; we assumed that Netflix may have canceled Shadow and Bone as part of its plan to recover from those strikes, which are now over. But Netflix has never been shy about canceling series, so maybe Six of Crows never really had much of a chance.
Unfortunately, we may never know now. That said, there is a petition to save the show that currently has over 150,000 signatures. While we wait to see if that bears fruit, there’s nothing to do but mourn:
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