‘Shadow and Bone’: A Surprise ‘Six of Crows’ Character Was Secretly Helping Kaz in that Darkling Face-off

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is way more than a straight adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling novel of the same name. Shadow and Bone showrunner Eric Heisserer created a story that playfully placed Six of Crows characters like Jesper Fahey (Kit Young) and Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman) on a collision course with the likes of Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and Mal Oretsev (Archie Renaux). Nowhere is this mashup more thrilling for fans than in Shadow and Bone Episode 6 when the Darkling (Ben Barnes) meets Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter).

Shadow and Bone Episode 6 “The Heart is an Arrow” opens with the General Kirigan, aka the Darkling, furious over the loss of his Sun Summoner, Alina. He believes that Kaz and his company have succeeded in their mission of kidnapping her for a ransom. What he doesn’t know is that Alina ran away willingly (after learning that Kirigan was in fact the ageless Black Heretic, responsible for creating the devastating Shadow Fold in the first place). When Inej lets Alina go, she, Kaz, and Jesper have to contend with an angry Darkling and his dangerous Grisha on their tails. While Inej and Jesper find themselves battling an Inferni and Heartrender, respectively, Kaz finds himself toe-to-toe with the Darkling himself. It’s a short, thrilling scene that pits the insanely powerful Shadow Summoner against one of the most cunning minds in the Grishaverse.

In the books, the Darkling and Kaz never cross paths. After all, the Six of Crows duology — the books that introduce Kaz and his band of Ketterdam thieves — takes place after the dust settles on Alina, Mal, and the Darkling’s story. By creating a “prequel heist” for the Crows characters, Heisserer was not only able to insert Kaz, Inej, and Jesper in Alina’s story from the jump, but also give fans a glimpse of what would happen if the Shadow Summoner ever crossed paths with the Bastard of the Barrel.

“Look, this is one of the most delicious things about adaptation,” Leigh Bardugo told Decider during a roundtable interview last month, “and it is not something that ever occurred to me that there were these gaps in the stories that Eric and his team were going to be able to fill with ‘What ifs?’ Writing a novel, once it’s done, it’s done. Those doors are closed.”

“So for me, it’s the ‘What if?’ that is so thrilling. Eric and the writers’ room threw those doors open and got to peek through to the other side. So I was grateful for it and I think that readers will be thrilled by it because you don’t get to see that on the page,” Bardugo said.

However it wasn’t just the fans’ minds who were blown by this meeting. In a recent interview with Decider, Freddy Carter himself gushed about how excited he and Ben Barnes were to have their characters meet in such a dramatic way.

“We were so excited because Eric [Heisserer] had been teasing us basically since we got there, that there would be a little interaction [between the Darkling and Kaz],” Carter said. “He kept talking about [us] passing in a corridor. Yeah, but I think you needed that to sort of temper our expectations, because actually, it’s so much cooler than passing in a corridor.”

Barnes told Decider in another interview that “Obviously Freddie and I are very close. We’re really good friends and so to be able to have that moment together was great.”

Though Barnes also teased that the weight of the moment might go over newbies’ head. “I think that is a bit of a scene that maybe people who haven’t read the books will go… ‘Okay?'” he said. “But I think it is just a sort of a little Easter egg for lovers are the books.”

“But it puts a little smile on the general’s face, I think, to have someone who sort of outdid him in a moment and managed to get away from him,” Barnes said. “I think he has respect for that. He has a bit of respect for Mal and a bit of respect for Kaz in the fact that they’re able to get away from him. I think that that that’s an interesting dynamic to set up for going forwards.”

Going forwards, Eric Heisserer hopes to share with fans the fact that another fan favorite character from the books, Wylan, had a secret role in the scene. Wylan has not been cast for the series yet, but there was a scene written for him that never was shot.

“Oftentimes in the writers’ room we would have scenes that we would call ‘Act Zero,’ which were essentially like little scenes that took place before the episodes themselves,” Heisserer shared in the same roundtable Decider attended with Leigh Bardugo. “One of our favorite scenes was really before Kaz left Ketterdam —  knowing that they were crossing the Fold, knowing that they were possibly crossing paths with the Darkling himself — he visited Wylan and said, ‘Can you make me some sort of device, something that might give me a second of freedom if I ever encounter the Darkling?'”

“And so that was a fun little piece of fiction that hopefully will go into the show’s DNA in the future if we ever get a chance to go back,” Heisserer said.

When Decider spoke to Heisserer one-on-one in a later interview, the showrunner shared that while the Kaz and Wylan scene was obviously never shot (because they haven’t cast Wylan, you guys!), other fun moments did wind up on the cutting room floor. For now.

“I would say we certainly did film a lot of stuff that didn’t necessarily make it into the show. Editorial shows you the version of the episode that you need it to be and sometimes that means you have to murder your darlings and let go of pieces of scenes or you know, entire elements that just don’t work in execution, the way that you could see them on the page,” Heisserer said. “If we have the privilege of returning with this amazing group of people, and we can make a second season, it is our greatest hope that we can bring some of those extra scenes and Easter eggs and off-camera pieces into the season somehow.”

Prayers up for a Shadow and Bone Season 2 renewal. We need to see Wylan help Kaz survive the Darkling.

Watch Shadow and Bone on Netflix