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- Netflix has not renewed Shadow & Bone for season 3 yet.
- Shadow & Bone season 2 premiered on March 16, 2023.
- Shadow & Bone showrunners have big plans for season 3.
Shadow & Bone returned for an epic second season on March 16, 2023. The 8-episode season concluded with a jaw-dropping finale that set the stage for an expansive third season. So, is Shadow & Bone season 3 happening?
Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse is vast, and the Shadow & Bone showrunners have exciting plans for the show’s future. HollywoodLife has rounded up all the latest news about Shadow & Bone season 3.
Will There Be A Shadow & Bone Season 3?
That’s to be determined. As of March 2023, Netflix has not renewed Shadow & Bone for season 3 yet. The second season dropped on March 16 and has already ascended to the #1 spot in Netflix’s top 10 TV shows in the U.S.
There are still plenty of stories to pull from the Grishaverse novels, so Shadow & Bone season 3 seems like a solid bet. Don’t leave us hanging, Netflix!
Shadow & Bone Season 3 Release Date
Since Shadow & Bone hasn’t been renewed for season 3, there’s no release date yet. If Netflix does renew the fantasy series, the show’s third season would likely not premiere until late 2024 or early 2025.
The first season premiered on April 23, 2021. The show was renewed for season 2 in June 2021, but season 2 didn’t premiere until March 16, 2023. Shadow & Bone season 2 took nearly 6 months to film, so the show would need time to plan and film a third season.
Shadow & Bone Season 3 Cast
If Shadow & Bone returns for season 3, you can expect the incredible ensemble cast to return. This includes Jessie Mei Li as Alina, Archie Renaux as Mal, Freddy Carter as Kaz, Amita Suman as Inej, Kit Young as Jesper, Danielle Galligan as Nina, Daisy Head as Genya Safin, Calahan Skogman as Matthias, Lewis Tan as Tolya, Anna Leong Brophy as Tamar, Jack Wolfe as Wylan, and Patrick Gibson as Nikolai Lantsov.
But what about Ben Barnes? General Kirigan seems to meet his end in the season 2 finale. It’s hard to believe that the show would want to not have Ben a part of the show moving forward, so he could come back in a new way in season 3. The possibilities are out there!
Is There Going To Be A Shadow & Bone Spinoff?
Maybe! Shadow & Bone showrunner Eric Heisserer has been “quietly at work” developing a Six of Crows spinoff, according to EW. The show is reportedly in the “early stages and isn’t close to getting a green light.”
Eric revealed that the spinoff depends on how well Shadow & Bone season 2 performs for Netflix. “There’s a lot of work that’s gone into the planning of this. The hope is then we get to act on that planning,” Eric told EW. “But of course, it’s about how well season 2 numbers do. And if so, then Daegan and I will continue to carry the mantle of both shows, which is also helpful because we have a lot of mouths to feed… To be able to give them their own real estate so they have elbow room allows us to go deeper on some of these character arcs.”
How Did Shadow & Bone Season 2 End?
So much went down in Shadow & Bone season 2, but let’s start with that smile in the final moments of the season 2 finale. During Nikolai and Alina’s coronation, a Fjerdan assassin uses the drug jurda parem and her own amplified gifts to cause chaos.
Alina stops the woman using the Cut, but there’s a catch. She summons shadow instead of light magic, which means that Alina’s power has been altered after saving Mal’s life and defeating the Darkling. In the last moments of the season 2 finale, Alina looks up with a smile on her face. Looks like Shadow & Bone has a new Shadow Summoner on its hands.
While this ending incorporates aspects of what happens in the books, the series is shaking things up a bit. “We wanted to pivot, you know, keeping something but making it just radically different than expectation,” showrunner Daegan Fryklind told EW.
Ahead of all this, Alina kills Kirigan. He warns her before he dies that without him “they will come for her.” He also pleads with her to make sure “there’s nothing left” of him. As this is happening, Nina is working to save Mal. When her efforts aren’t working, Alina uses merzost to revive him, even though she was warned never to use it.
Eric revealed to EW that season 3 would explore stories in the Grishaverse that do not stem directly from the books. “We did that a little bit with the prequel story for the Crows in season 1,” he said. “And now we get to do that with some of the Shadow and Bone characters.”
The showrunner added, “Thankfully we’re creating brand-new material for actors that we know and love and trust who will carry the water for us on this. And it’s weaving their story in with the King of Scars duology that we’re already in love with, and what we think is going to come alive on screen from those. So it’s a matter of stitching those in the way we’ve stitched in other characters in these first two seasons.”
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