![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In the books, I was more into the idea of the love triangle, and the notion that maybe one of Alina’s other suitors could be a better fit for her. That foundation of loyalty and dedication made much more sense to me in the show, and really foregrounded the storytelling as a romantic drama. Nicole: Hello, it’s me, a “many others out there,” who also found Mal aggravating in the books - for all of the same reasons that Petrana mentions. Any romantic feelings they have are built on years and years of friendship that actually feels like it’s there! Show Malina is far superior to book Malina. ![]() They have a devotion and dedication to each other that won’t be hindered by stupid jealousy. Mal is not a handsome cool guy, but a scrappy lad, cut from the same cloth as Alina. It makes any tension they have superficial, and ruins the friends-to-lovers dynamic because they just aren’t good pals!īut the first season of the show completely eliminates that jealousy and weird petty tension. That jealousy only continues and gets worse throughout their entire relationship. One of the big things about the books that always aggravated me (and many others out there) is that Mal and Alina just weren’t very good friends! When we first meet them, Alina is like, Wow, Mal is so handsome and cool and all the girls love him… Can’t believe he is friends with a brown-haired brown-eyed scrawny nobody like me! (Told you that first book suffers from YA protagonist energy.) And when Alina gets whisked off to the Little Palace, Mal gets really angry that she dares leave him. Petrana: I want to kick things off by talking about the foundation of Mal and Alina that we got in season 1 - and how much better it was than the books. So I’ll be coming at this with the show’s two seasons as my only context. Some people don’t like them, because they get in the weeds about the Grishaverse politics, but that was a feature, not a bug, to me.Īusten: I’ve definitely got the shortest answer here since I haven’t read any of the books at all. And I also read the King of Scars books, which I adore, because I adore Nikolai and Zoya, both of whom are heavily featured in them. And then I went back to the main trilogy, which as Nicole said, is incredibly and deeply fine - Leigh Bardugo’s writing only gets better from that first book, which suffers from stereotypical YA protagonist energy. Petrana: Like many people, I also started with Six of Crows and its sequel, which rule. I haven’t read any of the King of Scars books. Then I went back to read the original Grishaverse trilogy, starting with Shadow and Bone, which I thought was fine. Nicole: Should we share which books we’ve read, or if we’ve read the books? I can go first: I’ve read the Six of Crows duology… twice. Three Polygon staffers sat down to talk about all the big changes to the Grishaverse’s most important - and somehow most controversial - couple. But where does it go from here? How does season 2 handle this version of Mal and Alina? And does it work? The first season of the show ironed out some of the more contentious parts of Mal and Alina’s relationship, turning it into a deep friendship we could actually root for. Their romance was a cornerstone of the books, but not without criticism from fans, who would’ve rather seen Alina smooch the brooding Darkling or the charming Nikolai instead of dealing with Mal’s jealous ass. It’s a lot of characters and a lot of plot, but we’re homing in on the heart of the show: Sun Summoner Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and tracker Mal Oretsev (Archie Renaux). No, it pulls from the next two books - along with some tangential adventures created just for the show, in order to give every part of the massive cast some screen time. Put simply, the second season of Netflix’s YA adaptation doesn’t just adapt the next book in the series. The newest season of Shadow and Bone is full of some… big surprises, to say the least. ![]()
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