S01.E02: We're All Someone's Monster

[paulvdb]

Quote

Alina's actions against the Volcra bring her to the attention of General Kirigan. Kaz runs into trouble while looking for safe passage across the Fold.

 

[MissLucas]

Enter the Darkling. The cutting of the Fierda soldier was appropriately gory.

The events in Ketterdam were chuck-full of background story/world building. I liked it but it was a lot to unpack.

 

[ZeeEnnui]

General Kirigan did not disappoint. So Goth, I love it.

Jesper is awesome. That is all. 

I feel like this episode was a bit easier to unpack. The first episode was so chock full of world building it was a bit difficult to follow without book knowledge. This episode was good at helping us to understand the Grisha.

Oh man, Alina and Mal are so in lurve. The ANGST. So extra. I know that I should probably be swooning but it made me laugh every time. I am dead inside, and not fifteen so I think that's a reasonable reaction.

I'm excited for more Ben Barnes, and what comes next now that Alina is in the small palace.

[tennisgurl]

This episode was a lot easier for me to follow, it still had a lot of world building but the plot itself is kicking more into high gear. We are establishing more characters, including dreamy goth badass General Kirigan, we learn more about Alina's chosen oneness, and I think I understand more about the Grisha and Ravka. I also get the issues between the Grisha and the other soldiers a lot more, the rank and file see the Grisha as being the elite who live in luxury and are valued over the "grunts" who are treated as cannon fodder, while the Grisha live in fear of being hunted and killed because of what they can do, and are rather prickly about being resented and feared for doing their part for the nation, especially as it seems like its implied that anyone who is Grisha is recruited immediately and don't have much of a choice as to whether they join them. 

Alina is still in reluctant savior "I just want to be normal!" mode, especially because she and Mal are all about the big dramatic separation angst. Oh the drama, the yelling, the running after the carriage, the trying to run off to be together, its such high romance melodrama and I am into it. I still wish that they had kept her chosen oneness in their back pocket for an extra episode or two, but I am really interested in seeing more of the Grisha. 

The Ketterdam scenes are giving us so much more information about the world, I really want to know how their plot ends up connecting with Alina. They Ketterdam gang are off to go find her, but then what? 

[peachmangosteen]

I still have literally no idea what is going on. It doesn't help that I can never hear anyone.

I don't give a flying fuck about Alina and Mal. I'd rather ship her with Ben Barnes. 

Also, the most confusing in a long line of confusing things for me, are the general and the guy who rescued Alina and took her to the palace the same guy? I mean, I know they're both Ben Barnes, but is it the same character or like twins or something?

[Llywela]

11 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Also, the most confusing in a long line of confusing things for me, are the general and the guy who rescued Alina and took her to the palace the same guy? I mean, I know they're both Ben Barnes, but is it the same character or like twins or something?

The man who rescued Alina and took her to the palace was the general. General Kirigan, known as the Darkling. One guy.

[benteen]

Not a surprise that Ben Barnes brings it.  Yet another character more interesting than Alina.

[festivus]

Oh, the many knives of Inej. You were my favorite part of the episode.

[angora]

Ben Barnes on the scene! I get that he's going to be the charmingly-manipulative bad guy who temporarily comes between Alina and her childhood sweetheart One True Love, but I wish this was the sort of story where the guy with the super-rare shadow powers like the kind that made the Fold ISN'T eeeevilllll. I mean, this other army is clearly anti-Grisha and trying to kill them because of their powers, and even their fellow non-Grisha Ravkans are varying levels of unsettled by/afraid of them. How much more intense would the fear be toward someone with powers like Kirigan's? I can already tell Ben Barnes is gonna be great in the role, and I'm sure he'll be awesomely evil, but I feel like it'd be so much more interesting if he wasn't.

That scene of him scratching Alina's arm and activating her powers? SO COOL. The effects were suitably epic, and I liked the cut to Mal as he just saw this sliver of blinding white light shooting up out of the tent. Poor Alina that, as they were being separated, all she did was try to insist to him that she hadn't known she could do that.

Okay, so the Crows are objectively, empirically the best? I love that each is completely different from one another and they don't seem like they ought to fit together, but they just DO. All the love to Inej's many knives, Caz's shrewdness and plotting, and Jesper's everything. I understand that they're some of the characters who weren't originally in this story, but whoever decided to incorporate them into the show clearly knew what they were doing.

[Quark]

I've just seen the first two episodes of this, and whilst it's a tad confusing (I don't read the books), I'm quite enjoying it. 

The acting is fine, but I think the people playing the two main characters are rather sub-par. Ben Barnes looks amazing.

The thing I was most confused by this episode though, with respect to the Ketterdam stuff, it looks like Inej is an assassin (she is certainly a spy), but she doesn't kill? She asked her friend to kill for her? And then at the end of the episode it looked like she was about to kill The Contractor, but didn't, as Caz stopped her. That was all rather baffling to me.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Quark