Shadow and Bone relationship breakdown: Chemistry or just the Small Science?
Shadow and Bone makes the case for Kanej very clear
If Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were your favorite chapters in the Grishaverse, you’re in luck. Shadow and Bone on Netflix not only brought Kaz Brekker and his gang into Alina’s story, it also gave Kanej shippers a feast.
With Kaz’s aversion to touch and Inej’s indenture at Tante Heleen’s Menagerie, these are not characters who you’re likely to see go at it the way Darklina did. But that’s what makes the series’s ability to show just how much emotion is between them that much more impressive.
There is not so much as a split second where Kaz and Inej look at each other that isn’t charged. And even in just this small introduction that the streaming show gives viewers to the Crows, Shadow and Bone Season 1 makes it incredibly clear that Kaz Brekker would do anything within his power for Inej Ghafa. Period, end of discussion.
The whole reason Kaz even takes the mission that brings him into Alina’s world is to score enough kruge to help him finish buying out Inej’s “indenture” at the pleasure house. (Let’s call the “indenture” what it actually is: It’s sex trafficking, enslavement, and utterly disgusting.)
We’ve already gushed about how wonderfully Freddy Carter embodies Kaz, but let’s just add a bit more fangirling here: The way that tough exterior absolutely melts when interacting with Amita Suman’s Inej is really something to witness.
And while there’s not likely to be any naked pretzel antics between them, these two are so good at what they do that even the quickest look is enough to make Kanej shippers sweat. We can’t quite explain how, exactly, they’re capable of producing such emotionally-charged and smoldering looks with relatively little exposure—the show is, after all, called Shadow and Bone and not Six of Crows…
But we’re here for it. Absolutely, fundamentally, here for Kanej.