Shadow and Bone relationship breakdown: Chemistry or just the Small Science?

Helnik: Shadow and Bone’s other controversial couple

Here’s the thing about Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar: They absolutely should not work for me. Yes, me, the writer, who is inserting herself in the narrative. In real life, I hate nazis for trying to exterminate my people, and there is no forgiveness. None.

But there’s something about the magic (or the Small Science, if you will) of the Grishaverse that makes this fictional pairing work. Let’s talk background really quickly.

Matthias was raised in Fjerda, where Grisha like Nina are seen as witches and abominations—less than human. The goal of drüskelle like Matthias is, simply put, Grisha genocide.

However, because Leigh Bardugo wrote such complex characters and storylines, and because she wrote chapters specifically from many characters’ points of view, it became painfully easy to love Matthias. (If you’re a reader, you know exactly how painfully.) In what could have slipped into a “hug, rather than punch, your local nazi” angle, Bardugo let us see that it’s possible to change, to work oneself out of a lifetime of being programmed to hate.

What Shadow and Bone does so well with this story is showing Matthias’s internal struggle pretty much from the get-go. He knows he’s supposed to want Nina dead and to see her as his mortal enemy. But he can’t.

Then, there’s Nina’s bold, outgoing personality. You can’t help but love her, and it’s hilarious watching Danielle Galligan’s shameless flirtation with her scene partner, Calahan Skogman. We’re not supposed to get Helnik’s backstory until much later in the saga. Thankfully, Shadow and Bone Season 1 said, “we’re doing this now.”

When two people are taught to hate and fear one another their whole lives, yet they manage to come together and see each other as humans and equals, it’s kind of a beautiful thing. It’s a love story that, again, shouldn’t work…

But it’s so refreshing that it just does. If only the real world made it so easy

Who did you ship when you watched Shadow and Bone Season 1? Or, who are you waiting to see in future seasons? Send us your thoughts!