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Where before it took a lot of insecurity and jealous bickering for him to realize that their communications had been sabotaged, now Mal has simply chosen to act like a rational human being, one who wants to give his best “little friend” the benefit of the doubt, even as he believes she’s outgrown him. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Immortality is a monumentally dumb trope, so if you don’t care about the lore, I don’t blame you.) Sometimes it’s just nice to know!Īnyway, speaking of Mal, this guy just continues to rehabilitate his own reputation by saying all the right things. (Weird, given “The Making at the Heart of the World” is the title of the third episode.) Alina has certainly spent enough time at the Little Palace to have learned it by now, but in this episode, she has to piece together the explanation for Kirigan’s eternity on her own, when Mal (very smoothly) compliments her on how “healthy” she looks.
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(You’d think it would also be because he’s using merzost, but merzost takes from Grisha what the Small Science gives, so ironically, using it has shortened his lifespan.)īy contrast, it seems like this relationship might not be codified knowledge in the screen version. In the books, we automatically know the Darkling is old because he’s an extremely powerful Grisha. Alina’s former identity as Fragile Thin White Girl™ - and her subsequent transformation into Fit Thin White Girl™ - meant that by the time the Darkling’s true nature was revealed, she’d already learned about her biology from her more educated Grisha peers. It’s also directly proportional to an individual’s power: The stronger a Grisha, the longer they’ll live. Resistance to illness isn’t the same thing as immortality, of course, but in the Grishaverse, where people haven’t even figured out the mechanics of flight yet, it definitely means better chances for survival. (All that talk about being better than “ordinary people” probably doesn’t help.) It’s a “use it or lose it” scenario: If a Grisha suppresses her gifts, their halo effect on the body atrophies, as well, and her health takes a nosedive. This is one of the many reasons for Grisha- otkazat’sya tension: Grisha powers come with freakishly good health, but only when they exercise their abilities. Canonically, Grisha believe their power derives from a deep and unique connection to the forces of nature that have created the universe - the “making at the heart of the world,” they call it - and thus Grisha literally have a closer bond with life itself. In the books, the Darkling’s immortality was no great enigma.
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But the revelation in the last episode, that Kirigan is the Black Heretic, created a small but consequential mystery: how the hell is this dude that old? Until recently, that renovation has been all gain, no pain. Author Leigh Bardugo has gone on record confirming that this is by design, a direct request she made of Eric Heisserer, the screenwriter who adapted the series, to correct for what she describes as her own limitations as an early-career writer.
#Arrow season 1 episodes series
Once described as scrawny and sickly - and implicitly white - the series protagonist is now simply half-Shu, a move that transforms the feelings of alienation and loneliness Alina experiences in the books, justifying them more explicitly while enriching the Grishaverse’s sociopolitical landscape. As discussed previously, one of Netflix’s biggest updates to Shadow and Bone concerns Alina Starkov’s race.