Fans of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, which includes her books from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, Six of Crows duology, and current stand-alone King of Scars, have been waiting in anticipation for this day: an official trailer release. When it was announced months ago that the Grishaverse was going to be adapted into a live-action Netflix show, fantasy readers were a little bit skeptical. How could Netflix combine the two separate time lines of Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows? But before that can be answered, the overall world and basic plot of both need to be considered. In the Grishaverse, there is a small population known as Grisha who have, put simply, superpowers. There are different groups that separate the types of Grisha power and what they influence, such as the Corporalki, which is the order of the living and the dead. This is where the healers and such are. Though the Grisha are a minority, they are extremely powerful and have a large influence on the different countries.

As a very brief summary, in Shadow and Bone, there is a huge region blanketed in pure darkness, called The Fold, where monsters live. The main character Alina Starkov is a Grisha with a special ability that might finally destroy The Fold. During her journey, she gains new allies that help her fight the forces that threaten her country. In contrast, Six of Crows is about a heist. It has very different pacing than Shadow and Bone and occurs about two years after and in a different country. In this duology, Kaz Brekker and his crew The Dreggs are hired to break into the impenetrable Ice Court, to steal the only person who knows the formula to a power-enhancing Grisha drug that is extremely dangerous.

To combine the two plots, Bardugo and Eric Heisserer(who is helping run the show) have created origin stories for the members of The Dreggs that throw the characters into the Shadow and Bone timeline. Since these backstories have been created for the show, not even the readers know what to expect, which is why any information released by Netflix is devoured. Fans were more than happy with the teaser trailer that came out in December since the quality of the show seemed to be exactly what they were expecting. This morning, Netflix released the official trailer, which looks amazing. Many readers agree that everything in the live-action so far looks exactly like it had been imagined while reading, which is hard to do in the fantasy genre. Junior Mikayla Shaffer shares her reaction to the trailer, “The trailer has made me even more excited for the show, it was so cool to see all the things I’d pictured in my head be brought to life, and it looks like they’ve done a really fantastic job.”