Shadow & Bone: Kirigan’s [SPOILER] Twist Explained

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Shadow and Bone.

Just as the romance between Alina Starkov and the brooding General Aleksander Kirigan is beginning to heat up in Shadow and Bone, a twist in the story reveals his real motives for wanting to help her Sun Summoner powers bloom. Though Kirigan told Alina that he’s descended from the Dark Heretic, the Grisha who created the Shadow Fold hundreds of years ago, the truth is more terrible than that. General Kirigan is the Dark Heretic, and he wants to take control of the Fold, not destroy it.

Shadow and Bone season 1 is set in a time when Grisha have become valued members of Ravka’s military, living in luxury behind the walls of the Little Palace. Wielding different kinds of magic (or more specifically, Small Science), the Grisha can be deadly in battle and have used their skills to advance the technology of war, making themselves invaluable to a country that’s currently fighting a war on two fronts. For a long time, however, Grisha were hated and hunted in Ravka, and it was in this time that Kirigan created the Fold.

After his true colors are revealed, Kirigan stops playing nicely with Alina. He slaughters Morozova’s Stag in cold blood, and then forcibly melds its antlers into both his and Alina’s bodies in order to absorb its amplifying properties and give himself control over the Sun Summoner’s abilities. But just how evil is Kirigan, what drove him to become the person he is, and what were his real plans for the Shadow Fold?

Why Kirigan Created The Shadow Fold

The opening flashback of Shadow and Bone season 1’s penultimate episode, “The Unsea,” reveals that the Darkling was honest with Alina about one thing: his first name really is Aleksander. Several centuries before the time in which the show is set, the Darkling helped the king of Ravka win a war. Instead of rewarding him for his service, the king was threatened by the scope of the Darkling’s power and ordered a purge of all Grisha across the country. This declaration of war convinced the Darkling that the Grisha needed to learn to use their powers to fight and form an army – something that would eventually be accomplished when the Little Palace was built and the Grisha officially became the Second Army of Ravka.

At the time Aleksander was in love with a Grisha called Luda, who had healing powers, but when she was attacked by the king’s soldiers there were no other Grisha who had the ability to heal her. She died, and Aleksander was helpless to stop it. To understand what happened next, it’s important to know the difference in the Grishaverse between the Small Sciences and merzost, or magic. Though the Grisha are also called witches and what they do looks a lot like magic, they limit themselves to manipulating matter that is already there, like fire or air. Merzost is the practice of creating something from nothing. This is what Morozova did when he created amplifiers like the white stag. The use of merzost is considered an abomination by the Grisha, and Baghra warns her son that it is both unstable and unpredictable.

Ignoring these warnings, the Darkling searched through the archives of Morozova’s notes until he found a spell for practising merzost and used it an an attempt to make the king’s soldiers submit to him. As Baghra had warned, though, the magic quickly spun out of the Darkling’s control, transforming the soldiers into volcra and creating the Shadow Fold, which spread across Ravka and turned anyone trapped inside it – men, women and children – into monsters.

Why Kirigan Hasn’t Aged

In contrast to a lot of fantasy worlds, where the use of magic drains a person’s energy or life force, the Grisha in Shadow and Bone are actually energized by the use of their powers. As Baghra tells her son when she warns him away from using creation magic: “The Small Science feeds us; merzost feeds on us.” The more powerful a Grisha is and the more they train with and use their powers, the longer they can live. Luda suggests that with enough training and amplifiers she could live another hundred years, and Kirigan’s response (“That seems a long time to you, I’m sure“) implies that he had already been alive for several centuries when the Shadow Fold was created. Since Alina’s powers are on par with the Darkling’s, she could also potentially live for many centuries if she continued to nurture her gifts.

Why Kirigan Can’t Control The Shadow Fold Without Alina

Early on in Shadow and Bone season 1, Jesper Fahey asks the obvious question: if Darkling powers were used to create the Shadow Fold, why can’t the Darkling tear it down again? The simple answer is that destroying the Fold requires the ability to summon light, and Kirigan can’t do that any more than Alina can summon darkness. Though he may have created the Fold, it doesn’t recognize Kirigan as its master and he becomes a beacon for volcra attacks as soon as he enters it (perhaps because they’re drawn to the darkness inside him, or perhaps because they recognize him as the Grisha who originally transformed them into monsters and want a bit of payback).

Though Kirigan and Alina are both very powerful individually, they also seem to act as amplifiers for one another. Before she learned to control her power, Alina had to make contact with Kirigan to demonstrate her Sun Summoner abilities. And by tapping into Alina’s powers, Kirigan was able to expand the boundaries of the Fold. By combining their powers of light and darkness, Kirigan and Alina seemingly have the ability to generate magic that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

How Kirigan Plans To Use The Fold

Though the Darkling may not have created the Shadow Fold intentionally, he never actually wanted Alina to destroy it. The only mistake that General Kirigan is seeking to fix is his loss of control over the Fold, and his true intention was to use Alina’s power to expand and weaponize it. The Darkling’s desire to take control of the Fold may have originally stemmed from a desire to protect the Grisha from ever being afraid or hunted again, but his motivations have long since been corrupted by an obsession with power for the sake of power. Using the Fold he could overthrow the current king of Ravka and take his place as the ruler of the country, and even the countries beyond Ravka’s borders. He could also force the other Grisha to submit to him and become his own personal army.

While his initial plan may have failed, the fact that the Darkling emerged from the Shadow Fold alive – and with monsters in tow – suggests that he has obtained some measure of control over it without the need for Alina’s powers. And that can’t mean anything good.

About The Author

Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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