Looking Back, The Shadow And Bone Season 2 Poster Was 1 Big Spoiler

Shadow and Bone really amplified the shock factor in Season 2, but one of the show’s biggest twists was low-key spoiled a month before the new episodes dropped. Well, if you knew where to look, that is. Seeing the Season 2 poster now, after knowing about Mal’s big revelation towards the end of the season, it’s impossible to ignore the giant spoiler that’s been hiding in plain sight all this time.

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from Shadow and Bone Season 2, Episode 6. The main adventure of Season 2 involves Alina, Mal, and their crew hunting down Morozova’s amplifiers. These are mythical creatures whose remains can drastically enhance a Grisha’s powers when they are embedded into one’s body. Alina already bonded with the Stag in Season 1, but she needs the remaining two — the Sea Whip and the Firebird — in order to have enough power to destroy the Shadow Fold.

The Sea Whip wasn’t too difficult to locate thanks to Alina’s cartography and Mal’s tracking, but the Firebird proves to be tricky. It isn’t until Baghra reveals that her sister was the original Firebird that Mal connects the dots of his genealogy. He has been the son of Baghra’s sister all along, making him the Firebird.

Of course, anyone who read Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels already knew about this major revelation, but even the non-readers could have pieced it together if they looked close enough at the poster that was released on Feb. 16. The image showed Mal with a pair of golden wings behind him, and right next to a fire for good measure. Looking at it now, it’s basically screaming “Mal is the Firebird” at the top of its proverbial lungs.

The poster also points to other important connections with the three amplifiers. The Darkling is surrounded by the Stag’s horns as a reminder that he’s the one who killed the first amplifier, and Aline is framed by the Sea Whip’s tail to denote that she would be the one to kill the second sacred creature in Season 2.