Shadow & Bone: Kirigans [SPOILER] Twist Explained

Just as the romance between Alina Starkov and the brooding General Aleksandr 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?

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 Aleksandr. 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 Aleksandr 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 Aleksandr 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.