Ben Barnes talks Darkling’s ‘loneliness’ in Netflix upcoming ‘Shadow and Bone’ Season 2

Netflix's Shadow and Bone upcoming Season 2 is slated for a 2023 release.

The new season will draw inspiration from Leigh Bardugo’s second book in her Shadow and Bone trilogy, titled Siege and Storm. It will also take some material from the first book in her Six of Crows duology.

In an interview with Newsweek, Ben Barnes, who portrays the mysterious villain General Kirigan, shared some character insights ahead of his episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities in October, 2022.

While in the book the Darkling appears on and off throughout, Barnes shared that in the show the character will be expanded upon.

“I will say that, I think I've said before, that the character in the books becomes quite sort of emblematic after the first one, right? Representative of something dark,” Barnes told the outlet.

“So there has been a lot of efforts to try to still make him a real character, and, much like everything I've been talking about with [Cabinet of Curiosities], is just to explore the depths of his feeling and his ideology and his loneliness, and all of those things that motivate him, that drive him.

He also added that the upcoming season will also examine “the connections that he has and doesn't have, and the things that he feels and doesn't feel.”

“I think that my focus for the five months that we were up there [filming] was to champion those things, and our showrunners [Eric Heisserer and Daegan Fryklind] were so collaborative with me in helping design that, which is a real privilege,” he continued.

“I haven't seen much of the second season, but what I have seen is really exciting and it's obviously a huge world and it's got so many more characters and, yeah, I think it’s going to be great.”

Shadow and Bone Season 2 premieres on Netflix on Thursday, March 16, 2023.