Shadows House Season 2

Episode 9

In Hans Christian Andersen's 1847 short story The Shadow, a shadow learns how to be a little too human and switches places with his man, effectively killing him. In the first season of Shadows House, I was fairly certain that the show was working from Andersen's framework; now that we've gotten much more of the full story behind what it means to become an adult Shadow, I'm convinced of it. We knew from the end of the first season that Edward was a fusion of living doll and Shadow, and we could guess from his actions that he'd either drunk way too much of the coffee or was being controlled by the Shadow personality rather than the doll. The truth turns out to be a little darker: he's not just controlling the human, he's a parasite that killed the living doll and took over his body. “Eddie,” or whatever his living doll's name was, no longer exists: he's a Shadow with a human face. And that, if you think about it, has been hiding in plain sight all along.

We also learn this week what, precisely, the warden of the children's wing is meant to do. Yes, he runs the debut, as we saw, but he's also the person in charge of promoting pairs to the adult wing of the house. Ostensibly, the goal is to pick pairs with a high likelihood of success in fusing together, but that's not what Edward appears to be up to. Instead, he appears to be choosing pairs who have a high likelihood of failure - or at least going every-other with his selections. Why would he do such a thing? Because he's got a plan to attract Lord Grandfather's attention: weed out the rebellious pairs by setting them up to fail. If he invites duos he knows aren't going to succeed, he's neatly taking care of the problem, and his hope is that Lord Grandfather will notice the level of rebellions dropping under Edward's stewardship of the children's wing. It definitely feels like an imperfect plan, because if Edward has too many failures, he stands to get demoted like Thomas, but it's also exactly the sort of vaguely cockeyed scheme I'd expect him to come up with. Edward's less invested in the furtherance of Shadows House and Lord Grandfather's plans and more in his own superiority; he needs to be the best even if it means turning a blind eye to everything he ought to be actually working towards. This is the man who obsessively went after Kate, after all – once he gets his teeth into an issue, he can't seem to let go.

Maryrose's hopes of outwitting him also seem a bit short-sighted, largely because she doesn't seem to be using her time effectively. Rather than threatening Kate, John, Emilico, and Shaun, what she should be doing is trying to talk them over to her side. Kate's not invested in what the Star Bearers think of her; she's keen to figure out what's actually going on and hasn't made any clear plans about what to do once she has. Maryrose's assumption that she's going to go right to Barbara and the others with her knowledge feels flawed, especially since she knows that Kate is someone who really thinks things through. If offered an exit strategy, or the chance to formulate one with Maryrose, Kate would probably take it, because she knows that she and Emilico are two completely separate people and she values that. I can't think of anyone else who would be as aghast as Kate at the thought of killing Emilico and fusing with her corpse. (Except maybe Patrick, because it would mean that he'd never get to be with Emilico.) Yes, Maryrose is desperate and panicky, but rather than chucking scorches at Kate, she really ought to talk to her.

We may have seen the way out of Shadows House, though. Kate specifically says that the aqueduct carries water into the house, which means that there's the real possibility of egress by water. Shadows don't dissolve like scorches in water, so if they could figure out the river's course, there may be a real chance of escape. But that's going to take planning, and Maryrose may get in the way of that. It would be worth trying to convince her, however.

It's better than ending up like Christopher.

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Shadows House is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.