I recently rewatched the shadowhunters serie adaptation. It’s an adaptation of the book series ‘The Mortal Instruments’ by Cassandra Clare from the shadowhunters universe.
The series follows the main character, Clary Fray, who just turned 18 and discovers this whole new type of world. She loses her mother and wants to find her again, but she discovers a lot of things she didn’t expect and didn’t want to happen. She gets to know a family calles the Lightwoods and their “adoptive” son Jace Wayland. They all help her find her mom and help her discover more about herself and her past while they’re fighting the antagonist called Valentine Morgenstern.
SPOILERS!!!
I really liked the charcter development from all the characters, but especially the oldest brother from the Lightwoods, Alec Lightwood. He used to be very up-tight, very controlling and wouldn’t break the rules even if it meant hurting himself and his friends. He changed when he met his boyfriend, Magnus, who is a warlock. He showed him that life is about more than just playing by the rules and that life goes by too fast to just let people use you to get their way and not do what you want.
Clary also had a lot of character development, at first she didn’t care about what happened to others as long as she could go back to the way things were and could leave everyhing behind. But later on she started feeling like she belonged and started really caring about the others and she let herself get hurt so she could protect the others, which is more than in the beginning. In the beginning she mostly just wanted to find her mom and didn’t care about the others in the world she discovered, but that changed pretty quickly and she kept growing from there on.
I also liked the way it was shot, they made it feel really real and gave it this very dreamlike feel as well. While some parts were very realisitc and made it feel like you were actually there, others made the fact that it was a fantasy series and that it had magic in the world very prominent as well. It really gave you a change to live in the world and feel what Clary felt while discovering all of the new world and all of the magic in it.
The actors did a great job at portraying the charcater and how they were written by Cassandra Clare, while also still making them their own. It was great to see how they truly embraced their characters no matter how different they were from the chacracters or how bad their characters were acting, they still embraced them and portrayed them so well.
The plot was also very good, but it was extremely different from the plot of the books, which makes it a bit hard to watch if you read the books and wanted an accurate adaptation. The characters were adapted to perfection, but they compromised on the plot, which was a bit disappointing. But if you take the plot away from the books it is actually great. It sometimes lacks some details, which makes it hard to understand some things if you aren’t familiar with the universe. But the overall plot was nice, only a bit rushed in the last season because the show got cancelled and they still wanted to wrap it up at the end.
All in all I really loved the series and would recommend it to any teenager or young adult who loves fantasy or romantasy.