…and what we originally thought they would be about.
Grimm has had some interesting episode titles over the years. These names range from the painfully punny to the highly intriguing, but don’t always mean what we think they’re going to mean in either case. Below are some of the episode titles that turned our anticipation (or in some cases dread) up to 11…only to turn out not to be about what we expected at all.
Season 1, Episode 12: Last Grimm Standing
This sounded as though Nick would be going head-to-head against another Grimm in some kind of badass, epic showdown. But no. That didn’t come until later. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that every time we do see Nick fighting a Grimm, it’s a member of his own family. Ouch, Grimm Writers. Ouch.)
Season 2, Episode 2: The Kiss
Ooooo is Nick going to kiss Juliette and wake her up from her enspelled sleep because he’s her Prince Charming??? :3 No. Instead, the kiss that breaks the spell comes from…Renard?!
Season 2, Episode 3: Bad Moon Rising
Werewolves, of course! Right? Wrong. Instead, we got kidnapping and attempted rape/forced marriage. Grimm writers, why?! Even all the extra Hank in this ep and Mark Pellegrino as a guest star couldn’t make up for that nasty plot.
Season 2, Episode 12: Season of the Hexenbiest
A lot of us were giddy for this ep, thinking it would finally reveal Adalind as the True Big Bad of the series and we would get to see her do more than take orders or react to situations. Instead, Adalind got herself arrested “for protection” and the big midseason finale cliffhanger was that Renard had found the trailer.
Season 3, Episode 12: The Wild Hunt
With a title like that, this episode was obviously going to be about the actual Wild Hunt, right? An order of supernatural hunstmen, the Wesen world equivalent of ghosts or faeries. Sadly, that was not the case. Still…this episode was a big Monrosalee developer, which took most of the sting out of the disappointment.
Season 3, Episode 21: The Inheritance
Given that we were at the end of the third season and all, we thought for sure we were finally going to get more information about how Grimm powers were passed on and activated. And…we kinda did, just not quite the way we wanted to. This episode gave us an aging Grimm named Rolek and his skeptical son, Josh, i.e. the unofficial Fandom Puppy and possibly the character with the most fandom-bestowed epithets (Muggle Josh, Josh the Squib, Rubbish Josh, etc.). While it did spawn some great meta on how Grimm inheritance might work, it ultimately gave us few solid answers.
Season 4, Episode 18: Mishipeshu
This one doesn’t really belong here, because it wasn’t so much the title itself as it was the title in conjunction with the promo that had us waiting for Friday night with baited breath. Those glowing eyes on Hank had us all sure that the show was finally going to Kripke a long-standing fan theory (based mostly on his last name and the Grimm Writers’ complete inability to not make heinous puns) that Hank was in fact Wesen, though perhaps unaware of it. But it turned out Hank was merely temporarily possessed by a spirit, which was frankly annoying because most of the fandom agrees: Hank gets enspelled, possessed, controlled, and violated way too often.
Season 4, Episode 22: Cry Havoc
We thought for sure this was going to be the start of some big, epic war between the Royals, the Verrat, the Wesen Council, etc. All the pieces seemed to be moving into place. Instead, the writers gave us a much smaller war, and a heartbreaking conclusion to Juliette’s arc that had even some of those who didn’t like her feeling sad.
Season 5, Episode 1: The Grimm Identity
Okay, we thought. It’s season five. They’ve teased it a few times before. Surely, surely they’re finally going to reveal all the mysteries of how Grimm powers work. Once again, we were sorely disappointed. Instead, we got an off-the-rails Nick, a missing Trubel, and the introduction of a sinister new threat. Not a bad episode overall, but not as exciting as what the title seemed to be hinting at.
Season 5: Episode 5: The Rat King
Roddy. Geiger. That’s all we wanted. A return of the angry young Reinigen from season one who could charm armies of rats to do his bidding with his beautiful violin music. We wanted to see one of the Wesen Nick had helped early on, see if Nick and Monroe had managed to make a positive difference for him…or if ultimately, the harsh divisions in the Wesen world had driven him to use his abilities in nefarious ways just to survive. The real story was much weirder, and kind of gross: a massive rat creature created through the merging of many Reinigen at once, used in times of fear and danger to defend against predators.
Season 6, Episode 3: Oh Captain, My Captain
Let’s be honest here: we all thought Renard was gonna bite it in this episode, possibly with some final heroic act that would redeem him while making his descent into Black Claw all the more tragic in retrospect. Thankfully, they didn’t do that to us. Instead, we got to see two Sasha Roiz pretend to be Nick pretending to be Sean…and it was hilarious.
Season 6, Episode 8: The Son Also Rises
There was a nail-biting few weeks there where we thought “The Son” referred to Kelly, and there was a lot of speculation about what “rises” might mean. Was he going to age up quickly, like Diana? Were we finally going to see his powers in action? Was he going to turn out to be Team Grimm’s greatest ally…or were he and Diana going to be the final Big Bads of the series, in a heartbreaking turn of events for all concerned? As it turned out, the Grimm writers had lulled us into a false sense of security. The episode turned out to be another of their heinous puns.
Season 6, Episode 10: Blood Magic
At this point there was very little of the show left, and we were just dying for them to explain the strange and squicky relationship between Nick and Adalind, and make good on all the hinting around they’d done about a connection between Juliette/Eve and Adalind. Two other episode titles made me think it might finally be time to address that elephant in the room (The Seven-Year Itch, Blind Love), but this one was the most disappointing, both because it seemed to hint at a potential Kripke-ing of certain fan theories, and because with only three episodes left once it was over, it felt like the writers’ last chance to course-correct that horrendous subplot. Sadly, and to many Grimm fans’ indignation, they never did.
So there you have it, Grimmsters! For better or worse, I think the one thing we can say is that the Grimm writers kept us guessing constantly. For six years, we tuned in excitedly on Friday nights, never quite knowing what that next episode would bring. And to be fair, for every episode that was disappointing, there were many more that not only met, but exceeded, our wildest expectations.
What about you? What episodes surprised you (either in a good or bad way)? What episodes were much better than you ever thought they’d be?
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