I don’t think they really made Juliette evil, per se. Can someone be evil when they’re not in control of their own mind or actions? I think of Juliette’s actions in late season four as more sickness than evil, and in season five and six so far she’s definitely been an ally and asset to Nick and Team Grimm. And, more and more, we’re seeing glimpses of the old Juliette, the one who loved Nick and would do anything to protect him.
The getting-with-his-rapist thing though, yeah…that’s really gross. There’s no excuse for that and I will always wish the writers hadn’t gone there. There had to be better ways to deal with Claire getting pregnant than to have Adalind have a baby with Nick, and even if they chose to do that, they didn’t have to manufacture this stilted romance between them like none of the last five years of antagonism, violence, rape, and hatred ever happened between them.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as I’m sure you’ve seen by now, Trubel has indeed left Portland once more on orders from HW. Hopefully, though, she won’t be gone too long.
And it has definitely been complex so far! It seems as though Juliette’s emotional connection to her memories and friends is definitely back, but there’s still that layer of control that is Eve there. It seems as though there’s a big part of her that’s afraid to be Juliette again, too, and I’m sure that just adds to the complications.
That bothered me at first, too, but it was explained in the first episode of this season, thankfully!
She didn’t realize Bonaparte was dead until Sean told her about it later, and then she was afraid to take it off because the ring itself was cursed, not just laden with a threat from Bonaparte.
She’s afraid the curse may not be gone just because he is, and wants to make sure nothing will happen to her children before she takes it off and risks their safety.
So with the introduction of Josh as a non-Grimm son of a Grimm, I’ve been working on the theory that “Grimm-ness” is inherited as a dominant sex-linked trait and it has to be X-linked dominant inheritance.
Based on these permutations, I would like to take one…
My only question is, and I could just be missing something here, is Josh (the human son of a male Grimm) completely confirmed to not be a Grimm, or is it possible he just hasn’t presented as a Grimm yet?
And this opens up a whole new aspect to Grimm genetics- like, it’s been established that girls grow into their Grimm-ness much early than boys, which implies that the gene activates during a certain age window. But what triggers it? Hormones?
And it might not have anything to do with age, since girls could have two copies of the Grimm gene and therefore have a higher chance than boys of encountering whatever causes the activation.
(Though I’m leaning towards the age theory, because Nick began seeing Wesen before there was really anything that could work as a trigger)
So that would make being a Grimm a sort of second puberty, right? The same way that Wesen do it- remember that episode with the little girl (I think she was a badger Wesen?) who presented as a Wesen long before puberty- which established that shifting into Wesen isn’t something that presents at birth nor is it something that happens alongside puberty. Maybe Grimms do it the same way.
In that case, unless I’m mistaken, Josh could still end up a Grimm- just an immature one right now. Because, honestly, he doesn’t look that old and Nick was in his mid/late-twenties before he began seeing Wesen.
(BTW, I love doing genetics problems, so this is wonderful)
(Also, where’s the post on Wesen genetic distribution? I’m of the belief that Grimms are more like Wesen than either group would like to admit, so it might help to look at both; see if anything makes more sense that way.)
I mean, they kind of implied that the impending death of a family member could trigger it in male Grimms in the series pilot, which would mean Josh is absolutely not a Grimm since his father died and he didn’t start seeing Wesen. But that theory was never fully explained or expanded upon, and couldn’t be as simple as a traditional familial line of succession, since we later learn that Kelly was still alive when Marie died.
Now if Nick were Marie’s son instead of Kelly’s, and Marie was the older sibling (not sure that’s ever confirmed), then it might make a little more sense, as a traditional line of succession would usually go through the eldest child and their offspring first. But Kelly was already a Grimm, so that doesn’t quite work, either.
Unfortunately, we have so few Grimm families to go on that it makes it hard to come up with a complete theory that covers all bases and closes all loopholes. And I highly doubt Kelly Jr. will clarify matters at all, since he’s a special case with no known precedent and likely won’t follow any of the “rules” of usual Grimm inheritance (whatever those may be).
I do agree that Grimms are more like Wesen than either would like to admit. But all we know from the show when it comes to Wesen genetics is explained thus by Monroe and Rosalee in “Stories We Tell Our Young”:
Wesen + Human = 50/50 chance of Wesen child (Sean is one example)
Kehrseite-Genträger* + Wesen = Wesen child
Two Different Wesen =
Vorherrscher** (Monroe and Rosalee’s baby will be an example)
*A human who carries a Wesen gene but shows no Wesen characteristics, i.e. cannot woge.
**A hybrid Wesen with a combination of both parents’ traits, with the dominant genes’ characteristics being more prominent. It is not explicitly stated what makes some Wesen genes more dominant.
That explanation is actually part of how @irreverentcatalyst worked out this theory, if I remember correctly. She reasoned that it couldn’t work exactly like that for humans, because of what we knew of Nick and Josh’s parentage. Therefore, there had to be another factor, such as the Grimm traits being linked to sex chromosomes.
We did get a tweet from the writers at one point that the science in her theory was sound, but they coyly refused to confirm or deny it as absolute fact (as they said those “big-M Mythology” details were held close to the chest by the show creators).
I’m so sorry you have no way to watch! Have you tried hulu or other next-day streaming services?
I’m glad the blog gives you something to tide you over in the meantime! We love this show, even with all its flaws, and I for one am very sad to see it coming to an end. It’s been a part of my Friday nights ever since season one and it’s weird to think of not having it anymore.
The fandom is small, but it’s definitely there! @thegrimmnetwork and @dailygrimm are two great blogs to follow if you don’t already.
I wouldn’t want Nick to suddenly become involved with a new character here at the very end. That would seem…cheap and rushed and out-of-nowhere, to me. There wouldn’t really be time to develop the character or the relationship well and take care of all the other stuff they need to answer and deal with.
I will say this: I do understand why people would ship Nick and Adalind, both before and after the rape at the end of season 3. I understand as in comprehend, not as in agree with, support, condone, or ship it myself.
I understand it for two reasons: 1) we are trained from birth by the things we see portrayed in media to process antagonism, dominance, violence, and aggression as evidence of passion rather than abuse, and 2) we are not trained to think critically about the importance and nature of true consent, or to see men as potential victims of rape and women as potential perpetrators.
I can also definitely agree that the show hasn’t handled either relationship perfectly or even very well, and they definitely screwed up with the way they explained hexenbiest powers and the way they supposedly affect people. They broke their own continuity in that regard, and they’ve made it so their two main contenders for Nick’s affections at the end are a woman who doesn’t deserve him and a woman he doesn’t deserve.
Nadalind as a ship is unsalvageable from the standpoint of being healthy or positive in any way. Even if you argue that she did what she did under duress and because she was a hexenbiest, there are things in canon that contradict both conclusions and it doesn’t change the fact that Nick was still violated.
And even as much as I love Silverhardt, I can fully acknowledge that the writers would have to do a whole lot of work to make anything between them remotely healthy again…work I’m not convinced they really have time to do. Nick’s tendency to deceive Juliette and dismiss her feelings whenever convenient for him was a problem from like the third or fourth episode of the first season, and one they’ve never fully addressed.
Still, at the end of the day I know it’s going to be one or the other of the two. And in that context, I can wrap my head around Nick ending up with someone he needs to work on his relationship with over his ending up someone who literally raped him as well as one of his best friends, any day of the week.
That is very true and entirely scary, now that you mention it. The coins were almost addictive in the same way the stick seems to be, and yet they hardly affected Nick at all–just a split-second of hesitation before he put them away and was seemingly never tempted again. But the stick? That has messed with him.
Granted, the stick is ostensibly much older and more powerful than the coins, and seems to have been something important specifically to Grimms at one point. So maybe it’s an exception to the rule for some significant reason?
It could also be because it brought him back from the dead at least twice, or because he had it on him for so much longer than he had the coins.
Hopefully we’ll find out more soon! But I agree, it is definitely disconcerting.
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