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.
I hear you on the way supernatural children usually have a negative effect on the plot and relationships within a given ‘verse, but…I dunno. I actually find Diana kind of fascinating? Possibly because she’s written very realistically as a child.
One of the things that always bugs me about supernatural children is that they tend to be written like fully-grown adults in children’s bodies which, aside from occasionally giving rise to some very gross and creepy storylines, is just boring to me. Take, as an extremely bad example, the infamously-named Renesmee Cullen. She’s a small child who seems capable of communicating with adults on their level practically from birth, albeit through supernatural means, and who gripes the tiniest bit about their “special diet” before being a good little girl and adopting it.
Kids aren’t like that. Kids are messy. Kids are picky eaters. Kids ask ten billion questions a day and balk at early bedtimes and push their boundaries. Kids understand things in very black-and-white terms, most of the time. What causes them pain, fear, discomfort, or sadness? Those things are bad. What makes them comfortable, happy, secure? Those things are good.
Now Diana is written very much like a kid in that respect. There’s an innocence there that is both endearing and terrifying because of the amount of power she has to make whatever she decides she wants a reality. I’m actually very tense whenever she’s on-screen, because I never know what she’s going to do or how she’s going to react.
She doesn’t seem inherently malicious or inherently good…just inherently a child. She wants what she wants and she wants it now, she’s very curious and disinterested in the world around her by turns, and she doesn’t seem to understand right and wrong, or the ramifications of some of the things she does. Right is what makes her happy and keeps her family together. Wrong is anything that threatens that.
Her mommy and daddy should be together, she thinks, so she tries to make them love each other. She doesn’t understand consent, or how two people who’ve had a child together might still be completely unsuited to one another or even hate each other. She has to have that explained to her later…and I think it’s noteworthy that once it is explained, she abandons that course of action and moves on to another.
She sees Renard with Rachel and thinks that must be the reason her daddy doesn’t love her mommy anymore, and the reason her mommy is so sad. So she kills Rachel. Her daddy’s “friend” Bonaparte hurt her mommy, and her daddy should protect his family…so she makes him kill the bad man. Terrifying, but…oddly realistic in terms of how a child would most likely understand that situation.
It’s also telling that she doesn’t ever attack Nick, even though he’s as much or even more in the way of her parents being together than Rachel was. This could be because Nick is her brother’s father, and she likes her brother. It could also be because she’s already noticed that killing Rachel doesn’t seem to have worked, so there’s no point in killing Nick.
She’s probably the most accurate depiction I’ve seen of what it would look like if you took a little kid, with all their little-kid capriciousness and innocence and their id running everything, and gave them unmatched superpowers. It would be terrifying. Not least of all for the parents charged with trying to teach her to control and use her powers for good without pissing her off before she’s old enough to understand that some things can’t be fixed, forgiven, or undone.
So I’m interested to see where they go with the character in the episodes we have left. I just hope it’s as good as what we’ve seen so far.
The world of Grimm is both vast and detailed. Below are just a few of the completed and planned profiles of the show’s familiar places, as well as some of the tools, weapons, symbols, and other items Team Grimm uses throughout the series. As with Grimm Stats, this list will be updated with links as more posts are completed.
FYeahNickBurkhardt (Tumblr Backup) 