I always wondered about Adalind and Nick, if the show runners wanted them together, why not have that in the beginning? Or let Juliette off the hook in S01 or 2 and then let those two have whatever it is they have? Seriously, why did showrunners do that ?

My understanding from old articles and tumblr discussion is that Adalind was never supposed to be a long-term character. She was basically written in for a few episodes in season one, and then they liked Claire so much that they wrote more for her.

Which I get. What’s not to love about Claire?

But then they didn’t really know what to do with her. That’s nothing I heard, just an observation. They had no clue.

She spends most of seasons two and three “meanwhile in Vienna,” then comes back in seasons three and four only when they need a stronger villain to make the plot move. They spend very little time developing her but put a LOT on the character’s shoulders.

I also don’t think the writers necessarily wanted or planned to put Nick and Adalind together until a vocal minority of fans began demanding it. They certainly failed to set it up at all in seasons one through four if that’s not the case.

Then once they got together, Adalind became a background player for the most part. She got one or two good episodes in seasons five and six, but those were all when she was stuck in the mayor’s mansion with Renard. Otherwise, she became a very passive character with little agency after season five.

Even the single “I love you” Nick ever says to her happens in the Other Place, in a reality that gets erased. As far as Adalind is concerned, it never happened. And that’s where they end the show.

Looking at all of that, I honestly can’t believe they planned or wanted that ship to happen. Which begs the question: why did they never fix it?

juliette got a bad rap because she was nick’s girlfriend and not a grimm or wessen, so fans just hated her. but she was sweet and supportive and goodhearted and has the worst most traumatizing story of all the grimm characters and I think its rotten that adalind got her happy ending and her boyfriend AND her baby like… wow (and fans liked meechy sweet adalind and hated sincere sweet juliette and that’s just hypocritical) if they ever make a s7 or movie they should fix her story – Bella

But where is the lie?

One of these days I’m going to finish my season 7 fanfic in which Juliette’s story gets a happier ending, Adalind gets to be the big bad she was always meant to be from Day 1, and Sean Renard gets squished like a bug under her stylish heels during her Path of Destruction. Not because I hate Sean, but because let’s face it: if Adalind went Full Bad someone would have to die for Dramatic Effect, and there is no way I’m killing any other member of Team Grimm (or any of the babies) because they have done nothing to deserve it but like…Sean really messed up and he never showed a single ounce of remorse about it. Maybe he sees Meisner one last time, as he’s dying (maybe while saving/protecting someone else), and they go into the light together or whatever (or something way less sappy).

Ahem. Anyway. Yeah. Some things need fixing in that ending.

(EDIT: I finally wrote it and am in the process of editing it. Chapter 1 is here.)

i patiently waited for grimm to fix silverhardt since 4×09. through the painful arc of hexen!jules & nick being ooc. watching julies lose herself & get killed. the horrible n/dalind arc & that yucky affair & jules being unable to show emotions. i stuck through when jules came back in s6 & she & nick started showing feelings for each other again. & the writers dropped the ball. for faithful grimm fans that were there from S1 and watched it for GRIMM not just n/dalind that was freaking unfair

I feel you, anon. It’s been months and I still feel you so hard.

did you feel like nick was badly written in the last two seasons? cause to me he sometimes seemed to be a different nick altogether which is sad since I loved nick and they kinda ruined him… and it wasnt just nick either. it was everyone. it’s like the writers gave up on being true to their characters. such a shame.

A little yes, and a little no, anon. Let me see if I can explain.

There were definitely arcs where I felt Nick behaved very out of character. And in the Juliette/Hexenbiest arc at the end of season four, I felt that everyone behaved out of character without any good explanation (except for Juliette, who had all the reason in the world). It was almost like they made the entire team thoughtless and incompetent just so they could force Juliette’s arc, when there were definitely better ways to make that happen.

Granted, some of Nick’s writing during this time was par for the course–emotional avoidance, disregarding Juliette’s feelings, making things about him that so very were not–but the beauty of the show was that the characters’ flaws often balanced each other out. Nick’s tendency toward emotional avoidance and self-centeredness was balanced out by Juliette’s insistence on facing things head on and Hank’s tendency to point out the problems in his actions. Monroe’s pigheadedness was balanced by Rosalee’s level-headedness. The entire team’s collective gooeyness was balanced by Renard’s ruthless pragmatism…and occasionally Rosalee’s, depending on the subject. They all had skills and strengths that worked well with the rest of the team, and they were (mostly) good at communicating when it mattered.

But in that arc, suddenly, no one was balancing anyone out. No one was reacting to anything the way they usually would. Everyone was being ridiculously obtuse and not talking about shit and it was infuriating to watch. They basically all fell back to letting Nick do whatever he wanted–similar to how they acted in season 2, actually–and the end result was Juliette dead and Diana in the wind.

But overall, I thought Nick’s writing was fine in seasons 5 and 6, with the exception of one particular subplot (you know the one) in which the writing, acting, everything felt forced and stilted and just wrong. So wrong that up until the final episode I was sure it had to be some kind of spell causing him to act completely out of character. It wasn’t just that he was displaying traits that seemed unusual for him, it was that he was portraying certain emotions in a way that Nick Burkhardt definitely did not express himself, with no plausible explanation given as to why.

So. Yeah…I kinda feel you. But there were also moments that Nick felt every bit the Grimm we all know and love. Notably, his solo interactions with Hank, Monroe, and Juliette/Eve were super in-character and smacked of season one so hard that I had to swallow a nostalgic lump in my throat at times. And although sometimes his actions as a Grimm made me sad, they were also part of a clear progression that had been building for a few years, so I understood them as (not necessarily positive) character development, rather than OOC writing.

‘No regrets’ was Juliette telling Nick she didn’t regret loving him & she didn’t regret THEM. Nick blamed himself for what happened to Juliette & he thought she must regret knowing him & wish she could change it. But she didn’t regret knowing or being with him. Silverhardt deserved happiness. In that scene where Julieve died there was clearly love between them still. Its so dumb they didn’t just make it official. Sure its kind of open to interpretation… but geeze ~~ Gwen

I can’t disagree with anything here. It was clear throughout seasons five and six that Nick had unresolved feelings. It was strongly hinted that Eve did in season five, and made completely obvious in season six.

But here’s the thing: I’m unhappy with the relationship Nick did plausibly end up in because it was poorly written and squicky in the extreme. But I’m actually okay with the way things ended between Nick and Eve, because the feelings were not completely denied or erased…Eve just made a choice not to pursue them any further. She decided some things were more important to her, and that she didn’t want to go back to the way things were.

And while I’m not necessarily happy about the way she got to that point…it was a great ending for a character, and not a choice you often see a character make and stick to.

I mean, most of the time on television when a woman decides she’s happy with just herself, she is a) punished soon after by the narrative or b) immediately meets “Mr. Right” and goes back on her previous statement. And while I know we often find what we were looking for when we stop looking, it’s just annoying to me that TV rarely if ever depicts a woman who is truly happy without a romance in her life, who has a larger purpose and better things to do.

So I was really happy with that aspect of Eve’s story. I just wish we could have gotten that without a side of rapist/victim squickily-ever-after.

If Adalind and Nick end up happily together and Juliette is left alone – or killed off again – I won’t forgive Grimm. I haven’t put up with two+ seasons of crap just to see my favorite character and ship go down in flames.

I obviously have no idea what’s going to happen on Friday, but barring some kind of massive reset I can’t see Juliette ending up with anyone romantically at this point. I do hope she doesn’t die and I hope she’s not alone. She’s lost so much–now she’s even lost the power and the purpose she’d finally learned to accept. So I hope they don’t give her a sad or abrupt ending. I hope they do justice to all the writing she’s had up to this point. Even if that doesn’t include a “happily ever after” with Nick…I would settle for just “happily.”

I love Juliette so much, too. She’s one of my all-time favorite characters and I really hope they don’t ruin her just for the sake of eleventh-hour drama or manpain.

If Nadalind doesn’t crash or sink I don’t think I can watch Grimm anymore. The ship has too many defects for it to work too much that I can’t get my head around. the only reason I’m still watching the show now is cause a part of me hopes Juliette will actually come back. That somehow the walls in Eve will be broken & she’ll be able to feel again. I know she’ll never be completely Juliette again. Eve will always be a part of her. But I’d like to see them fix that character. She deserves better

This is a super old ask and I’m so sorry for the delay in answering.

A lot of people feel like you do, myself included. The good news is that Juliette is definitely back, even if she still chooses to go by Eve, and her feelings for Nick are very clearly present and are not being ignored by the writers. You’re right that Eve is still a part of her, but I think they’ve come a long way toward repairing her relationship with the entire team. All we can hope is that this continues for the last four episodes!

I’m starting to really believe Nick and Juliette are endgame. She’s obviously still in love with him so he only has to wake up. I wonder if the stick went near Adalind if she would be fixed back to her normal self rather than this fakery going on. It was powerful magic that changed her and Juliette and it’s not fully undone yet. My heart broke when I saw her in the tunnels by herself under where he lives.

I feel like we got a pretty solid glimpse in that last episode of Nick’s lingering feelings for Juliette as well. I’m not sure how much they’ll explore this in the next two episodes, but this synopsis makes me think we’ll definitely see more development between the two of them in episode 11. (Thanks for sending me the link, @teamrebecchi !)

The thing about Adalind, though…I don’t necessarily want to see her revert back suddenly to being bad but I’m not sure what else they could do that would make sense. At this point the changes in Adalind were either powerful magic or shitty writing, but either way they’ve let it go on too long and played it too sincere without saying or even implying anything in canon that would make it clear that it’s the former.

And I just wish if they were going to try to redeem her character they had even made an attempt to actually earn it. Because they could have done a real, sincere redemption arc and shown incredible character development. Or, they could have had her go good temporarily due to magic before reverting back, and kept the amazing antagonist while adding an almost tragic storyline, a kind of “we got a glimpse of what she could have been” situation.

But neither of those things is possible now, and with only five episodes left I don’t know that there’s anything the writers could do at this point that would completely fix her character arc. The writers have ruined Adalind’s story, and it’s a shame, because the character was interesting and complex, and Claire Coffee’s performance has always been amazing.

Something I noticed: 5×07 promotional videos with Nadalind kissing. Happy Nadalind fans getting excited. The vast majority of Silverhardt fans being respectfully quiet and not yelling at the Nadalind fans. 6×07 promo: Silverhardt kissing. Silverhardt haters ALL OVER that video, yelling at the ship and Juliette. Attacking any Silverhardt fan who dares show their support. 😒

I can neither confirm nor deny that this is true, but I can say it lines up with my fandom experiences for the last six years.

That being said, this is for all the fans, Nadalind, Silverhardt, slash shipper, or indifferent: stop. attacking. each other. Discourse is one thing, but jumping on each other because you ship different things is just painfully immature, not to mention unnecessary.

I mean…what does anyone get out of that? Moreover, what do you think it says about your ship to the rest of the fandom, if all they ever see is its shippers attacking people, and putting down other ships, characters, and even the actors who play them?

So cut it out. And if you see other fans doing it, maybe tell them to cut it out too. We have seven episodes left. Just seven! After that last episode airs and the credits roll, it will never be like this again. Ever. Sure, there’ll be new metas, maybe, the occasional new fic or fanart, fans discovering the show for the first time on streaming sites and blogging about it.

But there won’t be anymore of that “new episode this Friday!” feeling we get now. There won’t be any more promos, sneak peaks, new photos from the next ep, theorizing about what wild thing the writers will think of next. No more of the writers trolling us good-naturedly during hiatus. No more of Bitsie giving names to things, or posting drinking games during the episode.

It’s going to be different, it’s going to feel different. And while we’ll always have the show to go back to, it will be going back. Never forward. We’ll be loving something that was, not something that is.

So enjoy this now, while we can. And try to remember that whatever our different opinions are on various parts of the show, we all love this show. We have that in common. And we’re all gonna miss it when it’s gone.

I’m not sure if this has been addressed already. But I’ve seen some n*dalind shippers say that Juliette/Eve could also be a rapist (when she turned into Renard and had to sleep with Rachel.) What do you think?

Hi Anon! Yes, we’ve addressed this twice now at FYNB: here and here.

Look, a lot of people in fandom seem to want to make this some kind of weird reverse competition: my ship isn’t that bad because this other ship is just as unhealthy! My fave isn’t problematic because look at the awful things your fave has done!

The implied goal of these kinds of questions and arguments seems to be “gotcha! see! you can’t criticize my faves anymore because you like this character who has done bad things as well!”

But it doesn’t work like that. One character’s evil actions do not become less abhorrent because another character committed similar actions. One relationship does not become healthier because another unhealthy relationship exists.

And that’s even if you assume we’re comparing like situations and dynamics, which 90% of the time when these things come up, we’re not.

You can’t look at someone with free will and someone without it committing the same action and say they’re equally culpable. You can’t discount one character’s canonical history of sexual violence and erase another’s canonical history of kindness and selflessness and then imply someone else is being “unfair” to the characters.

Just like you can’t excuse one character’s actions while under the influence of dark magic and condemn another character for their actions while under the influence of the same dark magic.

Well, I mean…you can, but it becomes pretty clear at that point that the goal is not to reach some kind of internal fandom character treatment consistency, but rather to shame or confound anyone who doesn’t like your problematic fave into silence.