Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Netflix
In the sprawling fantasy series Shadow and Bone, our resident hot antihero, Kaz Brekker, is practically a legend. Known to many as the “bastard of the Barrel” in the seedy port city of Ketterdam, Kaz is known for cunning, his devoted gang of “Crows,” and above all, his ruthlessness. Tortured by childhood trauma and hopelessly in love with a fellow Crow, Kaz spends most of his time either scheming against his enemies or dreaming about a romantic future that feels just out of reach—for now.
As fans of both Leigh Bardugo’s book series and Netflix’s adaptation know, Kaz also happens to walk with a limp and use a cane—a detail that, refreshingly, informs Kaz’s characterization without defining him. Kaz lives in a fictional universe teeming with healers, but he never considers “fixing” his mobility issues.
As Bardugo writes in her Grishaverse novel Six of Crows, “There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken. The cane became a part of the myth he built.” With the recent news that Netflix is testing the waters for a Six of Crows spin-off, which would give the Crows of Ketterdam their own series, there’s potential for Kaz to evolve even more.