FOR OTHER FANS ALSO DISAPPOINTED WITH THE PATH OF CHARACTER “SEAN RENARD” IN “GRIMM”

When I was younger, I started a journal. But it wasn’t a journal in the conventional sense. It wasn’t a record of my day-to-day activities and it also wasn’t, despite my age back then, a collection of teenage confessions.

It was when I watched a movie, listened to a song, read a book, etc., that elicited certain thoughts or emotions, that I would write. It was never a very regular writing and with the passing of time, it has become less and less regular. So you can get an idea, the latest entry dated back to 2015!

Now that I felt like writing, I thought I’d share the entry in my blog.

It’s about a TV show that isn’t exactly recent, so it may not be relevant for most people, but maybe it can be of interest to some who, like me, started watching later.

Here’s the entry:

November 15^th/December 7^th 2019

Hello Diary,

It’s been a long time since I last wrote to you about what I first set out to write to you about.  Thoughts or emotions aroused by certain books, movies, songs... Actually, I guess I even thought those days were over.

I suppose it’s only natural that as we get older, less and less things are capable of making you feel emotions intense enough to arouse the need to write about it.

(...)

Recently, I again felt that need to write to you. And that desire was awoken by the TV show Grimm. Well, not exactly the show, which I initially didn’t even follow because the premise felt a little silly: a man who, unlike the common mortal, has the ability to see when some people turn into certain and varied creatures (known as Wesen in the show), which makes him a Grimm.

As I was saying, it wasn’t for the show itself but for one character in particular: Sean Renard.

Like I said, I didn’t follow the show initially (truth be told, I don’t follow that many because most of them seem little better than soap operas that have just been given the nicer name of TV series). However, I’d catch it sporadically when zapping, although I wouldn’t linger. But I started to linger occasionally, at first for lack of better options but afterwards because I started to feel captivated by the character in question. At that time I still wasn’t really following the show. I would sometimes watch parts of episodes, or I’d watch an episode, lose a few and then watch another. I must have started watching regularly by the end of season two or maybe the beginning of season three. And now that the show has ended, what made me feel the need to write was the disappointment with the way the character was treated from season five onwards. Namely, the fact that they turned him into a villain.

I’m well aware (both because it was obvious throughout the all story and because I have, in the meantime, watched the episodes I had missed) that he didn’t exactly start out as one of the “good guys”. After all, among other less than commendable things, he did try to have Nick’s aunt killed.

If, in different circumstances, that would have been enough to make me dislike the character, the truth is in this show even some of the most benevolent characters have dark pasts. Take the harmless Blutbad Monroe, for instance. Several times throughout the story we are hinted at the fact that in the past, Monroe hunted human prey.

That predisposes us to be more tolerant because it’s the only way of not losing interest in the characters and consequently the story.

And back to Renard, even in that initial phase where he didn’t always act like a good person, he also never was a man completely devoid of values or a sense of loyalty.

And the way the character evolved until the end of season four brought him closer to the story’s heroes and consequently, to Good.

Even if he got close to Nick and forged their tacit alliance for his own ends, this was gradually shaped, if not in a friendship, at least in esteem. It’s not believable that he would try to kill Nick and persecute all his friends.

The disappointment was even greater because the third and mostly the fourth seasons had shown us a more human – even more vulnerable – side of the character. First, through the relationship with his Mother and afterwards through the way he struggled with the possession by the Ripper’s spirit.

Maybe it could have made sense that the Sean Renard of seasons 1 and 2 became the Sean Renard of 5 and 6, but not the one from seasons 3 and 4. It’s not credible that the same man who was so upset about killing three women when it wasn’t even his fault would adhere, of his own volition, to a homicidal organization such as Black Claw.

Up to that point, he had been such a well thought-out character, from his background – and his consequent ambiguity between Good and Evil – to the choice of his name, which somehow sounded just right.

It was that ambiguity between Good and Evil first, and then his evolution towards Good that made him a character complex enough to be interesting. It was a shame that they exchanged such an interestingly complex character for the cheap thrill of a more conventional villain.

However, I must admit, for the sake of honesty, that in real life, I’m not much of a believer that people change for the better, which means that when that happens in fiction, I also don’t find it particularly believable. I think that if this time was an exception, it was largely due to Sasha Roiz’s acting being so convincing.

And as for Renard’s motivations? Well, it seems to have been mostly a matter of ambition. Fair enough. Renard is indeed an ambitious man, hungry for power. But he is also a man who wouldn’t settle for a sham power. I remember that in one of the first seasons somebody asked him if he would ever take his place as leader of the Royal Family he is a part of. He says yes, but he adds: “But only on my terms”. Now that’s what makes sense considering Renard’s personality. He wouldn’t accept being a puppet. And he fully understands that’s what he’ll be for Black Claw. That’s why he tells Adalind “You and I don’t have complete control here”.

It seems to me he’d rather keep the more modest but more authentic power of a Police Captain. Besides, for someone who had dreamed about becoming a prince, becoming Mayor seems to fall a little short to explain the character’s corruption.

The disappointment was so big that although, like I said, I don’t really believe that people come back from Evil to Good, I hoped that until the end of the show there would be some kind of redemption. And I think there actually was an attempt at it, but it was clearly insufficient.

When, after the confrontation with Nick, he is again approached by Black Claw in order to resume their efforts, this time, he rejects them. And Meisner, who had told him before dying that he had chosen the wrong side, now tells him, in ghost version, that this time he chose the right side. And he ends up saving his life, which seems to suggest that since he got back on the right track, he forgave him.

But the truth is you don’t feel like he refused because he came to his senses and it was a matter of conscience. He just realized he can’t beat Nick. There’s not much of a redemption in that.

Later, he apologizes to Adalind (but Adalind isn’t the only one he hurt or tried to hurt) and tells her he’ll do everything in his power to protect not only his daughter Diana but also Kelly, who is not his son, from the Zerstörer. And he indeed “dies” trying to stop the Zerstörer from taking Diana. But once again, dying to protect your own daughter isn’t much of a redemption. If he had died protecting more directly baby Kelly, for example, maybe I could have felt that he had, at least in some small measure, redeemed himself.

Besides, for all characters except Nick and Diana, the events that take place between the moment Nick comes back through the mirror followed by the Zerstörer and the moment he goes through the portal that opens after he has defeated the Zerstörer, will be as if they never happened. So, both his “death” and the apology will be as if they never took place.

Part of me likes to think that when he killed Bonaparte, even if that was the result of Diana’s spell, the true reason why the spell worked so well was because deep down he didn’t really want to kill Nick. But obviously it makes no sense, seeing that immediately after he tries to blame Nick for that and other events and has him chased with a shoot-to-kill order.

There were a few more things in the show that displeased me but what really disappointed me, because it was my favourite character and I felt like they ruined it, was the way the Sean Renard character was handled from season 5 onwards.

However, maybe it’s worth mentioning those other things in passing.

After a certain point, there was something we in Portuguese call baralha e torna a dar (literally, “shuffle and deal again”) which caught several characters.

I understand that plot twisting can be a way to breathe new life into a story but I think in this case there was an exaggeration.

It wasn’t just Renard turning evil. It was also Adalind turning good, Juliette turning bad and then good again as Eve...

Adalind’s evolution had been the opposite. If she initially acted under Renard’s influence, urged on by him, from the moment she loses her powers, she starts acting on her own, allying herself with the Royals, driven by revenge, becoming more and more the villain type. At least, until her child Diana is born. What she did after she was taken from her, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s excusable but it is, at least, understandable, seeing that she does it in the conviction that she would afterwards be allowed to be with her daughter.

As for what happened to Juliette, despite everything, I think it can make more sense, both from the point of view of the character logic and the point of view of interest for the storyline.

Starting with the interest for the storyline, the truth is Juliette wasn’t a particularly interesting or dynamic character. As the perfect little girlfriend of the story’s hero, she was rather one-dimensional, similar to so many others, in so many other TV shows, so she had something to gain with the change.

That wasn’t the case with Renard, who was always a complex, multidimensional and therefore interesting character. (And if it was a matter of needing a new villain now that the Royals had been virtually defeated and they didn’t want to introduce a brand new character, I would have actually preferred they had maintained Juliette evil instead of turning her into Eve).

And when I mention character logic, what I mean is that while Renard, due to his circumstances – being born a half Zauberbiest, the fact that he had to resort to some schemes and, certainly, some less than commendable contacts to escape the Royals – has always lived side by side with Evil, Juliette had a life more sheltered from Evil. Not in the sense of being a victim of Evil, but in the sense of being tempted by Evil.

When you live side by side with Evil, you end up building defences against it. The fact that Renard always struggled between Good and Evil would make it less likely that he would so easily yield to Evil. Juliette’s change makes thus more sense. When she turns into a Hexenbiest, she has no defences against the nature of the creature she has become.

It also doesn’t make a lot of sense, to me, that Nick and Adalind end up as a romantic couple. And it’s not that I think he owes any kind of loyalty to Juliette. Not, certainly, after she got his Mother killed! (Not to mention all the neighbours the Royals annihilated after she gave them their locations).

And it’s also not just because of the things she did to him. It’s also because of the things he did to her. First, he stripped her of her powers and then he helped take her child from her. This latter action, no matter how many good reasons he might have had, no Mother would forgive.

I also don’t feel it makes sense that after all the sacrifices Adalind went through during her first pregnancy, subjecting herself to a gruelling – sometimes even humiliating and degrading – ritual in order to recover her Hexenbiest powers, suddenly, after losing them again temporarily when testing the potion meant for Juliette, she doesn’t want them back.

Another thing that I didn’t really understand was that in the “20 years later scene”, with Kelly and Diana all grown up, Diana says: “Mom and Dad are waiting”. We know they have the same Mother, but not the same Father. And regardless of Renard’s flaws, according to what we saw, Diana was pretty close to her Dad. It’s kind of strange that she refers to her stepdad as “Dad” without us seeing if and how she distanced herself from Renard. Maybe he fell back into his evil ways and she, now older – old enough to understand – rejected him? If so, then there really was no redemption.

The next point is just a detail, but still I’ll add that it was kind of a shame that we never got to see Diana woge.

To finish up, I'll say also that despite these points, it is for the first one I mentioned - Sean Renard's transformation into an evil character from seadon 5 onwards - that for me this will always be a four season show. I'd rather pretend the last two never existed.