Grimm season 6 episode 13 review: The End
That's all folks! Grimm comes to an emotional end as Nick and the gang battle the Zerstorer in a final showdown...
This review contains spoilers.
6.13 The End
Well, we’ve come to end of the fairy-tale, folks. The last ever episode of Grimm delivered love, death, redemption and what every good fairy story needs – a happy ending.
Along with the obvious monsters and myths, there are some themes that have always run through the series, such as family, and in particular, strong women. The final episode was no different, and when Nick is in danger of making a very bad decision, it is the women in his life who step in to show him the way, and ultimately ensuring that goods wins out over evil.
It takes a while to get there, though – there is a lot of death to get through first. Throughout the episode, everyone Nick cares about gets killed off by the seemingly unstoppable Zerstorer, or Destroyer. One after another. I’ve read articles where other reviewers think this was a bruising experience for fans, seeing their favourites knocked off one after another. For me, it started to lose its effect in parallel with the rising body count.
Nick is unable to revive Hank and Wu with the magic stick, and that creates a genuine lump-in-the-throat moment when he breaks the news to the gang – particularly playing off Monroe’s heart-breaking reaction. But then, in turn, we see Eve, Renard, Rosalee, Monroe and Trubel all taken down by the Zerstorer’s mighty rod. It’s overkill, if you’ll excuse the pun. You can see the writers are trying to establish Nick as a man that’s lost everything but his son, and is pushed to a point where he will do anything to save him – even if that’s being the guy who pushes the button on the apocalypse itself.
However, all this does for me is make me think that the writers can’t possibly kill off this many characters, and them to stay dead. It lessens the anticipation of what was to come, somewhat.
Saying that, there are some lovely moments, still. The fight scene between Nick and Trubel is a highlight, with the two Grimms really hitting the spit out of each other’s mouths. Also, the return of Nick’s mum, Kelly, and Aunt Marie is a great touch, with the three Grimms banding together to create a formidable triple threat for the Zerstorer. We later learn that Trubel is Nick’s third cousin on his mother’s side, which was entirely fitting and in keeping with a family of women you wouldn’t want to mess with.
One thing that is confusing is Diana turning into a devil child around the Zerstorer. She willingly wants to go with him, even siding with the creature against Renard. There’s no explanation provided, and when Nick ultimately defeats the Destroyer, she’s back to normal, suddenly. Is she under the Zerstorer’s spell, perhaps? Answers on a postcard…
The other talking point must be how everything is resolved, and we get our happy ending. After defeating the Zerstorer, Nick is pulled back through the portal to another dimension – to the point where Nick and Adalind originally returned from ‘the other place’, but this time the Zerstorer hasn’t hitched a lift back through too. In this parallel universe Adalind doesn’t wear the ‘cursed’ engagement ring (they really didn’t know where to go with that, did they?) and no one is dead – hooray! While this is a little like Grimm’s version of ‘…and it was all a dream’, the writers had to find some way to turn things around so the series doesn’t end with a pile of bodies.
The icing on the cake is a fast-forward twenty years to where Kelly and (no longer evil) Diana are now fighting Wesen alongside their parents, complete with a 2037 version of the Airstream! This is a lovely way to wrap things up, and we even discover Monroe and Rosalee’s triplets are part of the Grimm 2.0 gang too! So, there are plenty of options for Grimm: The Next Generation!
Interestingly, the most likely spin-off will be based on Trubel, according to a recent interview with the show’s creators, David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf. “She’ll be off on another adventure,” said Kouf, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for that!
The finale did a good job of tying everything up, and as the final credits rolled, and ‘thank you’ appeared in dozens of languages, acknowledging the support of the fans, you would have to be a monster yourself not feel a little emotional about the end of the journey. The ‘little show that DID’ defied the odds and has become a fixture in our hearts over the past five years. We shall miss it.
Read Christine’s review of the previous episode, Zerstorer Shrugged, here.
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