An ode to the women of Shadowhunters: Hail and farewell

As Shadowhunters gears up for its series finale, we talked with some of the incredible women who worked on the show throughout the years.

When you sit down for a conversation with Katherine McNamara, it feels only right to wear a shirt that says “Bad*ss Woman.” That’s what Clary Fray is. That’s what Isabelle Lightwood is. That’s what the Seelie Queen, Maryse Lightwood, Maia Roberts, and even Lilith are.

Shadowhunters has thrived on its strong leading ladies from the beginning. Quite literally, these women are all physically strong. Living in the Shadow World involves a lot of combat.

But that strength also comes in large part from their complexity. Each one of these characters has been a hero and a villain at some point during the course of the show.

Maryse was a member of The Circle, yet a highly regarded member of The Clave. The Seelie Queen lives for mischief, but gave Simon the ultimate protection. Maia fights for the good of her pack, but tricked Heidi into killing herself.

Clary’s been a beacon of light since the beginning. Then this season, we met Dark Clary. It was brief but glorious, and she certainly got a lot done, including murdering Seelie Guards and kidnapping the queen. The gray area is, was it truly Clary’s own darkness?

SHADOWHUNTERS – “The Beast Within” – A demon outbreak in New York City on Halloween becomes a top priority at the Institute, but as the Shadowhunters hunt the demons, Jace becomes more worried about Clary. Meanwhile, Alec has to juggle the outbreak with his deep concern about Magnus’ depression. This episode of “Shadowhunters” airs Monday, April 15 (8:00-9:01 p.m. EDT) on Freeform. (Freeform/John Medland)

KATHERINE MCNAMARA

“We talked a lot about [that] in crafting it,” McNamara told me during our interview at Chicago’s Fan Fest. “Is it Jonathan’s will through Clary? Whatever it is, it’s basically Jonathan’s version of Clary.”

Still, Clary tells Jace in “City of Glass” that she was entirely cognizant in the moment.

Then there’s Isabelle. She’s fought for good through all three seasons – but still didn’t turn Raphael in when he raised Heidi. Why? She was grappling with her affection for him.

Affection can drive a person to extremes, like Lilith. Admittedly, “hero” is used very loosely in her case, but her actions were justified depending on the perspective. She was just a mother who wanted her son back.

“I think it just makes for a way better watch for people who are invested and are sometimes questioning the right and wrong,” Anna Hopkins told Culturess last May. “Some people might, at moments, sympathize with Lilith, which is a really troubling type of watch, which makes it a great show, I think.”

Indeed, it’s these moments of back-and-forth that have kept the women of Shadowhunters so real and relatable. And those moments come thanks to the people offscreen. Both Hopkins and McNamara are quick to give all credit back to the writers.

The pen is mightier than the Seraph Blade

In a study done by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film of the 2017-2018 television season, 74 percent of shows considered had no female writers. Shadowhunters made sure to buck that trend, keeping the gender ratio roughly 50/50, according to those inside the writers’ room.

Among those folks is Celeste Vasquez. She’s the writer behind “Salt In The Wound” and “Heavenly Fire” – two of the most emotionally daunting episodes this season.

In “Heavenly Fire” we saw the toxic side of Lilith’s love, forcing Clary to really recognize the tragedy of Jonathan’s story.

“It’s always drawing a fine line with our villains, in terms of humanizing them, making them relatable, but then also acknowledging that they’re still kind of scary and terrible people,” Vasquez says. “But I think it’s important to humanize them.”

To say Vasquez did it successfully would be an understatement. In Jonathan’s breakdown, we weren’t just sympathetic, but actively hurting for him. And, despite her best efforts, so was Clary.

“This is her brother. And she’s hearing the horrible life that he had in comparison to the life that she had with her mom,” Vasquez reasons. “We wanted to see that she was feeling empathy for him, but at the same time, she’s strong, Clary, and she’s there on a mission.”

It’s a balance that Clary has struggled with since learning that the Shadow World existed.

“That’s what I love about Clary,” Vasquez says. “She’s the hero of the show, but she was a human [a few] months ago.”

Vasquez is no stranger to writing relatable young, female characters, as she’s also a writer on Freeform’s The Bold Type. The two shows couldn’t be more different, but there is one similarity.

“I will say, I feel like there’s sort of this banter that happens, the fun between the characters and the relationships that I feel is similar in a way,” Vasquez admits. “Specifically with a character like Simon.”

For Taylor Mallory, another member of the writers’ room, Shadowhunters draws more of a galactic comparison.

“We talked actually a lot about Star Wars: The Last Jedi as a potential comparison,” Mallory reveals when discussing how exactly Clary got sucked in by Jonathan. “[Rey and Kylo Ren] have this special bond, that anyone on the outside of it is like… ‘this guy is so purely awful.’ But that connection allows her to see a side of him that no one else can.”

Once Vasquez set up that sympathetic connection, Mallory used it to unleash Clary’s darkness in the following episode, “The Beast Within.”

All it took was a good hit from a Drevak demon to send Clary through a wall and away from Jace’s side. Without him, her binding rune finally dragged her under.

It’s easy to be discouraged by this moment; I myself was disheartened to think that someone as strong as Clary needed her boyfriend at her side at all times to keep up the fight. Even the writers were wary of that perception, but there was a little more to it.

“It’s not fun to think a woman is completely dependent on a man to save her,” Mallory agrees. But, she clarifies, “I think it’s more the power of love and what Jace represents is sort of keeping her barely clinging to Team Good.”

It was a pivotal moment in the series, and not one Mallory took lightly, nor one she took for granted.

Who runs the Shadow World?

In season one, Mallory mostly contributed Easter eggs for book readers as the writers’ room assistant. These days, as a staff writer, Mallory’s given us entire Easter baskets. According to McNamara, Mallory became the book authority early on in the series and became quite the asset to the team.

“It’s so cool to watch someone who’s read the books and was such a huge fan of them work her way up and get such a cool moment,” McNamara told me.

In addition to Mallory’s hard work, she had some great new showrunners helping to lift her up: Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer.

“Ed and Todd and Darren, they were all really open to hearing women’s’ take on anything,” Mallory recalls. “I felt that any time something came up or was proposed that felt like… it wouldn’t be well received, or I didn’t really like this idea from a girl’s point of view – I could say that, and not feel at all intimidated by the feedback.”

Both Vasquez and Mallory agree that there were open conversations between the male and female writers on how to handle certain aspects of character development, like the closeness between Clary and Isabelle.

“That was a conscious decision in the writers’ room,” Mallory notes. “And I think it was because we had a lot of girls in the room, saying it’s refreshing to see there aren’t really these rivalries between our core girls at all.”

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, even Shadowhunters. But hopefully, dynamics like Clary and Izzy’s don’t. It’s women like them – and Maia, and Maryse, and Aline, and Helen – that we need more of in shows to come.

And it’s writers like Taylor Mallory, Celeste Vasquez, Jamie Gorenberg, Aisha Porter-Christie, and the rest of the women on the show that need to help tell these stories.

So, to the women of Shadowhunters, both real and fictional: Hail and farewell.

Shadowhunters‘ series finale airs on Monday, May 6 at 8 p.m. EST on Freeform.