The Psychology of Nick and Adalind (Or, The Failure of Nick and Juliette, Part Two)
Before I get into part two of this essay, I want to preface it by making sure everyone understands that this character analysis of Adalind and her relationship with Nick is not an effort to apologize for her actions throughout the duration of the series. I am not unaware that the things she did were wrong. She hurt people. She made an innocent woman suffer so badly that her life would never be the same. And she turned Nick’s entire world on its head the moment they set eyes on each other.
This analysis isn’t about trying to get anyone to forgive her. Fans are allowed to have their opinions; to feel the way that they want to feel. I would never hold that against anyone because, honestly, if this had happened in the real world, we all know these characters would likely be in jail or dead.
But Grimm doesn’t take place in the real world. It takes place in a world that looks and feels like ours but exists in an alternate universe of dark fantasy, mythology, and magic. The rules about what is and is not acceptable, what can and cannot be forgiven, are very different from our own moral compasses. For every person that rails against Adalind and adamantly believes that there is no redemption for her no matter how hard she works to earn it, there are others who reason that her child killing multiple people with impunity and attempting to force her parents into intimate acts that they would never have consented to if they were operating under their own free will can be excused due to her immense power and supposed inability to control it because of a ‘lack of emotional maturity.’
I don’t think I have to tell anyone in this fandom that Diana absolutely knew what she was doing. Every. Single. Time. If anything, her level of reasoning and intellect operates on a far higher level than anyone around her and being that she wasn’t even fully grown yet when the show ended, there was no telling how much more powerful she would become or what she would truly be capable of once she reached physical maturity.
Even Juliette supporters have been able to recognize this moral fallacy. The woman literally torched Nick’s legacy, tried to kill him and his friends, and orchestrated the murder of his mother and their neighbors (along with kidnapping a child). I’m not even including her infidelity with Renard and Kenneth (the latter occurring in her and Nick’s own bed) because, by the time Nick stood in front of that messed up bed and put two and two together, he was so emotionally numb that he was well past the point of giving a damn about something so insignificant compared to everything else she’d already done.
My point is that other characters on this show have done terrible wrongs but have been given the opportunity to seek forgiveness from those they’ve hurt and work towards redemption. Yet, for some reason that escapes me, Adalind is raked over the coals for trying to do the same. Why? What makes her so different from everyone else on this show that the idea of her wanting to be a better person, to give her children a normal, peaceful life, and to find some semblance of love and happiness is so anathema to so many people?
If this is strictly about morality, then that excuse just doesn’t fly for a show like this. If this was David Giuntoli’s other show, A Million Little Things, and those characters did the things that the characters in Grimm have done, all of them would’ve been in prison ages ago.
Because that show is set in a fictional but real world. No dark fantasy. No mythological creatures. No magic. And most of all, no moral grey areas (other than what one would expect from a soapy drama).
The cast of Grimm does not live in that world. This is a show where a cop finds himself sometimes having to go around the boundaries of the law, killing violent, murderous wesen because what they are puts them outside the confines of human justice. And I don’t have to remind anyone what Nick is capable of when his family is threatened. In the beginning, Nick had a very black and white view of the world, and it took a good while for him to come to terms with the two different sides of himself: Nick the cop, who valued human life, respected the barriers of the law, and tried to walk the line of what was right and just, and Nick the Grimm, who had come to understand that sometimes, to protect the innocent and the people you love, the line is meaningless when, to survive, you have to do what is necessary.
That Nick would kill without batting an eyelash because, by season five, he had fully come to terms with the fact that sometimes the badge just got in the way of doing what needed to be done.
If Nick didn’t inherently understand this, he wouldn’t have been able to put his contentious history with Adalind aside for the sake of their son. He wouldn’t have been able to let his guard down long enough to truly work at understanding Adalind, forgiving her, and eventually allowing himself to love her. If that were the case, the ensuing custody battle would have been cataclysmic, leaving everyone involved even more vulnerable to Black Claw and anyone else that wanted a piece of them.
The characters of Grimm understand that they do not live in a black and white world. Sometimes they have to do things that most normal people couldn’t possibly conceive of. Most of them have dark pasts and have done things they aren’t proud of. Monroe hunted without restraint for most of his young life until he decided he didn’t want to live like that anymore and wanted to be a better version of himself. Rosalee was a drug addict who admittedly did some less than legal things to support her habit, ran with a violent crowd, and ultimately went to jail for her actions. God only knows how many people Trubel has had to kill just to survive. How positively feral she was when Nick found her. I’m not even going to attempt to lay out the ridiculously long list of things Renard has done. We’re all more than aware of what he’s capable of.
Every one of these people (Juliette included) has done things they regret, from destructive decisions in youth to truly heinous acts, but they’ve also been given the chance to seek forgiveness and redemption through hard work and sacrifice. They’ve allowed themselves to be vulnerable enough to accept the wrongs they’ve done, take responsibility for their actions, and strive to do and be better. By the end, they’ve become the best versions of themselves. They’ve accepted what they used to be, learned from their mistakes, and have managed to forgive themselves while fully earning the forgiveness of those they’ve wronged.
This is the very idea that Grimm is built on – people fighting to be more than their stereotypes. Going beyond society’s expectations and traditions of who and what they should be: a Grimm that doesn’t kill first and ask questions later, and who has earned the trust, support, and friendship of a community that once feared him and his kind. A blutbad who is vegan and does yoga. A fuchsbau who is one of the kindest and most trustworthy people you will ever meet. An eisbeiber who learns how to stand up for himself and be brave for the first time in his life.
A hexenbiest and a Grimm who put their past aside and learned to trust each other, to love eachother, because they wanted to give their children a better life than they had.
Amid all that, there is no reason that Adalind shouldn’t at least be given the chance to earn her own redemption, because if she is constantly vilified but everyone else is forgiven or allowed a pass for their own past actions, it would be bordering on hypocritical.
And so, we come to Adalind Schade. Before I can discuss her tumultuous relationship with Nick, I feel I need to talk about Adalind’s history because how she grew up and was raised, all the experiences of her youth, directly shaped the adult she would become and motivated almost every decision she made before the births of her children. To understand how Adalind became the way she was in the show and why she ultimately decided to change her ways, one must understand who she used to be.
Adalind was born in Portland to Catherine Schade and an unknown father. We have no idea if he was a zauberbiest or even a wesen at all. It’s entirely possible he may have even been a kehrseite, but the only canon details we know about him are the fact that he left when Adalind was four years old, and her mother has blamed her for this dissolution ever since.
Per the double date in season one, Hank reveals that Adalind mentioned to him she lived on a farm in Iowa with her grandparents from when she was four until the age of twelve. It stands to reason that, after her father left, Catherine no longer wanted to deal with her daughter, and as with most hexenbiests, cared more about her own personal desires – namely gaining power. As a result, she left Adalind with her parents in Iowa for an extended period.
How her life went on the farm, I can’t say, as she never spoke of it beyond this mention, but I have to believe it was a mostly positive experience, other than being homeschooled. She seemed to look upon it fondly, and as she describes it to Nick later, her return to her mother ushered in a cold and lonely adolescence devoid of true affection from her only parent. Now, I am assuming here, but seeing as Catherine only came back to collect her when she was twelve years old, and this was when Adalind would have hit puberty, it’s not beyond reason to believe that Catherine only showed interest at this time when her daughter started to come into her powers. Otherwise, she may not have bothered with her at all (considering her reaction when Adalind lost her powers).
I can’t say for sure if Catherine was more loving before Adalind’s father left but considering that she spent her entire childhood being told that she was the reason her father walked out and resented by her mother had to be extremely psychologically damaging to her self-esteem and her entire view of her self-worth.
It can be surmised either that her father was possibly the only person Catherine genuinely loved, or her conception was an unexpected stumbling block preventing them from meeting their mutual goals. Either way, his leaving left her cold, embittered, and emotionally vulnerable enough for the hexenbiest within to assert full control.
She explains that she had to teach herself to cook because Catherine was hardly around, and when she was with her daughter, the focus was completely on her studies (both human schooling and hexenbiest spellwork). She was completely homeschooled and likely kept away from other children, both to avoid the chance of a power bleed in public before she was ready, but moreso because Catherine probably genuinely believed that relationships with normal kehrseite children were just not worth Adalind’s time.
It was Catherine who first taught her that everything in life is built on a series of transactions. Nothing is ever given freely. Everyone and everything has a price, even her mother’s love. Catherine didn’t want a daughter to mother. She wanted a legacy she could mold to achieve her own power-hungry ends, and her affection was contingent solely on Adalind’s usefulness towards Catherine’s own goals. It’s doubtful Adalind had any true, meaningful personal connections at all, other than what her mother deemed appropriate to ensure her rise in notoriety among other hexenbiests and in the heights of wesen society. Doing so would ensure that Adalind would be noticed by the right people – namely, the Royal in Portland.
Adalind seemed to have known Renard for some time by season one, so I will assume she most likely met him when she was a teenager. It would have been the optimal time for Catherine to groom her to attract the prince’s attention. Assuring him of their usefulness towards implementing his agenda would buy them a place next to the throne when he eventually assumed power.
Adalind, however, didn’t want any of this. She didn’t want to be like her mother at all and decided that going to law school was the best way to thumb her nose at Catherine. Adalind had always been a nerd, with her nose firmly stuck in as many books as she could get her hands on. She was exceptional in her studies, and it’s possible that Adalind assumed if she did well and became a cutthroat lawyer, she could earn her mother’s love and acceptance without having to use her magic...or her body to do it. She could be a successful shark without having to allow her hexenbiest to draw blood.
She made the smart decision to get herself hired by a wesen corporate law firm - Berman, Rautbort and Associates. Though Adalind is an exceptional lawyer in her own right, it was obvious that Berman hired her because he had a soft spot for powerful hexenbiests that are good at what they do.
Her desperation for her mother’s love and acceptance ultimately led to her finally acquiescing to what Catherine had drilled into her from childhood - that her entire self-worth was built on her usefulness and therefore, her powers. If the hexenbiest was all that mattered to those whose love she craved, then she would give them exactly what they wanted.
When we first meet Adalind in the Pilot, she’s been working at the firm for some years, and is well-valued and appreciated for her skills. She seems to be well-liked, but again, most of these are working relationships with mutual benefit. She didn’t have what anyone would call real, true friends.
Nick has just come from a jewelry store with an engagement ring in hand for his girlfriend, Juliette. Adalind is across the street, coming out of a coffee shop. He and Hank are joking around, putting their detective skills to the test by making up life stories about passersby after Hank ribs him about finally ‘putting a ring on it.’
To Nick’s chagrin, the striking blonde across the way is Hank’s unwitting choice to test his partner’s abilities. She doesn’t initially notice them, nor does she hear Nick’s remarks because her attention is diverted, but the moment he and Adalind set eyes on each other, the attraction is instantaneous.
His whole world zeroes in on this unknown woman, even though he literally has a newly purchased engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket. Nick seems to be somewhat thrilled that she’s noticed him as she sends a flirty grin his way, which he returns enthusiastically...until her lovely face morphs into that of a ghastly hag right in front of his eyes.
As her countenance shifts back to its natural state, the look of shock in her eyes matches Nick’s own as she skitters away in fear. Nick has no idea if what he’s seeing is even real or if he’s losing his mind, but he’ll soon come to find out that she’s unwittingly ushered him into a world beyond his imagining.
Adalind was his first woge. Nick was her first Grimm.
From then on, they would be constantly drawn to each other, through both the machinations of other, more powerful figures, and their own inexplicable yet undeniable mutual attraction.
Nick having to protect Adalind from the Queen Mellifer and her bees after he recognizes that she was the person who tried to kill his aunt only made their antagonistic chemistry crackle that much more. Their tete-a-tete in the hotel room showed that they were getting a quiet thrill out of seeing how far they could push each other.
A pulling of each other’s pig tails, if you will.
After that, there’s no denying that everything Adalind did in season one, apart from poisoning Juliette, was down to Renard’s influence. Obviously, their relationship progressed as Adalind got older, which is exactly what her mother wanted. Thing is, prior to this, Adalind was perfectly happy with her career as a lawyer and had been living a relatively quiet, uncomplicated life. She wanted to be with Sean, but she had no idea she was going to have to go as far as she did to secure his affection.
Catherine dragged Adalind into Renard’s plans because her mother was in debt, and he promised to wipe her slate clean as well as give them a place at his side once he secured the throne. It was everything Catherine could have ever wanted. But Adalind? Not so much. Everything she did, from trying to kill Aunt Marie to seducing Hank with the ‘love cookies’ was all at Renard’s behest and in hopes of earning his love and her mother’s acceptance.
While it is true that Adalind is a grown, independent woman and could easily have said no to being made a pawn in her mother and Sean’s plans, you must remember that, at this point in her life, Adalind’s personal experiences with her mother, Sean – even her boss – have taught her that all relationships were transactional. No one ever wanted her just for herself. You had to give something in order to get something, and in her case, for every terrible act she committed, she hoped to be rewarded with what she honestly believed was Sean’s love.
I know Adalind’s worst fear was to be rejected, as she’d been subjected to this heartbreak time after time by her mother for most of her youth. There was also a healthy dose of terror at the prospect of being disposed of by Sean if she was no longer useful or killed by Nick if her actions pushed him far enough over the edge. She’d been raised on stories of the decapitare’s vicious hatred for hexenbiests, and I’m sure she was surprised and intrigued with Nick, who she was slowly beginning to see was not your ordinary Grimm.
By the time we get to Love Sick, Adalind is under increasing pressure from Renard to get her hands on the key, so she has to step her seduction of Hank up a notch. At the double date we are treated to a barely concealed smorgasbord of fiery double entendres and heavy-handed double-speak between Nick and Adalind while a blissfully unaware Hank and a painfully dense Juliette just sit there looking on, none the wiser.
Note that this episode takes place right after Juliette rejects Nick’s initial marriage proposal. He’s already on edge because things between them are strained, and he’s really starting to question whether or not she’ll ever agree to marry him if he tells her the truth about being a Grimm. That stress has already made him irritable and less than enthusiastic about being roped into this date, and now he has to deal with this witch woman that he knows is up to something concerning Hank.
During their confrontation by the restrooms, Nick looks like he wants to strangle Adalind almost as much as he wants to wipe the shit-eating grin right off her face...with his whole-ass mouth. Every time he invades her space like that, the heat ratchets up, and his gaze goes straight to her lips. (He does this consistently with her, all the way through to season six.)
Adalind’s toothless threat to scream if he doesn’t let her go comes off like a dare, and the way he looks at her, you can tell Nick’s almost buying into it. His eyes bore into her as if he’s envisioning an entire scenario in his mind where he thinks to himself, ‘the hell with it,’ before shoving her into the bathroom where they either beat the crap out of each other or fuck each other senseless.
When two women pass them on the stairs giving them a concerned once-over, the moment is forcefully wrenched away, but Adalind’s knowing look as she saunters off says everything.
She’s well-aware that she’s got him by the balls (literally and figuratively), and there’s not a damn thing Nick can do about it.
It all comes to a head at Bremen Ruins. For Nick, Hank’s time is running out, and for Adalind, it’s her last chance to get her hands on that key or suffer Renard’s wrath. I don’t think I’d be the first to point out that there were any number of ways that Nick could have gotten his blood into Adalind’s system.
Kissing her was absolutely...a choice.
What made me really reconsider this entire scene was when Nick rolled on top of Adalind and pinned her to the ground. Her woge shifts back to her human face, and her eyes bulge. She lets out a soft mewl of fear and appears to freeze in his hold. It didn’t occur to me years ago when I first watched this episode, but seeing it now, I seriously began to wonder if Adalind had been a victim of sexual assault. Her fearful response to Nick being in such a position of control on top of her was spot on with a person reliving that past experience.
As a powerful hexenbiest with telekinetic abilities, Adalind could have easily thrown Nick off, but she just laid there, frozen to the spot and looking like she was scared to death. Granted, this could be because he’s a Grimm, and she fully believes he’s going to kill her. We may never know, but regardless, it should definitely be food for thought.
The kiss was absolutely a culmination of their simmering attraction to each other throughout their season one arc as much as it was a vehicle for him to get his blood into her. I don’t think Nick had any idea of what stripping Adalind of her powers would truly do to her. How horribly it would crush and destroy her. When she tells him tearfully, ‘you killed me. You’ve taken everything. I’m nothing now,’ the look of unexpected remorse on his face is telling as he stares at her slowly retreating form in utter shock and confusion.
Adalind knew her mother was going to be furious with her for her failure, but regardless, she sought Catherine out for solace and comfort. Instead, not only was she heartbroken to find out that her mother and Renard were sleeping together behind her back, but she also then had her world shattered when Catherine recoiled from her touch upon realizing that Adalind had lost her powers, slapped her across the face, and called her a disappointment, while Renard looked down his nose at her with derision, calling her ‘useless.’
Adalind had lost everything – her powers, which were her entire identity, her only family, as her mother had for all intents disowned her and thrown her out of the house, and the man she thought loved her but who she now realized had only been using her.
The revenge she sought against Nick didn’t exactly come as a surprise, especially as she had to do something to prove her worth to the royals, or they would never have given her even a second’s consideration as a powerless hexenbiest. She needed protection and a way to get her powers back while Prince Eric needed the key, so accepting his job offer was a no-brainer.
Making Nick suffer at Juliette’s expense was the perfect kind of vengeance for Adalind after what he’d taken from her. She’d lost more than he could’ve possibly conceived and making him lose the woman he loved was a more than just punishment in her mind.
She probably figured that, as a Grimm and with many wesen contacts, Nick would likely find a way to save Juliette’s life, but not before her memories of him vanished.
What better way to make him pay than to do just enough damage to sever their relationship forever?
This type of back-and-forth tennis match of mutual destruction becomes the constant throughline of Nick and Adalind’s relationship. From here on out, whatever she does against him is almost always in response to something he has done to her first.
Seasons two and three focus on Adalind’s quest to get her powers back, protect her baby, and stay one step ahead of the royals when she realizes she may have gotten in over her head with Prince Victor and the Verrat.
When Adalind returns in Season of the Hexnebiest, Nick’s relationship with Juliette is non-existent and he is one uncomfortable conversation away from losing his shit. His righteous anger at and suspicion of Adalind’s motives is totally justified, but at the same time, his paranoia is amplified to one thousand percent because he knows exactly what she’s capable of and has been living with the consequences of underestimating her for months.
He can’t rightly deal with his frustration by confronting Juliette about her infidelity because he knows what’s happening isn’t entirely her fault, though Monroe is clear that Juliette and Renard know exactly what they’re doing, they just can’t control their actions or their obsessive attraction to each other because of the side effects of the awakening kiss.
As a result, the only outlet for the quiet rage he’s feeling over his caving personal life and Hank’s brutal assault is the person who he knows is the most to blame and is conveniently within arm’s reach: Adalind.
He knows she sent the Verrat to beat up Hank. He knows Renard is tangled up in the entire thing somehow, but he’s still lacking one last pivotal piece of information (namely, the identity of the Portland royal) to put the puzzle together and get to the truth.
There’s one other thing Nick has managed to ferret out that Adalind doesn’t realize she’s inadvertently given away. He’s learned a great deal since their last encounter, and he’s come to understand quite well exactly how she operates. Nick knows damn well she allowed him to arrest her, and it wasn’t just to make him look bad in front of Juliette.
It was an act of pure self-preservation.
A four-on-one all-out assault against him by the Verrat that he barely escaped from with his life can only mean that the royals have run out of patience and want that key, and they longer care what they have to do or who they have to kill to get it. It's no great leap of logic on Nick’s part to surmise that if Adalind returned to Vienna empty handed, it would be her head next on the chopping block.
Getting arrested at least kept her off their radar for a while and bought her some time to come up with a new plan. And that’s when she tried to seduce a deal out of Nick from her jail cell: the key in exchange for the Portland royal’s identity. This wasn’t about lust. It was about survival, and both Nick and Adalind knew it.
She knew he was in a vulnerable state because of what was going on with Juliette. Mining that by playing on their unspoken but well-understood attraction for each other should have been easy as pie, right?
Well...she did get him to bend...slightly. That look they shared between the bars was anything but subtle. When she mentioned the fun they could’ve had together, once again, you could feel the moment stretch slowly, his heated gaze trailing over the curves of her body as dark fantasies played out in the back of his mind.
Nick walked away without a backward glance, but they both had claimed a victory in that battle of wills. Nick proved that he wouldn’t be swayed by her tricks, and Adalind got her first real glimpse of something completely anathema to her – a good and decent man.
But a man, nonetheless. Nick may not have fallen for her wiles, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was sorely tempted.
She didn’t expect to be let out of jail so quickly, and with nothing to show the royals for her efforts, Sean was really her last option for protection. Adalind had to bring the royals something significant other than the key that they would have an interest in, which would not only keep her alive but ensure that they would help her get her powers back. Taking advantage of a sexually frustrated and desperate Renard to put her plan in motion was just a pleasurable little bonus.
We don’t see Adalind in Portland again until season three, just days after she’s given birth to her baby. During that time, she was enduring the painful contaminatio ritualis, and in her mind, the child was nothing more than a bargaining chip to get her powers back. She never saw it as a person or herself as a mother, not until she could actually feel the baby moving within her.
For the first time, she found herself beginning to see this baby as her child, this innocent little life that she loved unconditionally and who would love her unconditionally in return. Once Victor took Eric’s place after his...untimely death, Adalind quickly realized that her wiles were not going to work on him the way they worked on his cousin.
Victor’s only concern was the baby.
It didn’t take long for her to come to the conclusion that she was living on borrowed time.
Up to this point, the reality of becoming a mother had not fully settled in for Adalind until the moment she held her daughter in her arms for the first time.
Adalind had never known real, unconditional love for her entire life. She may have finally gotten her powers back, but that wasn’t even important to her anymore. All that mattered to her after this point was doing whatever was necessary to keep her baby safe.
From this moment on, there is no doubt that Adalind had absolutely changed – although the change would not be fully complete until the birth of her son. She was not the same person she once was. She had found something that meant more to her than power and prestige – real love. Motherhood is a powerful thing, and any mother will tell you that when you have a baby, your entire world changes.
When she finally makes it to Portland with Kelly’s help, Adalind is scared, exhausted, and unsure of who she can really trust. Once she realizes that Mama Burkhardt has brought her to Nick for protection, she can’t really be blamed for her scathing reaction. The last time she and Nick had crossed paths, he had wanted to rip her to pieces for what she did to Juliette.
And Juliette’s response to her arrival showed that she would sooner scratch Adalind’s eyes out than give her even a shred of help.
Nick hadn’t been in the mood to deal with her either, seeing as her arrival had sidelined his second proposal attempt (seeing as he and Juliette were in a slightly more solidified but still somewhat tenuous place after all their earlier relationship drama.)
Still, he could see that Adalind’s need for protection, as well as her love for her child, was genuine. As I mentioned in part one, Juliette could’ve taken a step back from this entire situation. No one would have faulted her, all things considered. If anything, keeping her out of it would’ve protected her from the fallout and shielded her from the...not entirely legal steps they were going to have to take to get Diana to safety.
Instead, she chose to do what she could for an innocent child. While admirable, her cold animosity toward Adalind made a bad situation worse. She was already mentally and emotionally spent and just needed a moment to breathe. Although her help was appreciated, Juliette’s icy reception only exacerbated Adalind’s fear and distrust even more.
Adalind’s grandstanding in front of Nick at Renard’s apartment (wogeing with smug satisfaction to show that her hexenbiest was back), was nothing more than a feeble attempt on her part to show him that she still had some semblance of power and control when it was obvious she feared for her and her daughter’s lives.
Nick saw right through her weak facade.
Later, at Monroe and Rosalee’s, it’s plain to see that the couple doesn’t know what to make of this frightened, highly vulnerable version of a woman they’d previously known to be devious, manipulative, and deadly. They don’t really know how to act around her, but they try their best to make Adalind comfortable. Unfortunately, this only serves to make her feel more uncomfortable and isolated.
At the precinct, when Adalind realizes she’s been deceived, the terror in her eyes as she goes running down the halls desperately trying to find her daughter is some of the best acting in the entire series. Claire Coffee’s portrayal of Adalind’s profound grief in the parking lot as she blows out the police car windows with the force of it, is guttural and utterly believable.
And here’s where Nick and the scooby gang become complete and total hypocrites.
When Adalind went to Nick and Juliette, as well as Monroe and Rosalee, she was a mother who desperately wanted her child back and literally threw herself on her sword begging these people for help. These people who she knew hated her and would rather see her dead.
This is when they could have done the right thing. They could have sat Adalind down and explained their plan. Yes, she would’ve been pissed off that they went behind her back, but if they stressed that Diana needed to be off grid in order to keep her safe from the royals and the resistance, and as a mother who wanted what was best for her child, I honestly believe that, once she was able to calm down, she would have backed off and gone along with the plan for Diana’s sake.
They may have even been able to find a way for her to keep in contact with Kelly that was safe and secure. Hell, they could’ve sent Adalind with Kelly and Diana to somewhere far away where she could have started a new life with her child.
Instead, they lied to her outright. They may as well have spit in her face.
Turned away by everyone, Adalind’s grief quickly morphs into a cold, seething rage. She becomes determined to get her daughter back at any cost. The irony is, the scooby gang had done their job a little too well in making her believe that the royals had her baby. It was their hubris that ultimately forced Adalind to choose the one remaining option she had left – Prince Victor.
She throws herself on his mercy and begs for her child back. It can arguably be said that this is for sure Adalind’s lowest point. Victor, realizing that Adalind doesn’t know they don’t have the child, capitalizes on her desperation and manipulates her into a deal that will change her life forever.
He promises to let Adalind see her baby if she strips Nick of his powers.
Nick losing his abilities takes him off the playing field, strikes a major blow to Renard, and rids them of an annoying Grimm who’s become a nuisance they can’t control. Knowing that Adalind has Nick’s blood in her makes her the perfect pawn.
Victor gets a powerful hexenbiest at his disposal, while Adalind gets to make Nick and his friends pay for taking her child from her.
And now we come to the crux of it all. The act that many claim is the point of no return for Adalind. I’m not going to try to tell you that there was nothing wrong with what she did. Because I know that what Adalind did was wrong. She knows that what she did was wrong.
Some people call into question why Nick didn’t realize sooner that it wasn’t Juliette he was with. Some believe that her forwardness and they very idea that she was up for an ‘afternoon delight’ in the middle of such a busy day (Monroe and Rosalee’s wedding) should have clued him in that this was not how Juliette would act.
They wonder, how could he not know? Even Juliette herself couldn’t understand how he could have been so fooled.
Don’t forget that Nick is not just a Grimm. He’s also a man. A man who is trying to keep a relationship together that, despite all outward appearances, is still in a very tenuous place. If someone that he believed was his girlfriend – the woman he loves – practically throws herself at him in the middle of the day while wearing a sexy negligee...do you really think he’d be dumb enough to turn her down?
Hell, no. He'd be thanking his lucky stars.
To those that think he did suspect something was off but just went along with it so as not to rock the boat? I highly doubt it. Hot-blooded male with sex on the brain and a horny girlfriend ain’t looking a gift horse in the mouth, let me tell you. Trust me, this ain’t that deep, folks.
Yes, it happened. No, there is no excuse. I can give you a list of reasons why Adalind did it. She was blatantly manipulated by Victor while not in a mentally and emotionally sound place (probably her lowest point in the series, honestly) after having her child literally stolen from her. She believed it was her only recourse to get her daughter back (again, not thinking clearly). And most of all, she wanted Nick to feel her pain.
To suffer as she was suffering.
Taking her vengeance out on Renard would have been pointless. His betrayal was expected. But Nick’s wasn’t. She may not have liked or trusted him, but Adalind did know one thing to be true. Nick Burkhardt was a good man. A man with a heart and a conscience. She’d seen that with her own eyes, so for him to betray his own morals, take her baby, and lie to her face was reason enough for her to make him pay.
In the end, though, none of that makes what she did in any way right.
Even as desperate for her child as she was, Adalind still made a choice. And it’s something I think she knows she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life.
And I want you all to take one important thing into consideration. Prior to this, none of the gang had children of their own. They couldn’t truly know what Adalind was going through or how much pain she was in. They simply deemed her a terribly unsuitable mother, which I suppose, in their minds, was a sound judgement based on her past actions.
When Kelly was taken by Black Claw in season five, Nick’s moral compass wasn’t nearly so straightforward. This was a man who would stop at nothing to get his child back. Even kill if he had to. I think that was why Nick was able to set the past aside and forgive Adalind so easily. When he held his son in his arms for the first time, he understood.
He understood why Adalind had done what she’d done. That didn’t mean he believed it was right. It meant he knew that he couldn’t keep holding it against her anymore without acknowledging his own part to play in the whole mess. And he couldn’t judge her without now judging himself because his love for Kelly was just as unwavering as his unspoken conviction that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep him safe, even if it meant darkening his own soul.
Adalind suppressing her powers to help Juliette, someone who at the time venomous hated her and was actively trying to kill her and her unborn baby, did not go unnoticed by Nick, as well. Before they even had their conversation in the hospital about putting the past behind them for Kelly’s sake, it was obvious in the way he comforted her at Bud’s place after the clusterfuck with Juliette at the spice shop that Nick had already let most of his animosity toward her go.
She was afraid he was going to hurt her, but he assured her that he wasn’t and that it wasn’t her fault the plan didn’t work out. At that point, Juliette was just too far gone and didn’t want to be saved.
His first instinct, though he was looking right at the evidence of his girlfriend’s indiscretions in his own bed, was that Adalind would know what was going on with Renard. In some small way, he was already starting to trust her, and the knowledge she gave them about his spirit possession and how to end it (as well as helping them to get Kenneth arrested) went a long way towards starting to convince him that she really was serious about wanting to change and be a better person.
(Note: There’s actually a deleted scene with Adalind in season four at Bud’s house where she asks if it’s possible for someone like her to change, so her personality starting at the end of season four and going into season five suggests that she had finally found the strength within herself to be the person she’d always truly wanted to be without her mother’s oppression and manipulation.)
At the beginning of season five, the awkwardness between Nick and Adalind makes sense and is actually kind of endearing. Here are these two people who, not so long ago, were making each other’s lives a living hell. Their world has been burned to the ground, they’ve lost everything, and now they have to make something out of the ashes of what little they have left by figuring out how to live together and be co-parents to a newborn while unsure if they can even fully trust each other.
They tiptoe around each other, scrutinizing each other’s every word and move for the slightest instance of subterfuge or ulterior motives.
I think the sandwich making scene, as they clumsily natter on about the few dishes they’re good at cooking, is the first instance of these two having a real, actual conversation about...well...anything.
They are no longer two enemies bent on mutual destruction, but two people finally taking a breath and sitting still long enough to actually get to know each other.
When Nick gets called away by Hank, he pauses at the front door, waiting for Adalind to say something. To ask where he’s going or when he’ll be back. This is something he was used to doing with Juliette because he knew that she needed that kind of reassurance. It’s easy to assume that he’s wondering if Adalind will want or need the same.
When they look at each other for a long moment, you can tell by the slight bulge of her eyes that Adalind is nervously going over in her mind what the right response should be and second-guessing every single possibility because she doesn’t want to say something wrong and make an already tense situation worse.
When she tells him not to worry, that they’ll be okay, and she won’t ask him when he’ll be home, (both in this scene and in the next episode when they first move into the loft, and he has to leave again), you can see the tension in him visibly seep away as his whole body relaxes.
For Nick, it’s pure, unadulterated relief.
He can see that Adalind is not Juliette. She doesn’t need to be handled with kid’s gloves. She knows his world better than he does – was born into it -- and doesn’t need to be coddled.
After everything that happened with Juliette, this is exactly what Nick desperately needs – someone who won’t ask more from him in the moment than he’s willing to give.
He’s just not emotionally ready to let her in any further than that, and she’s not about to risk rocking a very tenuous boat.
Asking him to share the bed with her is unexpected but, for Adalind, makes a weird kind of sense. The loft is a new and unfamiliar place that both of them don’t feel entirely comfortable in yet.
Its creepy echoes leave Adalind unsettled after having just come from the comfort of a quiet and cozy house. And for Nick, unceasing paranoia has made it almost impossible for him to settle.
She wants his warmth and comfort but doesn’t feel comfortable asking for it, so she couches it in the need for safety and is so nervous to even broach this with him that she backtracks before Nick is able to get a word in edgewise.
He agrees, quipping, ‘sure, why not? It’s not like things can get any weirder.’ This is Nick’s way of trying to make light of an insanely awkward situation. Remember, the last time these two shared a bed, she had deceived him into believing her to be someone else.
He knows he shouldn’t be alright with this. He damn sure shouldn’t get any comfort from it, but keeping to their own sides in the bed with some imaginary wall between them isn’t really helping. This is something that they both knew they desperately needed, and the fact that they never even thought of sleeping apart again after this speaks volumes about how much they’ve already come to emotionally depend on each other.
Taking care of a newborn isn’t easy, and sometimes they get overwhelmed, but they somehow develop a system that works for them, leaning on each other to get themselves through each passing day. They try to focus on the little things: an easy conversation over a nice dinner, a comforting hug after a long and trying day, and looking on quietly while Adalind sings softly as she rocks their son in her arms.
For Nick, Adalind becomes his port in an ever-worsening storm and the lone, steady presence in his increasingly chaotic life that he finds himself looking forward to coming home to every night. She doesn’t force him to talk if he doesn’t want to, but allows him to come to her when he feels like he’s able.
She understands when he comes and goes at odd hours, and when Trubel drops on their doorstep out of the blue needing to be hidden from Black Claw, she doesn’t even hesitate to prepare the guest bed for her arrival. The next day, she assures Trubel that she’s safe with them and makes sure she has enough to eat, which eases the tension considerably before Nick starts barraging her with questions.
These little domestic moments help them to learn each other organically and without pressure. Adalind finally begins to accept that Nick isn’t just taking care of her for Kelly’s sake. He's by her side because he wants to be. Because, despite the rockiness of their past, she means something to him. She matters.
This is something Adalind is wildly unfamiliar with-acceptance without negotiation. Care without conditions. For someone who had never known real love for most of her life, it’s unsurprising that Adalind wound up falling so deeply in love with Nick so quickly.
He was the first person who ever truly gave a damn about her for her, and without expecting something in return. She didn’t have to be anything other than herself for him, and doing so helped her find the true core of herself.
The real Adalind that her mother made her believe didn’t matter to anyone.
And in her, Nick had found someone who didn’t fear his world or the man he had to become to live in it.
She accepted and cherished every part of him, the cop and the Grimm.
They weren’t two people clinging to the idea of love but unable to move forward.
They weren’t pushing against each other trying to reconcile their own diametrically opposed visions of the future.
Nick and Adalind worked because they had found in each other what they had always needed – a true partner.
It was crucial that they both had come to the realization that they at least wanted to explore the possibility of something more by the time Ju-Eve made her bombastic arrival.
Adalind was under no illusions about Nick’s complicated feelings for Juliette. She also had no expectations, despite their burgeoning feelings and emotional reliance on each other, that he would want anything more to do with her if his ex-girlfriend re-entered his life wanting him back.
Nick’s reassurance that his feelings about her and Kelly had not changed with Juliette’s reappearance – that he was choosing them – not only did everything to ease Adalind’s worry but gave her the courage to put her heart at risk and make a bold move that could easily have blown up in her face.
The kiss at the table is something of a reframing of the kiss from season one. That initial kiss wasn’t about intimacy. It was about equal parts necessity and lust. This time, they’re not trying to hurt each other, save someone’s life, or put out a raging fire within.
This time they aren’t kissing each other because they have to.
They’re kissing each other because they want to.
Many have said that this relationship only came about because of some kind of latent Stockholm Syndrome, owing to the fact that they’ve been living together, sharing a bed, and raising a child, (both Trubel and Monroe make a point of this at different times when asking about Adalind and Nick’s feelings for each other. Trubel clocks onto this almost immediately, wondering how no one else seems to realize how obvious they both are, whereas Monroe is more cautious about bringing it up, unsure if what he’s picking up on is truly genuine.) but the very fact that they both mutually decide not to rush into anything until they can be sure it’s something they both truly want and for the right reasons, leaves no doubt.
What Nick and Adalind are feeling for each other is very real.
They’re taking it slow because she doesn’t want to be the rebound or risk a terrible rejection, and he doesn’t want to ruin something this important to him by making the same mistakes as before. (Cue the unabashed heart eyes every time Adalind walks into a room, says something nerdy that turns him on like crazy, or you know, breathes in his general direction.)
Unfortunately, their lives are never boring, and the recovery of a chest of ancient Grimm books and three more keys, and the ensuing unplanned trip to Germany, puts paid to any further ideas about waiting for the right time.
Neither of them knows how this crusade will end or if Nick will even come home at all. The danger in doing this is monumental, and Adalind is so worried that she actually tries to convince him to let it go. That no stupid treasure is worth the risk.
But his Aunt Marie died getting that key to Nick. Nearly at Adalind’s own hand. Keeping him from going now would make Marie’s death a needless, worthless sacrifice. The woman who raised the man she now loves deserved better than to become a forgotten afterthought.
But she’s not going to let him go without making sure he knows how she feels.
Again, Adalind initiates the intimacy, stressing that she knows it’s probably not a good idea for them to take this step, but she’s not going to send Nick away to an unknown fate without him knowing that he’s taking her heart with him.
She’s putting her heart in his hands, the look of warmth and heat in Nick’s gaze showing her what he’s not yet ready to say in words – that he loves her too, and he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Adalind getting her powers back while Nick is gone starts a chain reaction that I really wish the writers had dealt with in a better way. When the scoobies are discussing what to do with the stick, they ask Nick if he’s going to tell Adalind about what they found.
While I understand Nick not wanting to make too many assumptions about what the stick is capable of, (because none of them knows what it’s true purpose is at this point) I don’t agree with his reasoning.
He says that he’s just going to tell her that they didn’t find anything at all, which is a blatant lie. He makes the excuse that, because they’re still unsure of the exact nature of Renard’s mayoral/royal ambitions and how deeply Black Claw may have their hooks in him, her connection to him through Diana makes it unwise and dangerous for her to know too much, especially when they’re unsure of what the hell the stick even is.
Nick’s resolute tone, however, comes off as though this decision is rooted in a place of doubt and uncertainty about her. It’s as if he’s unsure whether or not Adalind can be trusted with this knowledge, even though he was very clear with Monroe while they were in Germany (and even before at the dinner party) that he was in awe of how much Adalind had changed.
This is something about the scoobies that I’d found to be exceedingly irksome and borderline hypocritical going all the way back to the end of season four.
Apart from Hank, Nick, and tangentially, Wu, (though he had no one to blame but himself for stealing the cookie when he was explicitly told by Hank that they couldn’t be shared), who have absolutely legitimate reasons to distrust Adalind and be suspicious of her motives, Adalind had never actually done anything to directly hurt the other members of the group.
Their reticence to give her the benefit of the doubt or even truly acknowledge all of her hard work and how far she’s come in her commitment to change is mind-numbing. Rosalee made some good inroads toward friendship in the beginning by spending time with Adalind, helping her with Kelly, and giving her a – mostly- nonjudgemental ear when she needed someone to talk to.
But after Adalind got her powers back, she immediately started pulling away, consistently reminding her that it was important that she not wait too long to tell Nick the truth. When Rosalee finally comes clean to Nick in Inugami, it feels like a total heel turn because she couches it under the guise of concern over Adalind’s trustworthiness - ‘well, I told her to tell you, but she still hasn’t. If she’s not going to be honest with you, I feel like I have no other choice.’
She at least had the decency to admit that Adalind’s reasons are rooted in her fear of his reaction, (specifically because of what happened with Juliette), although her stressing that Adalind had to be the one to tell him or their relationship would suffer makes you feel like she thinks Adalind might be slipping back into her old ways.
And here is what pisses me off the most: Adalind is the one who has been bending over backwards to do all the hard work towards changing her life for the better and making amends for her past mistakes. She’s so damn contrite around the scoobies, it’s almost like she’s afraid if she says or does the wrong thing, they’ll cast her out, Nick will take her child from her, and she’ll lose them both forever.
Why is it that she has to be the one to initiate the important discussions? Why does she have to be the only one who does the work? She makes all the apologies, She bends over backwards to be as helpful and accommodating as possible whenever they need her.
The dinner party was a great way for them to let off some steam and bond, but it was obvious in the deleted scene that Adalind was extremely nervous about not offending anyone. The courage it took to stand in front of Nick and his friends, to let these people see her at her most vulnerable as she owned up to her faults, took responsibility for her actions, and thanked them for allowing her to prove herself?
While they return the favor in a series of lukewarm half-measures?
Not a single one of them ever bothered to apologize to Adalind for the part they played in taking Diana away from her other than Rosalee with her half-hearted, ‘I don’t feel good about what we did.’
Nick, at least, managed to look properly chastised in the captain’s office when she curtly reminded him that the only reason that she did what she did was because he took her child from her.
If I’m honest, I wonder if Nick is as emotionally conflicted about Adalind as the gang thinks he is, especially after they come back from Germany. Them constantly calling Adalind’s trustworthiness into question and immediately assuming she’ll change to back to what she was now that she’s regained her powers is what eggs him on and seems to make him second guess himself.
Look...I understand that Adalind has a lot to make up for. Even she knows that. But to make her feel like the entire future of her relationship with Nick hinges on being honest about her hexenbiest being back, while he is free to be blatantly dishonest about the stick, keeping the truth about its existence to himself until circumstances give him no choice but to tell her?
How is that in any way right?
Adalind agonizes over the course of several episodes about keeping the truth about her powers from Nick, and this isn’t even the only worry she had to deal with.
Renard manipulating her emotions by insinuating that Nick might not be too happy to learn she’s getting her powers back (because that didn’t end so well the last time, remember?) while dangling their daughter in front of her like a carrot on a stick is just nauseating.
I will say that I thought the writers teasing this reveal over time was the right approach to showcase Adalind’s fear and anxiety. She didn’t yet have the courage to tell Nick outright, so she worked at solidifying trust by not only asking for his help to look for Diana, but also by being honest about other things that were just as important: asking him if she could take Kelly to work with her and confessing what Renard had told her about Diana being with the resistance.
All of this was Adalind‘s way of showing Nick that she really was trying. That she wanted them to be able to trust each other.
By Taming of the Wu, the pressure on her has become so great that Adalind knows she can no longer keep the truth from him. Things are certain to come to a head sooner rather than later, and she can’t bear the idea of him not knowing and still distrusting her before she may find herself having to walk away from him forever.
The whole reveal winds up being rather anticlimactic, and it’s not because Nick already knows Adalind has her powers back. At this point, he’s so deeply in love with her that he genuinely doesn’t care that she’s a hexenbiest again because the very idea of hurting her is almost anathema to him now.
Nick’s not angry that Adalind has her powers back. He’s disappointed that, after everything they’ve endured together, she still fears him enough that she doesn’t feel like she can come to him and trust him with her burdens.
The comfort of his arms around her, and the reassurance that they’re both in this together doesn’t necessarily solve all their problems or make their world right again, but it does show them that they can depend on each other while also solidifying a new level of trust between them that they were struggling to attain.
The timing of this is critical when you know what happens next – Adalind taking Kelly and going to Renard.
If she and Nick hadn’t had this come to Jesus moment right before the shit hit the fan, it’s possible their relationship might not have withstood what looked to everyone else like a flat-out betrayal.
But Nick knows Adalind now. Far better than he ever did before.
He knows her heart and believes in her love for him, and he doesn’t doubt for a second that she made the only decision she could to protect him and her children.
Nick’s venomous anger when he sees Renard gloating on stage at the victory party while Adalind and their son are forced to stand at his side and play happy family is palpable and very real.
You can feel the intense weight of it when he storms into Renard’s office with cold fury in his eyes, ready to tear Sean limb from limb. They’ve taken the woman he loves and his child from him. This is a man who is ready to burn it all to the ground, consequences be damned.
It’s almost a full circle moment for Nick and Adalind’s relationship, before their well-deserved and highly anticipated reunion in Fugitive.
When they met, they were bitter enemies who were constantly working against each other and did nothing but cause each other pain. There were moments that Nick would’ve liked nothing more than to see Adalind dead and vice versa.
By the end of season five, Nick’s need for Adalind is so great and his love is so visceral that he’s ready to kill for her without a second thought.
He’s absolutely lost without her, falling into a downward emotional spiral so profound that he slips into survival mode, his only focus being to destroy those that have taken his family away from him.
Adalind isn’t living any better than he is. She’s merely existing from one moment to the next, constantly in fear of Bonaparte and hating Renard with every fiber of her being. The only thing that keeps her from falling into abject misery is her desperate need to protect her children and her hope that Nick will save them from their living hell.
Their overwhelming relief at seeing each other again is a reaffirmation of their love and the strength of their bond that is one hundred percent earned.
Nick seeking Adalind’s guidance with the trust me knot, his grin of satisfaction and unabashed bragging that she agreed to help him but turned Renard down, him seemingly acting like going to Eve to do the twinning curse because Adalind couldn’t at the time was some kind of betrayal, (and let’s not forget his ‘that’s my girl’ moment of unabashed glee when needling Tony in the interrogation room about getting his manhood and fingers crushed by his little hexenbiest) and his aggressive insistence during his ‘negotiations’ with Sean that Adalind is to come home with him – all these things drive home what we’ve known for a while.
This is no longer a relationship of need and convenience. It hadn’t been for a long, long time.
As Rosalee once described her and Monroe’s new status after getting married: they’re not just Nick and Adalind anymore.
They’re Nick and Adalind.
Blind Love is an episode that, for Adalind, had been a long time coming. After all her hard work and sacrifice, Adalind has finally found the love and acceptance she has searched for her entire life in the man she loves, her children, and her chosen family.
When the Amor de Infierno is broken, the first thing Nick and Adalind do is run into each other’s arms because they’re mortified that they were chasing after and in love with anyone other than each other.
When we get to the series finale, there is no longer a question of what these two mean to each other. They are a solid, unbreakable unit who know each other inside and out.
There are no longer issues of trust or doubts of feelings. They actively seek out and lean on each other without hesitation and love each other without reservation or condition.
They are no longer two adults sharing a space for the sake of a child.
The irony here is that it’s Juliette in the end who ultimately gives her blessing to their relationship. In the Other Place, she tells Nick that he doesn’t need to feel guilty anymore. That it’s okay to let her go. She’s happy with who she is, comfortable in her own skin, and has an inner strength and purpose she never had before. Being in a relationship holds no importance for her, but she knows he loves Adalind and wants to be able to be with her without holding on to old regrets.
That lingering guilt is the only reason Nick hadn’t yet told Adalind that he loved her. Because telling her would mean that he no longer feels obligated to Juliette and what they had.
Her absolving him finally gives him the permission within himself that he needed to fully move on with the woman he loves and wants to spend the rest of his life with.
This is a place that Nick could never have found with Juliette because she was never going to want this life with him.
His vision of the future changed around him to fit his new life. She was still holding onto a safe, rose-colored version of it that simply didn’t exist anymore.
Again, as Midnight Jen had Nick put it in Necessary Sins:
“My life scares the hell out of you Juliette, but Adalind embraces it, and I love her for it.”
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