“It is not light that we need,
But fire.”

 If there was ever a case of a show hitting the ground running, wow, the Grimm season five premiere does that and so much more, barely giving the characters and TV goers alike, not much room the breathe.

Nick holds Juliette for the last time…moments before all hell breaks loose.

The whirlwind begins seconds after last year’s finale and Juliette dying in Nick’s arms. The heartbroken Grimm sheds maybe a half dozen tears before men dressed head to toe in black storm into the house, drug him and abduct Trubel. After dreaming of Juliette’s funeral and his mother’s boxed head, Nick awakes the next morning and does the rounds, briefing both Hank and Monrosalee on the events of the previous night. Everyone is understandably shell-shocked and Hank tries to get his partner to slow down but Nick sets his sights on the one clue, based on a comment by Trubel, he has—Special Agent Chavez. He tells the others “find out everything you can about Chavez” and he confronts the FBI agent in her office. It doesn’t go well for Nick and he’s thrown out of her office and threatened with arrest.

Back at the station, Renard is wrapping up the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case when Hank and Wu fill him in on the last few hours. Soon after he gets word on three of Nick’s neighbors’ bodies being found, Chavez calls to warn him on Nick’s behavior. The captain brings his prized detective in and warns Nick that if he confronts Chavez again, suspension will be the least of his concerns. Of course, does anyone expect this grimm to let it go so easily?

While the whole gang is still having trouble believing the whirlwind of news, Nick eventually finds Chavez’s address. As he combs through the house prior to paying her a visit, for the first time he feels the weight of Juliette’s death and for but a second, the grief is crushing. But he redirects the shroud of despair and refocuses on the task at hand.

As Nick and the others search for more information on her, we follow Chavez as she has an exchange in an underground bunker with Meisner, a key cog in the Resistance. “We’re playing with fire,” she tells him after observing an incarcerated individual and his cryptic response “we’re going to need fire” hints at a much bigger problem on the horizon.

In case you thought things were a little slow, they pick up even more after Nick pulls his own abduction, taking Chavez to Monrosalee’s shop and interrogating her on Trubel’s location. She’s pretty cool under the fire and despite the very real threats tells Nick that there’s too much at stake for her to be worrying about her life. And then Bud calls—Adalind’s going into labor. Nick leaves the gang in charge of questioning Chavez while he and Rosalee head to the hospital for the birth of his son. One would almost say it’s impossible for things to get any crazier—but you know it does.

First, there’s an issue with the delivery when the doctors lose the baby’s heartbeat and Adalind is taken back for an emergency C-section. Nick can’t even process this news because Hank calls and puts Chavez on the line. “This is your one chance to get answers,” she tells him. “You come with me, alone, and we leave in 20 minutes. After that, it’ll be too late.”

Nick and Adalind are parents. Together.

Nick knows this is his only recourse if he wants to find Trubel so he follows Chavez to an abandoned factory wh ere the people they were supposed to be meeting have already beenbutchered. And then the unlikely duo is attacked by several Wesen. They’re able to kill or drive the group off but not before Chavez is mortally wounded. Before she dies, Chavez warns Nick of what’s coming. “The Uprising,” she mutters, “it’s war.” She hands Nick Trubel’s pawn and dies. Seconds later, her phone rings and Nick answers. Though he doesn’t recognize Meisner on the other line, the latter tells Nick to hang on to the phone.

The capstone of this whirlwind episode is Nick back at the hospital with Adalind and his new son. Despite the bad blood between the two, Adalind asks Nick not to hate her, for the baby’s sake. He agrees and promises to bet there for the both of them. This tentative bond is strengthened when Adalind name’s the newborn—Kelly, in memory of Nick’s mother.

The Grimmtastic

  • You will be hard-pressed to find an hour of television where a character gets as much thrown at him as Nick does in the season five Grimm premiere. It’s still surreal to think Juliette’s dead and not coming back. How is Nick—when he actually gives himself time to process it all—going to deal with the love of his life no longer in the land of the living? And more importantly, at least for now…
  • Nick’s a papa Grimm! With a hexenbiest, no less. It’s only a matter of time before some baddies set their sights on baby Kelly because, after all, if baby Diana—the daughter of a hexenbiest and zauerbiest—is powerful, what’s the child of a Grimm and hexenbiest going to be?
  • Meisner’s back and working with this secret organization? Despite grimm-napping Trubel, it seems that their purpose is to stop this Uprising. And whatever it is, this Uprising promises to be a greater threat than anything Nick has ever faced. He’s going to need all the help he can get, including that of Meisner, Trubel and the gang because, now that Kelly’s in his life, he’ll have to balance it all without his love by his side. Because Juliette’s dead. Right? Or…
  • Maybe, just maybe there’s something going on, involving a savage growl, locked up behind a steel door and central to the “playing with fire” comment…