Even as a fan, I don’t think ‘Grimm’ really needed to run for six seasons. Somehow, the show survived its rocky periods and was granted the opportunity for a proper send-off with a concrete ending. The series finale quite possibly lives up to the show’s title more than any other episode ever did. It’s a grim affair, indeed.

I’m not going to summarize everything that happened over the course of the last season. Of relevance from recent episodes, Nick and Eve traveled to an alternate world or dimension dominated by wesen and ran into a big evil skull-faced baddie named Zerstorer, who’s basically an unkillable pedo-monster and wants to claim Adalind’s young daughter Diana as a child bride. (I can’t fathom why. That kid is annoying.) Although Nick and Eve escaped and returned home, Zerstorer followed them to Portland and woged into the form of a hunky underwear model. The penultimate episode ended with Zerstorer invading the Portland police precinct and murdering all the cops inside, except Nick. Included in the carnage were Hank and Wu, both of whom died violently.

As if that weren’t shocking or upsetting enough, the finale then proceeds to have Zerstorer pick off almost every other major character in the show, and the magic stick Nick has used to heal himself all season long is useless at reviving them for some reason. The next to go is Eve/Juliette. Zerstorer, in full skull-face form, busts into the Spice Shop and uses his powers to force her to stab herself in the stomach. She dies in Nick’s arms.

All of the surviving characters (including Renard, who was evil at the start of the season but is currently working with the good guys again) retreat to the old Blutbad cabin in the woods that was featured the show’s pilot episode. Because bullets don’t work on Zerstorer, Rosalee cooks up a powerful potion that will supposedly kill anything. Monroe calls this the nuclear option. The spell requires the blood of a Grimm, a Hexenbiest and another wesen. Nick, Adalind and Monroe lay their hands on top of each other’s, and Renard stabs through the three of them together with a big knife so that their blood will mix as it drips into a bowl. The resulting concoction melts a spoon like acid.

Zerstorer finds the cabin shortly. It turns out that Nick’s magic stick is a piece of the big staff he carries around, and he can track it anywhere. He needs the final piece in order to destroy the world or something, and he wants Diana as his queen. The little brat is the only one not knocked down when Zerstorer attacks, and she leaves the cabin with him willingly, even happily. In trying to protect her, Renard gets stabbed and dies.

Monroe tosses the blood potion onto Zerstorer’s face. It hurts him but doesn’t kill him. The monster recovers easily, and in quick succession murders Adalind, Monroe, Rosalee (pregnant with triplets!) and Trubel, leaving only Nick and the evil little bitch Diana alive outside the cabin, while Nick and Adalind’s infant son Kelly is left alone inside.

Zerstorer wants Nick’s stick, but he isn’t able to just take it from him. It must be given. That’s why he hasn’t killed Nick yet. He then offers Nick a deal. He says that his magic staff can revive all Nick’s friends from the dead, which he demonstrates by healing Trubel. If he turns over the stick, Nick can get everyone back.

Distraught with grief, Nick almost takes the deal until Trubel stops him. They actually fight over this. Trubel grabs the stick and runs off into the woods. Nick gets it back, but before he can return to Zerstorer, he’s blocked by his mother Kelly (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and his Aunt Marie (Kate Burton) – both of whom, it should be noted, are dead. They don’t have time to explain where they came from. They urge him not to turn over the stick, and tell him that Grimm blood is the answer to defeating Zerstorer.

With Nick returned to his senses, all four Grimms (Nick, Trubel and the old ladies) face off against Zerstorer. Their combined might subdues him. Kelly slices his arm off. Nick grabs the magic staff and merges it with his stick to form the ultimate weapon, which he uses to stab and kill Zerstorer.

As soon as the foe is vanquished, Kelly and Marie vanish. Trubel says she never saw them. As far as she knows, she and Nick fought Zerstorer alone. Diana, however, saw both the ladies.

Zerstorer’s body turns to ash, which swirls into a vortex and forms a portal. Nick and the staff are sucked into it. Seconds later, he flies through the mirror into his living room, exactly as he had when he returned from the wesen world. In fact, he seems to have been transported back in time to that very night. All his friends are in the room, and everybody’s fine. Nick has an “… And you were there. And you were there. And you were there…” moment trying to process what he experienced, like it was all a dream. Only Diana knows what happened, and confirms that Zerstorer is truly dead. He didn’t come back in time with Nick.

The staff did, though. Nick picks it up from the remains of the mirror.

Epilogue

The series closes by flash-forwarding 20 years. Kelly (Nick’s son Kelly, not his dead mother Kelly) is an adult now. He’s inside the little trailer parked in the woods, writing in the Grimm journal to tell of his father’s adventures. He illustrates it with cheesy graphic novel art. The door opens and Diana, who’s grown up to be a total babe, tells Kelly that it’s time to go; they have wesen to hunt. Kelly slams the journal closed. Fade to black.

Episode Verdict

This wasn’t my favorite season of the show. Some of the storylines were dumb, the characters’ constant flip-flopping of allegiances was annoying, and the little girl who plays Diana was – I’m not exaggerating in the slightest – one of the worst child actors who has ever worked in television. Diana spent the entire season being an evil monster in training, and was totally psyched to go off and become a child sex slave to the beast that just murdered her parents, but then we’re supposed to accept that she’s really been good underneath it all the whole time? I don’t buy it.

This Zerstorer guy, who was just introduced a couple episodes ago yet is supposedly the ultimate badass evil and Nick’s greatest nemesis, was also pretty lame.

When it became clear that all of Nick’s friends were going to die, I had no doubt that a cheap twist at the end would bring them all back – which is of course exactly what happened. Even with the happy ending, the tone of this episode feels very out of sync with the show. It’s unrelentingly dark and traumatic, until suddenly it isn’t anymore.

Despite all that, I enjoyed ‘Grimm’ through all its highs and lows, and I’m glad that the show ends with a note of closure that’s at least fairly satisfying, even if it isn’t the way I would have ended things if I’d been in charge.