Are you watching The Dragon Prince? You should watch The Dragon Prince. It’s the holidays, give yourself a gift. The gift is The Dragon Prince. You can binge all three available seasons in a day. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It’s a great cooking companion. It’s an excellent addition to your yearly fantasy marathon. It will keep you from setting fire to the kitchen if your big oven-baked protein doesn’t cook right.
You may think I’m overselling this. I’m really not. You can go ahead, and I’ll wait here.
Presuming that you’ve now seen all of The Dragon Prince… how about that finale, eh?
[Spoilers for The Dragon Prince season 3]
It’s not all that surprising that The Dragon Prince keeps getting better and better given its pedigree. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a sea change of a series in terms of what animated fantasy shows could pull off, a story full of complex worldbuilding, sharp characters, and excellent scripts. Given that two alumni from A:TLA are in charge of The Dragon Prince, the quality of the show doesn’t come as a shock. But now that the television landscape has become considerably more crowded—and now spiritual successors of Avatar’s ilk (Steven Universe, She-Ra, Gravity Falls) make up some of the best stories on TV—it’s more a question of what The Dragon Prince can bring to the table that audiences haven’t seen before.
At the start, the show had a lot in common with The Last Airbender… almost too much, at times. But what The Dragon Prince has repeatedly delivered on is a story built on high fantasy foundations that procedurally ignores many of the givens of the genre. To start, the world of the show is diverse (among both its humans and other species that populate its various kingdoms) without remark. The prejudices that exist on the show are lines drawn between humans, elves, and dragons, with questions lingering around humans’s abilities with magic and whether or not they should have access to that manner of power.
In fact, The Dragon Prince is fascinating for its choice to explore epic fantasy from a particular American perspective; in this world, the human characters are all played with American accents, while the magical denizens of Xadia all seem to have variations of European accents. This lends the show a unique prism through which it can be viewed—much in the ways the Unites States commonly used Europe as a source of “magic” when devising mainstream fantasy stories, The Dragon Prince essentially casts humanity’s magical counterparts with markers that poke at that history. It’s a mode of deconstruction that extra adds layers to the show’s clever use of fantasy tropes.
Overcoming prejudice and hatred is a large part of what The Dragon Prince means to address, and to that end, our initial trio of protagonists are Ezran and Callum, the sons of the king of Katolis and a Moonshadow Elf named Reyla (who they initially thought of as a moral enemy) they befriend for their epic quest. While the three come to trust and rely on each other and encourage other humans and elves to do the same, the show lands on some of the same themes that Lord of the Rings and its compantriots tout—a world can only be defended by the engagement of all its peoples, working together toward a common goal. In this case, it is protecting a dragon prince, named Zym, whom others would use as a prop for their own power and world domination.
But that is only a small part of what makes The Dragon Prince great. The show’s depictions of disability continues a narrative dialogue that Avatar started with Toph Beifong, leading with the introduction of Callum and Ezran’s Aunt Amaya, a general who commands deep and abiding respect and also happens to be deaf. The show uses its first season—via a little girl named Ellis and her three-legged wolf friend, Ava—to make cutting commentary about how abled-bodied people judge disability and use even its mere appearance to justify cruelty.
Environmental factors also take precedence in the story, as the balance of the world and the creatures that live in it are integral to the narrative’s core quest. And there’s questions of familial love and abuse to consider as well; we see good examples of parenting within the show, but are also given a closeup example of parental gaslighting from head mage Viren and the ways he constantly manipulates his children, Claudia and Soren.
Though understated in its execution, Xadia also seems like a place where heterosexuality is anything but compulsory. She-Ra and Steven Universe have led a charge in this arena, and now The Dragon Prince shows Xadians taking no issue with queerness whatsoever, among humans or elves. So far, the show has featured ruling queens with a daughter, and even a kiss (this is still extremely rare among animated content aimed at children) between Reyla’s two adoptive elf dads. Also, most of the characters on this show have insane chemistry, so at any given moment, there’s no telling what people’s sexualities might be—or become.
Add to that, the show has managed a thoroughly un-cringeworthy teen romance between Callum and Reyla in its most recent season. While adolescent antics can be fun for everyone, it’s nice to see a young relationship built on mutual respect and trust. It’s perhaps even nicer to see that relationship built partly upon Callum’s awe of Reyla’s heroics, because Tough Girl and Nerd Boy are a pairing that always warms the heartm while being an excellent model for the children watching the show.
The show runners have stated that their planned run would extend to seven seasons (Netflix abiding), making season three’s finale a near halfway point. The show handled this marker with one of the hallmarks of epic fantasy—a seemingly hopeless battle on a large playing field, with new allies coming together against a common foe. This battle was on par with what we’re accustomed to seeing from the big hitters, easily standing alongside Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, and anything that Game of Thrones ever churned out.
If this is what the show leaves us with at the halfway mark, I can’t imagine what more seasons will bring. Lets hope Netflix sees this one through to the end, because The Dragon Prince leaves most of its contemporaries in the dust.
Emmet Asher-Perrin worries about Zym, but also PROTEXT ERAN AT ALL COSTS. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I love the series but thought the third season was a little weak, and the final epic battle particularly so. Like the creators just decided to bring back tons of characters to make the battle ‘even’, but it didn’t make any %$@@@@@!$ing sense to me. The child queen of a neighboring kingdom suddenly shows up with her army! Why? She wasn’t even in the rest of the season, at least reintroduce them to give some context to her helping. $@@@@@!%ing JELLY TART GUY shows up to fight. He’s the royal baker, and you’d expect even if there was a second army assembled he’d still be at home doing that, but no, and he’s with the rest of the loyalists to the original royal line who all apparently just marched across a continent to show up for a battle at a location they found out about somehow at exactly the right time. Huh?
Am I supposed to already know WHERE to watch this thing? Is it on a subscription service, or even on a broadcast (cable) network? The only way I could do it is on broadband.
#1
One of the things about Dragon Prince is that some of the side stories are played out in terms of illustrations over the end credits. I only realised that in season 2. In the end credits to season 3, you can see Corvus, Lujanne, Opeli et al travelling to the young queen and seeking her help.
There’s a compilation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd36l-pBqdE
Spoilers, obviously.
#2 – it’s a Netflix original/ exclusive.
@3
Wow, that’s really horrible design on the part of the show, if indeed the credits are meant to tell side stories. For one, many of the stills in the credits look more like goofy little jokes, or cute ones, rather than things that are meant to be substantive story telling, for another, Netflix literally skips the credits in almost all cases unless the user tells it to show them in full.
I kind of think the show up of the child Queen here, and this credit thing, really underlines a lot of the weakness of this show. In a lot of ways the Dragon Prince feels like it’s trying to be another Avatar largely by emulating the various facets of that show, but somehow it more often than not doesn’t seem to stick the landing. For example, within the first season the show goes out of its way to deliberately show the viewer that even if the Firelord and the Fire Nation are generally baddies, fire bending itself isn’t necessarily evil. In contrast, TDR seems to lean into magic-aligned-morality really hard, up to and including violating their own worldbuilding by allowing Callum access to the sky arcanum. You can clearly see the writers trying to do the same beats that were done in Avatar, but between the greatly shortened seasons and some weird decisions, it just doesn’t seem as good.
It’s still enjoyable, but I’m not sure I’d rank it above either of the two Avatar series.
This show is way better than it needs to be, and it’s the only animated show to keep my interest since ReBoot.
It’s a pretty good show and I’ve for the most part enjoyed a lot, especially in how they really try to make characters complex and even the bad guys for the most part have motivations that go beyond being evil for evil’s sake. The world building is also really great, especially with details like how the Sunfire elves version of a salute is covering their faces with their hands as if the person they’re honoring radiates intense sunlight and might blind them. The animation is also great and at times surprisingly detailed, once you get past the cell-shading thing.
There’s just a couple of things I don’t really like that much.
Sometimes really stupid things happen because the plot needs them to happen, like how in this season when the High Mage was in jail for treason and Ezran decided, against most of his advisors’ counsel, to set Soren and Claudia free instead of assuming they were part of their father’s treason, they’re allowed to freely visit their father and continue scheming with him. Granted, we as viewers know that they’re not really part of their father’s evil plans and have for the most part been gaslighted and manipulated, and that’s what happens again in this case, but why would they be allowed to visit him in private if there was suspicion in the first place? At least when the corrupt advisor and Prince Kasef went in after them to do their own plotting, they were shown bribing the guard.
The other thing I don’t like, and a lot of American shows are guilty of this, is how they make characters act like stereotypical modern American people, which often hugely clashes with the setting or the story. I get that they’re trying to make the characters relatable, but man, it’s often really cringy.
Small correction to this article: Amaya is not deaf, she’s mute.
Isn’t she deaf and mute? Characters sometimes use sign language while speaking out loud to her.
@@.-@: I think a lot of the problems on the show are caused by its short runs. With 20 episodes per season, Avatar had a lot of time for side-stories to flesh out the world and characters. DP can’t do that. It’s three seasons to date, which tell the first complete story arc, only equals Avatar up to the point that Appa is kidnapped a few episodes into Season 2, for example.
@7: Amaya absolutely is deaf. The producers have confirmed it several times, and I believe there’s been a few times when people have been talking to Amaya and turned away, and she’s pulled them back so she can see what they’re saying.
I don’t think it’s been confirmed she’s mute. She might just not choose to make any sounds.
@6
“The other thing I don’t like, and a lot of American shows are guilty of this, is how they make characters act like stereotypical modern American people, which often hugely clashes with the setting or the story. I get that they’re trying to make the characters relatable, but man, it’s often really cringy.”
Some of the humor is pretty corny, but on the other hand what else are the characters supposed to act like other than modern people? Making them talk like people from some arbitrary point in history would be just as jarring and false.
Anyway I was glad that the show got a lot deeper after the first season, and that the animation stepped up. Also they had better hope that they never do anything bad to Claudia!
The best anime serie in all Netflix and with difference. The serie is epic, with a good story and amazing characters, graphics and music.
All the 3 seasons are amazing. I hope Netflix will do more seasons.
Long live king Ezran!!! ;p
Great review! I would point out though that the elves don’t all have European accents. The sunfire elves sound Caribbean, probably Haitian to me, or maaaybe African.
I enjoy the Dragon Prince, although the first season was weaker and I grow fonder of the characters in the third one. I didn’t find the final battle epic, but I think “not showing” it, curiously, worked in this case. I didn’t feel robbed.