A Solid, If At Times Uneven, High Seas Adventure

When The Dragon Prince aired its third season way back in 2019, I called it one of the best fantasy shows on TV. Despite being a family-oriented animated series, the third season showed that even an all-ages adventure could deliver a powerful, epic story that resonated with adults and children alike.

Then the pandemic hit, and years passed between seasons. Season 4 picked up after a major time-jump both in the fictional realms of Xadia and Katolis, and in our world. After the powerful, definitive ending of the first three-season arc, it felt a bit odd getting back into the show. The characters had aged-up, which is strange for animated shows. A reset button had been hit and tonally, The Dragon Prince just felt different.

Maybe we’d just been away too long.

Whatever the case, despite enjoying Season 4, it definitely felt like a weak link, though I wasn’t too worried at the time. It felt like a setup season, laying the groundwork for the new Mystery Of Aaravos four-season arc. Season 5 improves on it in almost every way, though I still have a few dragon bones to pick.

The story picks up directly after the events of Season 4. Ezran (Sasha Rojen), Callum (Jack De Sena), Rayla (Paula Burrows) and Soren (Jesse Inocalla) are trying to find the prison of the mysterious Startouch elf, Aaravos (Erik Dellums) before Claudia (Racquel Belmonte), Terry (Benjamin Callins) and Viren (Jason Simpson). The good guys want to keep Aaravos imprisoned, fearing his diabolical plans for the world. Claudia wants to free him in order to save her father’s life.

There’s a third plot that has to do with the Sunfire elves who are drawing ever closer to civil war as Janai (Rena Anakwe) and her brother Karim (Luc Roderique) struggle for power. More on that in a minute.

What Works

While this was definitely a big improvement over Season 4, the latest season still felt a bit uneven at times. We’ll start with what works. I won’t go heavy into spoilers in this section.

In terms of the big picture, Season 5 gets better and better as it goes along. It starts off a little slow, but quickly we start getting really cool locations like “The Great Bookery” (it makes more sense than library!) and eventually make our way to a three-part pirate sequence that culminates in one of the best episodes of The Dragon Prince ever in “Finnegrin’s Wake.”

The new antagonist, Finnegrin, is as charming as he is dastardly, and the trilogy of episodes he’s featured in are filled with adventure, sacrifice and some really great twists and turns. I don’t want to spoil any of this beyond what I’ve said here, or I’d go into more detail. Suffice to say, Callum and Soren are both tested in different ways, and both emerge a little worse for wear, but also a little stronger. Soren remains this show’s secret weapon, stealing every scene he’s in.

All this leads up to a stirring, powerful season finale in “Infantis Sanguine” (which means with the blood of a child) that once again turns everything on its head for our heroes and villains alike (though the talented people at Wonderstorm never let characters fall neatly into those boxes). Viren undergoes a series of hallucinatory—and revelatory—waking dreams that finally open his eyes to the great damage he’s caused in the world, and specifically to his children.

The animation quality and overall production feels higher this season as well, and the humor is more on-point this time around. This is a kids’ show so there’s bound to be some goofy kid humor mixed in, but it’s handled better than in Season 4. I definitely found myself chuckling from time to time.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a bit trickier, probably because I realize that I’m going to spend more time on gripes than on singing the show’s praises, which I suppose is because it feels more useful to point out flaws than to gush about what I enjoyed.

I think one of my biggest gripes with The Dragon Prince is the 9-episode format. Realistically, this felt like Season 4 Part 2 rather than its own season. Yes, Season 4 was ‘Earth’ and this was ‘Ocean’ but they still felt like two halves of one longer setup season, laying narrative cement for Seasons 6 and 7. The problem with 9-episode seasons is the pacing issues such truncated seasons create. Side-quests outside the main plot can feel too much like time wasted, despite sometimes being genuinely fun episodes. In 18 episodes, however, very little has actually happened, and most of it at the end of Season 5, when the Claudia / Viren storyline finally ramps up.

With longer seasons, the show would have more time to take diversions but also focus on propelling the story forward. The narrative wind has exactly filled this show’s sails over the past two seasons, and by the end of Season 5 we really know very little more about Aaravos and fundamentally only Viren’s character arc has really seen any major momentum.

Elsewhere, the Callum / Rayla plot remains a bit muddled after her two-year disappearance during the time-jump. Maybe this is realistic, and the fraught nature of their relationship—one in which Rayla is pretty consistently deceitful and Callum is pretty consistently forgiving—is realistic. Truth be told, I’m not sure how to feel about it (or, if we’re being honest, whether I was ever a fan of the pair going in a romantic direction in the first place).

Ezran and Xym have taken on almost side-character roles, which is odd and a little disappointing. Perhaps Ezran would have been better served by a separate subplot back at the castle, where the king probably ought to be anyways, or alongside Janai, linking that storyline to the main characters—he is the great uniter, after all.

This brings me to another big complaint: The Sunfire elf subplot. I hope I’m wrong and this ends up being an awesome story, but right now it feels like a distraction. I’m also bothered by how little sense aspects of it make.

For instance—and here we enter spoiler territory—much of the Sunfire storyline this season focuses on Karim trying to wrest back power from Janai. In order to do that, he meets with the ancient dragon, Sol Regem, which is definitely a cool, epic moment. The dragon has been blinded, but Karim knows how to heal him. He needs a Sun Seed, which his sister has, so he enlists the help of Kim’dael, an ancient Moonshadow elf who uses forbidden magic and has no qualms killing numerous Sunfire elves and humans when she goes to retrieve the Sun Seed.

Janai entrusts the Sun Seed with Miyana for reasons that are too baffling to comprehend, since Miyana was Karim’s lover before betraying him. If anything, Miyana should have been stripped of her rank and not entrusted with anything remotely so valuable. Of course, she betrays Janai and brings the Sun Seed to Karim—along with an army of Sunfire elves who apparently are happy to betray their queen despite Karim sending an assassin into their midst, killing many of their brethren.

This is all very puzzling to me, and feels like a distraction from the much more important questing of our main heroes, though Janai has some pretty disturbing Aaravos dreams that I enjoyed.

I could quibble further, like why does Callum insist on being an idiot so often this season (The Great Bookery was a super exciting episode, but did it need to be Callum’s idiocy that almost gets them all killed?) or why we get so very little of the Archdragon, Domina Profundis, but I’ll leave it at that. Many of these complaints are fairly minor in the big scheme of things. My great hope is that we are now through the setting the stage phase and the final two seasons are filled with glorious payoff.

Spoilery Scattered Thoughts

• I’m not bothered by Callum learning the Ocean Arcanum the way he did, but I wish we’d had more time with the ocean in general beforehand. Again, not enough Domina Profundis, but also not enough time spent with the ocean itself, and Callum becoming tuned to its arcane vibes. Perhaps this is one consequence of such short seasons.
• I’m very mixed on the mushroom mage showing up to heal Zubeia (Nicole Oliver) who was wounded by the corrupted Banthers at the Great Bookery. Far more interesting and sinister to have a corrupted Archdragon causing all sorts of complications for our heroes than to have a deus ex machina save her. But as with Viren’s fate, nothing is certain just yet.
• I wish Rayla hadn’t gotten the coins with her parents trapped in them from Claudia at the end of Season 4 and one of her big motivating factors this season was getting those back, which would have made what happens between her and Claudia in the finale even more intense. Higher stakes for everyone involved.
• I hope we get more Claudia and Aaravos scenes next season, since there have been basically no scenes betwixt the two so far. More Aaravos in general! He’s such a great villain. The scene with him and Viren and their “child” was so damn good.
• Speaking of Aaravos, is it a tiny bit odd that they put his prison beneath a giant statue of . . . him? Not so subtle. Cool image but not ideal if you want the prison to remain a secret!
• Finally, I think we need Claudia to go much darker. In many ways, Terry (I wish they’d just call him Terrestrius, which is such a cool name!) has been holding her back, keeping her one-foot in the light (and now, well). But for a satisfying arc—one in which Claudia comes back from the brink a la Anakin—she needs to fully embrace the Dark Side. Terry is a likable character, but he’s holding Claudia back in ways that this show simply doesn’t need. She should have killed that dragon. At least the next two seasons won’t be rated TV-Y7 anymore!

Verdict

All told, a strong season with several episodes that I’d rank at the very top of my list of best Dragon Prince episodes of all time and some fun world-building with the Tidebound elves, but one that suffers again from too many plot-threads and pacing issues.

The direction the show takes Viren this season—and the implications of his choices and how they will end up impacting Claudia—fills me with both excitement and dread. Claudia will be at her lowest, most vulnerable place as Season 6 kicks off. But it’s Callum, and his own flirtation with Dark Magic, that has me truly worried.

Still, all quibbles and nit-picks aside, I love this show to pieces and continue to root for its heroes (and sometimes its villains) to emerge victorious.

Hopefully we won’t have too long to wait for Season 6!

What did you think of The Dragon Prince Season 5? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.