The Dragon Prince season 2 is an improvement for Netflix’s animated epic

Last year, I reviewed the first season of Netflix’s The Dragon Prince, an animated fantasy epic from Justin Richmond and Aaron Ehasz, the head writer on Nickelodeon’s much-beloved Avatar: The Last Airdender. I didn’t think much of it. It had some Avatar-like charm, but I didn’t think it mixed light comedy with weighty themes of war and revenge to good effect, and the pilfering of plotlines from shows like Game of Thrones got pretty shameless at times. Beyond the political maneuvers and the sword-and-sorcery trappings, the first season literally ends with our heroes managing to hatch a baby dragon from an egg they’d been carrying around all season. It’s a PG-rated version of the final scene of Thrones’ first season.

That said, when I saw that Netflix had posted new episodes, I found myself watching them — they’re just a half-hour, why not? — and ultimately I’m glad I did. The writing is more assured, the animation is improved, and we got more payoff than we did in season 1. I was disappointed that we got to the end of that season without Callum and Ezran — two of our main characters — finding out that their father, King Harrow, had died. In season 2, they find out, and it’s painful, and their characters feel richer for going through it. I felt the same way about Soren and Claudia, the children of King Harrow’s corrupt advisor Viren, who’s now ruling the kingdom. In season 1, Viren sent his kids to find the wayward princes, but the finale came and went with everyone still miles apart. This season, the show makes good.

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There’s just more to chew on in The Dragon Prince season 2, although the tone can still throw me for a loop. The Dragon Prince looks to all the world like a kid’s show. There’s no swearing, no nudity, and no onscreen death. There are not one but two kid-friendly animal sidekicks ready and waiting to be made into plush dolls: Bait the magical Glow Toad and Zym the adorable baby dragon. It’s set in a medieval fantasy world but all the characters talk in modern English vernacular so as not to lose the audience.

All of that makes you expect a certain sort of show, but then something really heavy will happen and you’ll wonder what in the world you’re watching. To start, the serialized tale of warring kingdoms may be a bit much for young kids to follow — in another nod to Game of Thrones, at one point Viren tries to reunite the seven five kingdoms of humanity against the alien threat across the magical border, but the other rulers won’t see reason. More jarring is what happens at the end of the episode “Fire and Fury,” when Soren — an affable, goofy swordsman — is battling a dragon that knocks him against a rock. At the end of the episode, we learn that he’s paralyzed from the neck down, a terrifying real-world problem. What the hell kind of kid’s show is this?

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But it IS a kid’s show, so of course Soren can’t stay paralyzed. Claudia, a mage, brings him back with magic. Everything’s fine, right? Only no, because she has to kill a darling deer to get the ingredients for her spell. The Dragon Prince edges us back towards the equilibrium of a kid’s show with a dark turn of the plot.

One more: early in the season, Soren makes a zipline for the young moppet-like Ezran, King Harrow’s heir. Unbeknownst to Ezran, Soren is under orders from his father to kill Ezran to prevent him from taking power, so Soren loosens the zipline intending for Ezran to fall to his death. He doesn’t succeed — the princes’ elven protector Rayla cottons on and stops on — but still, this is dark stuff. But that’s not the way the show sells it. It portrays Soren, an attempted child murderer, as a well-meaning doofus at worst. The tone is wildly at odds with itself.

Basically, I wish Ehasz and company would pick a lane. They seem to want to make a show for teenagers or even adults but are committed to the trappings of children’s entertainment. It can make for weird watching. Still, in this and many other ways, season 2 improves on season 1, mainly because the characters are better drawn. Maybe Ehasz will level out the tone for season 3, or maybe I just need more time to get used to whatever he and Richmond are going for.

The season season ends with Callum and Rayla crossing the border into Xadia, the magical land of the elves. Their mission is to return the adorable baby dragon Zym to his mother, thus making up for the time the armies of humanity killed the Dragon King and preventing an inter-species war. Like season 1, this season ends with plenty of lingering questions — Viren, with the aid of a mysterious new elven helper, is redoubling his efforts to make the rulers of the human kingdoms see things his way, and Callum and Rayla come face to face with a scary-looking dragon before we cut to black. Structurally, it seems like season 3 will resemble Game of Thrones even more closely, with different groups of characters off on their own quests. It still feels a bit derivative, but there’s nothing new under the sun anyway, and Richmond and Ehasz have earned my interest to the point where I’ll do more than just stumble on season 3.

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