This season's problem is that it didn't feel like a season. It felt like a buildup to season 5. Edit: What I'm saying is that it felt more like a buildup than a season. Were seasons 1 & 2 buildup? Yes. But they also felt like actual _seasons_ on their own. Season 4 doesn't.
while i was binging the season i kept assuming it will have 20 episodes cuz of the pacing. i checked the episode count when i was at ep9. my first thought was: 'so when will something actually happen?!' i hope the 5th season wont take so long to come out
I love how this season is called "Mystery of Aaravos" and yet the Dragon Queen just gives us all the answers in the first few episodes and then we just get nothing that is related to him
I was so excited to learn more about Aaravos, only to find out that they just copied Morgoth's backstory from the Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. No it wasn't an homage, or a reference, it was a straight up copy. Jesus this show is so uncreative in it's lore and worldbuilding.
man... this season just felt like it was being handled by a completely different team from the people behind the first 3 seasons, the childish humor is worst than it has ever been (Claudia having a fart fetish is just why) and almost nothing happen the whole season besides being setup, hell the fact that it's supposed to be focused on Aaravos and he shows up just once just feels like false advertisement even if his single scene is great... idk felt like we needed more
Rule of drama taken to the extreme. They feel like stability equals boredom because we must have conflict to have a story. Of course the conflict could be an external one and the couple could support each other through it instead of arguing with each other, but writers are allergic to that idea.
Yes, I was looking forward to cute romance. What was the point of the romance arc and end of season 3 if they just break up between seasons in a comic?!
That's why I love some of these K/C/J dramas these days. A few of them (Love O2O for example) are very big on the "nah, you can break us apart because we communicate and trust each other." Instead, the show's "drama" is more about helping friends or succeeding at life. Don't get me wrong, I love a good "will they, won't they?" but not everyone likes being stressed out, and most people don't want to be stressed out ALL THE TIME. Having some junk food fluff shows is good, and those are the ones I watch over and over and over again. It's hard to do that with shows that are high drama because you have to be in the right headspace for them.
I agree about you saying "this season is allergic to skipping anything", but it doesn't skip unimportant scenes. It skips the important ones!!! Like Viren and Soren's reunion conversation happening OFF SCREEN is UNFORGIVABLE!! If they do that to Runaan and Ethari's reunion I may cry 😢
I think it's insulting that Rayla apologized to Ezran on-screen and not to Callum. Almost as if Rayla can do whatever she wants, consequence-free and Callum is in the wrong for being rightfully upset with her ditching him on his birthday and, 🙄 of course, never writing him letters during the two years she was away from Callum
Thank god, i thought i was the only soul that thought this, i was about to think i was the weird one because i think that callum deserved a deep and truthful apology, but the nearest thing we got was "i know me leaving hurt you" everyone knows that, i think an apology should be the first step to be back together
@@Trexzaz Yeah after rewatching the season I agree we never really got any heartfelt apology or even a good conflict scene with them about Rayla's decision. The only thing we got close to being an argument was in episode 3 but the new monkey pet kind of ruined the scene before it could progress more.
Yeah for me it was that Rayla never apologized once to Callum and was oblivious as to why he was feeling some type of way about it. That and the constant jokes. I understand comedy is a good break in between serious sections. But it was every. single. scene. And there were waaayyy too many fart jokes
My main problem with season 4 is that throughout the whole season callum and rayla have their relationship problems that won’t make any sense unless you read the book and by the time they resolve it the season’s already over. 😢 I also can’t help but feel that the B plot with the sun elves was used for just a little bit of padding.
One of my main disappointments with season 4 was that they didn't explore Callum being a sky mage and the implications of this. As far as I can remember Veiran and Claudia have never seen him use his sky magic, something that they have always believed to be impossible for humans without a primal stone. I feel like Veiran and/or Claudia learning about Callum's magic could have caused an interesting story arc. Also, I feel like Callum only used like 3 spells in the entire season which was disappointing as I wanted to see his progress with Sky Magic over the two year time skip.
When Claudia met Soren and told him that dark magic was the only way for humans to have power, I was SO sure that Soren would mention that it is, in fact, not the only way, and that Callum can do sky magic. And it just didn't happen.
Omg I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this. It was one of the previous seasons biggest issues, a major part of the history of the human/elf conflict, the motivations behind Viren/Claudia’s reasons for learning Dark Magic……AND IT NEVER GETS ACKNOWLEDGED?!? NOBODY ever talks about this? NO other human wants to learn magic? Nobody ever thinks about how this could change human society for better or for worse?? We’re just….not gonna talk about it? Ok then 😬
I'm really happy with Viren. Like, he's the ONLY character I genuinely liked this season. Everyone else felt... more childish. More annoying. Heck, I was hoping for a rebound with Soren, but Soren just... got back to his S1 self again. Viren though strove to be different. Well, 'strove.' He saw his death. He felt the nothingness after. He didn't want to go, unfulfilled. And honestly, that's the most mature thing this season did.
Fr. Rayla got so….sentimental! Nothing at all like her. Ezra’s just stayed the same as last season but go taller and more hair. Callum is the same too. All the characters either stayed the same or git more childish but Virne actually….idk he got… better
One of my favorite theories for Viren this season is that after he died, all of the residual dark magic was drained from him. Therefore, he's back to the point where he wasn't tainted by the darkness we can see Claudia gradually being corrupted by and is now realizing he might have gone just a bit too far. Granted, I don't think we're going to see this come to anything as he uses dark magic again at the end of the season but I'm curious to see where Viren's arc ends. Probably somewhere close to the beginning of Claudia's equivalent of Azula's gradual decay of her mental stability we see in the later half of ATLA S3.
I interpreted that as two years changing the dynamic slightly, with Ezran more occupied by kingly matters and Bait being emotionally intelligent enough to react to Callum's grief by doing the opposite of abandoning him.
I'm a little sad we didn't get Callum slowly being manipulated by Aaravos BUT that scene with possessed Callum with Aaravos roasting the cast was so worth it!!!
The roasting scene was kind of a breath of fresh air after the totally over kidified rest of the season. (I get it's geared towards kids but S4 was way overdone)
Leave out "little" and the last part of your sentence and you are correct. It would have been way cooler if Aaravos was hedging his bets and making Callum his main bitch.
@@JustAJinx-ci6hg Never heard someone say "over kidified" before, but that term nailed it. In fact it may even be an understatement. The dialogue and exposition is written like it was geared towards 6-8 year olds and the content matter of war, racial tension, weird romances, etc, just DOESN'T FIT that demographic, so it's made a jarring and disjointed story that just doesn't work for any age group on any level. For lack of a better term, it resulted in major "cringe."
I know, season 4 was a huge "WTF is this" I couldn't stop looking at my phone and I'm not even that kind of person with an attention span of -1, looking at a phone every 20 secs. I actually leave my phone aside every time I watch a movie or a show. But this season was just unbearable
A lot of the issues with dragon prince is that they use a “tell don’t show” method for a lot of the issues. If I wrote season 4 I would made so that Callum stayed in Xadia to train with Ibis so that his death would’ve been more impactful. I would have written out the sun fire subplot, or at least make it have some lasting relevant consequences. Aaravos wouldn’t be a moustache twirling villain but rather someone who misguidedly gave humans dark magic to help them. And with his centuries of imprisonment he would grow bitter and vengeful like how he is in the show. On another note I feel like the dragon prince needs to be a more mature show to take its themes more seriously.
I'm fine with Aaravos just being a manipulative asshole, the villain doesn't always need to be sympathetic and I think they actually do him just being evil well, hell we're just getting into his backstory too so there might actually be more to it. Not to mention we already have more grey villains with Viren, Claudia, and Terry.
@@mikemorro140 yeah villains don’t have to be sympathetic, but this show does explore people who make misguided choices. But they better give Aaravos some reasonable character motive for his actions, tho I would also be fine if he did it for shits and giggles.
@@joshuacouture479 I do hope that Aaravos buildup comes to proper payoff in seasons 5-7 cause he’s one of the best players in this show. Honestly I still like the show but the heroes (exclude Rayla and Soren) just feel so flat. The Villains and Soren feel like the most fleshed out characters while our heroes just feel like cardboard to me. I still don’t care about Callum much as a protagonist cause he brings no depth to me. Tell me, what makes me WANT to care about what he’s going through? He has Sokka’s VA but none of his character or charm that made him a great character. Wee Baby Ezran has the potential to be interesting being a child king after the death of his father but they don’t expand on that and soon he just gets out of that role and being the little cinnamon roll who loves animals, the morality of king hood completely tossed to the wayside, TWICE! Honestly Opelli is the real ruler of Katolis while Ezran is just a toxic positive figurehead.
I'm half way convinced Terry is being kept around as a sacrifice to bring Viren back to life. She needed a whole fawn to make Soren walk. She will eventually need a person to bring him back. What better way to get a sacrifice, then to befriend it and keep it around for later. Not gonna lie, I'm almost hoping this happens and Viren actually tries to stop her. I really think the series could end with his redemption. Also if Terry isn't a sacrifice then he is proof Claudia still has some good in her. The way I described her to a friend I'm trying to get to watch the show is either the writers are making an Azula or a Zuko, only time will tell.
Omg Claudia using Terry to keep Viren alive would honestly be such a good twist It would be such a good storyline and that twist would actually make sense from what we've seen so far. And Viren stopping this because he bonded so well with Terry throughout that month would be even better tbh
I wish the show would sacrifice Terry asap. I can't stand that character, and it makes no sense for Claudi to be with an elf, or anyone that weak. My theory was that she's using Terry for something. But until Terry stops existing in this show, I'm not watching it. Insufferable, nonsensical character.
@@potatospud9365 you dont like him? that's strange I thought he was perfect for her other than being an elf but evn still hes open minded about dark magic and shares her humor
The character writing suffered so hard. It feels like a completely different team behind it. They kept cramming in Avatar references, it feels like fans of the show and its past writers took over. Claudia has none of the conflict or depth that she used to. The scene where Callum was possessed by Aaravos is supposedly a big moment for Callum because he tells Rayla to kill him if he gets possessed again. But the scene where he’s possessed doesnt shoe Callum being scared or stressed or that he even cared about being possessed. What happened to this show? I did not wait 3 years for this
I agree with this analysis. I think the voice for callum might have too much influence on the writing, as well as other avatar fan members on the writing team; they made callum's character feel too sokka at times every since the first season even though he lacks the same emotive expression. They also structured the seasons as "books" focusing on a single type of magic which limits the story to be stuck in that particular element, despite it being far too little to do anything with. They keep adding characters and unnecessary quests and jokes that feel strangely placed in- they might work in a book format, but are extremely dull visually, as they spend time on showing characters walking or talking too much rather than making each action mean something. It's all so clunky :( and extremely surface level despite it wanting to be really heavy
I agree, I'm so over the avatar references. I love atla with my whole heart but it's really getting old now, especially if they spend too much time on it like the boomerang reference. The background ones like Aang's glider was cool but if a joke would leave someone who hasn't seen avatar confused then it's gone too far.
I really felt like the callum and Aaravos stuff was wasted. I expected to callum to find Aaravos mirror and properly meet him alone like Viren did but instead the dragon queen just told the entire group and Aaravos shattered his own mirror. I hope they do something with Callum and Aaravos in later seasons
When I first saw that scene I was expecting Callum to pull a viren and listen to aaravos try and help him, but Callum not knowing it was aaravos and I think it would have made a very interesting plot for them to all hunt aaravos without callum know he was helping him, all while aaravos is sabotaging all of them
Honestly, having a parallel between Claudia and Callum by having Aaravos whisper in both of their ear, and see how they react to it, would have been much more impactful imo
If that were the case we would only have had 5 episodes instead of 9. And I think that actually would have been beneficial because then instead of stretching what little important content they had, they could have instead been individual episodes devoted to those arcs instead of this overly stretched mess.
@@dustinvance243 he means they cut down what could've been an 18 episode season where we would have time for these extra bits with actual plot, it got cut into 9 episodes where it wasn't as interesting
@@dustinvance243 cut as in story lines and potential lines were cut from the script for the season, it could of been a potential (18 episode) story but it *FELT* like it was cut
When the comic came out, the whole community wondered how they would explain the Rayllum breakup in S4. Turns out they just weren't going to explain it at all :D
I also have a problem with Terry accepting Dark Magic, cause even considering what you said in the video, he still is an Earth Elf...the one race of elves that should be the most connected with life and nature cause of their magic, and Dark Magic is the magic that literally steals life to fuel its spells. So yes, it should be a big issue even for an outcast elf that is questioning elven paradigms.
Not really, the main villain of the series is a literal elf god of the stars, the purest form of being there is. Just being an elf does really not mean anything.
it definitely feels like he was written in to call back to that one joke from season two. That’s the only reason I could think of for this guy to be a part of the plot
I notice that the Earth Dragon said that Thunder the Dragon King would often try to provoke conflict with the human so he can start a fight with human, Something he was critical of. Not alot of people seams to pay attention to this. He has no reason to lie to the human and he didn't know that Zym was their. He had no reason to expect that humans to be on the Thunder side. Also the theme of the show seams to be generational conflicts and shades of grey, so it would should mean Thunder did bad stuff as well. Also would that mean Viren was not crazy for viewing Thunder as a giant threat if Thunder was also instigating boarder conflicts.
Yeah, everything about Rex was great. He's an interesting subversion of the greedy dragon since he doesn't care about weapons and treasure, and he is the first dragon to really show any hatred for Avazandym. Easily the best new character from the season.
@@megabladechronicles962 makes me somewhat curious if we’ll see different viewpoints of Avizandum from other arch dragons though I am overestimating the show at that point.
Honestly that minor plot point was pretty interesting. It really makes me wonder if at some point we'll see Zim go on a quest or just have a side story with him discovering more about his dad. I mean even us as the audience, we know WHAT Zim's dad did and WHAT he's capable of, but we don't know WHO he actually is. Cliché by this point, but having a Rose Quartz situation with Zim's dad would be very fitting for this show.
I was expecting this show to grasp this topic seriously. Its not one side being all paranoid for no reason. The show doesn't want the dragons to be bad? But they made the elf-dragon side genocide the human side for a crimes of a small fraction of people. Literally nothing justifies this. Fine, dark magic is horrible, but help the humans then, no one fucking cared when they were struggling and originally dragons wanted to straight up murder all the humans, the elf moon princess suggesdted banishing them instead. These dragons that wanted people dead are still around! I like how it seemed that Aaravos was on the humen side because he sympasithed with them and hated how repressive dragons and elves were. So he sorta helped them and taught them to spite others. That led him imprisoned and humanity banished. Show wants Aaravos being irredemable? Fine, let this break him completely, losing everything, so then even if he is sympathetic, he won't stop, so he has to be stopped. But no, show keeps introducing this complicated gray topics and just 'actually its more black and white. just, just ignore the gray areas'. Heck Avatar did such a better job at this!
@DeathKitta I'm fine with Aaravos being a straight jerk who took advantage of the state of humanity to spread his dark magic. Buy I wish the show acknowledging how the circumstances were created by Xadian racism and apathy.
In the first 3 seasons it actually felt like alot of stuff was going on at one especially since each season ended on a cliffhanger and the season opening continues exactly where we left off, this season felt like it was to little and not enough going on and the ending felt like a mid season finale. I was also really expecting callum and aaravos to have a proper greeting and acknowledgement of one another and keep in mind that callum has already lost his nother, father and step dad and almost his brother and several occasions. I understand him being upset rayla is gone but it's not like he's moping every second. Before his birthday celebration when we saw him, he was his normal happy cheerful self. It was only at the party he started to really sulk. Also the fact that Viren and soren reunited and we had no interaction between the 2
I felt the opposite. I felt like the season finishers were pretty anti climatic and only until season 3 did it feel like a culmination of the story so far. Im going to assume this is how the rest is structured
Yeah plus the only reason he sulks that much about Rayla on his birthday was because it was the anniversary of when she left, though I don't know if that lines up because I don't remember it being his birthday in that book
Okay while I can accuse some parts of this season being just build up…….y’all seriously just…didn’t show us a interaction between Soren and Viren after it being 2 years since they last seen each other. 2 YEARS and even within those 2 YEARS Soren thought his neglectful dad was dead and that him and Claudia was free from his plans he had when he was corrupted messiah Viren. I’m just sad and disappointed that they miss out on the opportunity whether on purpose or not, to have a interesting conflict reunion between Soren and Viren(especially since Viren already feeling guilty and realizing he f-up as a parent).
What probably ended up bothering me the most was the "bad guy trio" retrieving the staff. Not that they did it at all, obiously, but when they chose to do it. Claudia KNEW that Viren would be on a timer once revived, so it would be wise to do all the preparations that could be done before that, you know, BEFORE THAT. The dragons were only leaving after they'd already begun ascending the mountain, and she clearly didn't need Viren himself to get the staff. Very small changes could have fixed that, but oh well...
Especially since Viren was having panic attack after panic attack, passing out TWICE. All for her to say he can wait at the bottom and she can get it?? I would get it if Viren needed to get it himself with a spell or something, but since he didn't why make him climb the mountain?
Honestly many things in this season just did not make sense. Like when they used Zym to look at stuff from far up (which got him captured), when Callum literally has wings now, and he was the one who came up with the idea??
I also was confused by the fact that they didn't do that earlier. Bringing Viren up that mountain for no reason felt not only unnecessary but also quite sadistic, in my opinion.
Poor Terry. I’m scared for him because Claudia never liked elves. I have a theory that she’s going to use him for the dark magic she needs to permanently revive her dad at the end 😢
Yer I spent the whole season waiting for him to die. When Rayla had a knife at his throat I was definitely expecting Claudia being like 'go on, do it' and then when Rayla couldn't that would be when Terry would be like 'wait is Claudia evil?!'
I was more scared that Terry would be the useless comic relief character considering the jokes that oftentimes just felt off. The fart jokes were a first for me and it probably shows that they got super egregious in this season. But the theory makes sense, but he could also be a sort of redemption for Claudia as she is showing that she somewhat cares about how he feels.
Amaya not taking the situation seriously doesn't make a lot of sense. She likely would know that is an important tradition for the elves. From all the previous scenes it seemed like she knew it was a somewhat complicated situation and was going to try to get both sides of story. It seemed that one out of place character moment was only so Janai's brother could seem to have somewhat of a point
She goes from not taking it seriously at all (out of character for her) to not even weighing the logical reasons for the architects actions at all and just saying she's a totally indefensible villain in the next minute (also out of character)
@@Dumbledoresarmy13 I think her point was the architect was in the wrong for not really trying to talk it out. She just kept demanding the fire be put out and didn't even want to understand why he was doing it.
@@Dumbledoresarmy13 I mean , an architect is supposed to talk to the communities they’re working for so they can understand their needs and design around them , the fact she made a camp of flammable materials for literal FIRE elves in a desert where there’s little to no water is dumb Af and shows a colonialists mindset.
@Bla Bla I think the point, and this was what Janai's brother was getting at, was that the humans were doing things their way and not thinking about the fire elves traditions
I wish it had been longer, and had way less annoying kiddy shit, but it at least progressed the story by a fair margin. I’ll still watch season five, but I think there is a good chance the show is going down hill.
Also, Rex outright told the main cast this "Avizandum love to provoke fights with humans, he enjoyed killing them!" What was the main cast's reaction?: "😑 I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that and assume that Avizandum is a good person just because he's Zym's dad and pretend that he's not racist in any way whatsoever."
They've acknowledged Avizandum's problems in the past, I mean he did kill Ezran and Callum's mom after all. It's just Zym was there and they didn't want to get into it. Though I'd also point out that Rex is shown to chill out when he learns what happened which makes it seem like he was just talking shit
It's weird, how would they suppose to build new piece, when they want to acknowledge only the humanity wrong doings. It's like this show dropped 'dragons were as bad, even worse. oh SHOOT! dragons are cool though! we can't have dragons being the worse side. quick, ignore dragons being horrible even when it is shown/told you on screen!' Super disappointed, why am I supposed to care about racism when it is either not shown but retold, or no one reacts to racism crimes whatsoever?
@@DeathKitta I think part of it might be Ezran being a tad too positive. It's one thing to keep your chin up, it's another to disregard/deny the negative parts of life. Ezran isn't bad,he just needs to improve on himself a bit
@Bla Bla Yeah, Ezran was being pretty disrespectful on that. Zubeia was the one who ordered Runaan and the other Moonshadow elves to kill Harrow and Ezran. Has she even apologized to Ezran on-screen? Why have Opeli around if he's not going to listen to her 90% of the time?
If it would be made more interesting sure, because as it was now it was just plain boring. Like actually feel like everything wrong with the other 2 plots could've just been fixed with more time, which they wouldve gotten if this subplot just wasn't here at all BECAUSE IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING AND ITS BORING AND ANTI-CLIMAXTIC AS SHIT
As Sarcastic Chorus said a few times, THAT plot should've been the tie-in comic, while we skipped the breakup and possibly even avoid the time skip. Give more time to the actual plot of the season. Maybe set up the Dragon Queen's visit as something to cap the season off with, rather than to start it with. Do the "elf/human racism tensions" thing with more Callum and Reyla travelling through Xadia, actually visiting places that show how vast and sprawling its populations and cultures are on their quest to find Ignis. Maybe Xim's run away to hang out with them and help with this quest, and his mother is frantic and they don't know it's trouble because she's keeping the fact that her son's disappeared quiet while mobilizing magical forces to hunt down his "kidnappers." (She blames the humans, of course.) Suggest in the Claudia plot that what she needs to bring her father back permanently is a source of life and magic, a sacrifice of something unique and precious...and imply that's Xim. The mystery of Aravos should've been Callum's to investigate, because the Dragon Queen wasn't talking. WHen he figured it all out, and realized what Claudia was doing in seeking out his prison, that's when confronting the Dragon Queen near the end should've happened, and telling her what is going on and getting Xim to beg her for help would've let HER be one of those learning the lesson of unity. I don't know if Terry is doomed or not, if Claudia really likes him or not, but I would've had their relationship start and develop throughout the season, in parallel to Callum and Reyla but also probably with Terry's quest being to find a lost family member who is implied - strongly - to have been the random elf Claudia used to bring her father back temporarily.
I had no idea why it was so underwhelming 😩 I was getting so hyped for something so short. If Book 5 comes I hope we have more episodes and the show actually goes places. I still love the show though, it's just so weird. 😕I wouldn't expect this ever but It did do some good stuff like the Dragon Queen's character and the ongoing plot of the Dragon Queen's Quest. You're right the show IS special. . Hopefully Book 5 will be great😞
You should watch the season and form your own opinion. There is nothing worse than bandwagoning on what others tell you about something. Don't make that mistake and ignore all opinions until you form yours
The biggest issue i had with the Sun elf plot was the sheer stupidity of Jinai's brother. The Sun Elf queen marrying a human is only an issue if they were to have a mixed race kid. Then, maybe, it would be a succession issue, with magic being race-based. But no, its a gay marriage. Jinai's brother is next in line, no matter what, now. His children will inherit. And he's already in a relationship with one of the top Masks/Generals. And the whole thing with the Seed. It just stunk of a "if i can't get it within MY lifetime, it doesn't matter" mentality.
And that’s not even taking into account that Amaya and Jinai could decide to have a kid from another Sunelf or even adopt a child that could have been orphaned when Aaravos attacked the capital of the Sun Empire.
@@jaredhigham869 I don’t think that’s how royal succession works, but then again all the human and elf realms in the show seem rather absurdly progressive.
@@jaredhigham869 we don't even know how these things work in the show, it has magic in the show so they may very well be able to have a child that is biologically both of their child. just think of it this way. in real life scientists have figured out a way to take random cells in a human body and convert them into pluripotent cells, cells that can take on the properties of other cells. they can convert the cells from one person into sperm cells and than convert the cells into another person into an egg, than fertilize that "egg" and in theory implant it into the women, allowing for same sex spouses to have a child that is bioligically both parents. so who knows they may be able to use magic to have Jenai and Amaya have a biological chid together
When Soren gave the speech while trying to open the door, I genuinely thought he was going to connect with an arcanum. I just wanted something to happen
no but he GENUINELY sounded like he was connecting to the Earth Arcanum during that. "in times like these the only strength that matters is the strength of your heart," followed by immediately shoving open a door that it takes two stone giants to open. like??? this scene was too big of a deal and he had too much of a focus on him for it to not be important
I thought that his legs were going to temporarily start glowing and grow stronger given that they were healed/infused with dark magic/life force of that deer. Thus giving more weight to the "Dark Magic saved you" dilema that Claudia said. This would deepen his character and inner conflict, and also giving him an upgrade in terms of power/abilities.
What the heck!! I didn't even think of that. The writers really dropped the ball on that one for not including that. It would give Soren so much more meaningful development.
my biggest gripe with this season is one that can be easily fixed in the next season. That being that we never saw any interactions between Soren and Verin when the bad guys captured him. That scene where he just kept yelling no was the first “conversation” the two had since Verin tried to make Soren a lava zombie.
Ye I think this is kinda fixable in the next season, if it's actually a better season first of all... But also they can just kinda flashback it or smth and make that work.
I'm still convinced Claudia is keeping Terry around for spare parts. Like just knowing magic tropes and how dark magic works in Dragon Prince, I can see the spell being like "You transfer the remaining years of Y person into X person" and Elves having longer life spans why wouldn't she try and give her dad that little extra bonus?
honestly, i had been waiting for Claudia to meet Cullum and find out that he can use magic (not dark magic) because if am mistaken this should be a huge blow to her and make her question all the things she did/does when using black magic.
Good point, if her and Viren saw he figured it out with such ease they would’ve thought back to every living thing they had to take the life of for themselves, and since they haven’t, I theorize that Claudia is getting more evil. And since she does still hate elves, perhaps will be using Terry the same way she used the doe, to keep Viren alive a little longer
I think the one thing I most certainly didn't like was Soren didnt get a chance to confront his abuser. Soren's able to be pretty damn cheerful despite the crap he's had to deal with. His mother couldn't stand the sight of him, because Viren didn't let him die, so she left. His father thought he was worthless, because he wasn't a mage and was dimwitted, so he used and gaslit him at every turn. I felt he deserved either making Viren realize he's a crap parent. THe show's probably gonna push for Viren to become a better parent, or you know axe him...again. But even if that's the case, Soren deserves to say his piece, because he's had to hold back how badly he's been treated his entire life.
Oh don't even get me started on Soren. My favorite character, who'd had so much development over the first three seasons, just gets done dirty in this one. Apparently his reaction to finding out his dad came back to life was so unimportant we don't need to see it.
@@deen7530 Yeah, that was one if the worst issues with this series. Soren was reduced to nothing more than comedic relief and he wasn't allowed to be part of any truly serious scenes. He was pushed to the sidelines even though he was an important character with more depth in seasons 1-3
@@TheOptimistDelusion soren was badly hurt as a kid, injury was fatal Viren usdd dark magic to heal him His mother never looked at him the same Edit showrunner info Unless they retconned it But claudia does mention the dark magic saving his life
I have mixed feelings on this season. There was some stuff that I did like. Example; I liked some of the character beats. Example; Viren's PTSD and him humbling himself for a bit, and realizing how short his is on earth and how people should cherish their time was a good writing. Kind of wish they had done more with that. This show is also doing a good job of showing how corrupt Claudia is becoming and her strong dislike of elves. That speech she gave Callum when tied up was great. I'm also glad that the season didn't pretend like everything was okay between the elves and the humans. I appreciated scenes like Erzan's speech about people being angry contrasting with Claudia's battle on the mountain. But then...you have stuff like how the pacing was rushed, and there was barely any time for stuff to breathe. Anyone else feel like the seasons (particularly this one) need more then 9 episodes? Heck; I would be fine with a 13 episode season that trimmed the fat and fleshed out things more. Get rid of trash like the fart scenes and characters messing around, and focus more on scenes with character building and interactions. For example; Soren sees his dad alive and literally his only reaction is, "Nooooo". That's it? Why not give us more depth to Soren seeing that his father has returned? And then when the show does act like it's going to take it seriously, with stuff like Callum saying the Rayla, "I need you to kill me", with his fear of being possessed, it's treated like a joke with Rayla's, "Just don't get controlled". Really writers?
@@JustAJinx-ci6hg Yes, but Claudia had that whole speech to Callum (when she was tied up) about how elves took away everything from humans and how the human and their hatred for elves is justified. It's a good example of how you can date someone of a (in a real life example) a different ethnicity but still have biases towards the race.
my main problem is that the humor and dialoges have become so dumb and meaningless. And every damn scene that could have any emotional impact got wasted by a fart joke or stuff like this. It looks like Netflix dont trust the audience to handle consequences and emotions. They seemingly have learned from Disney
another (though comparatively minor) problem i had with janai and amaya this season: i feel like it was kind of a weird choice that in doing the timeskip the show just like... skipped an entire stage in their relationship. like they went from liking each other in the end of season three to getting engaged in the first episode of season four. ik their romance isn't the most important thing but the fact that they didn't spend ANY time showing them in the dating stage was kinda weird (unless you count one of the short stories they put out but that's on a similar level to rayllum breaking up in a comic lmao).
This is another reason the entire arc feels like forced virtue signalling. "Oh, no, the may have just seemed like friends, but OBVIOUSLY that means they're lovers!" The whole arc should've been off on its own, if done at all. Personally, I don't think it really was worth canonizing, but I could have shrugged at it if it weren't an anchor on an already foundering season.
I know certain people have tendency to call any sort of LGBT representation as pandering... Man, is that what they felt like. Like it would be better to just cut their subplot out entirely, for how little it contributes, so it feels like they are actually just there to say there is a queer couple, IMO.
Katolis has fire and candles for some rituals revolving around death (at least the elites do). It feels odd the the engineer lady and Amaya wouldn’t know this.
I think what's even odder is that they set up a camp for Sun Fire elves, a group that can magically set their own bodies on fire, and plenty of fire based weapons and rituals, yet the architect didn't think of using fire proof materials to build the camp
@@oliviamorales9406 because that would be a waste of resources. This is supposed to be a temporary camp, not a permanent settlement. Resources like that would be better used on actual homes.
@@juanitacanon3120 if you're working with stone, you're building an actual house. Camps use easier to harvest materials like cloth and wood because the point of a camp is that it's meant to be temporary and portable. The architect was likely working with what was available to her and built this camp with that in mind. She's not the one in the wrong here. The sun elf could have lit his mother's candle outside of the camp or better yet, built a fire pit to contain it. He put his religious beliefs before the safety of the group. He was clearly being irresponsible, but he's painted as the victim because of stupid racial coding.
@@dustinvance243 i don’t see it that way , I am an architect and there are various ways you can make temporal shelters out of clay and stones. I’ve seen desert communities build temporal ranches out of sun drying clay. The work of an architect is to build spaces people can live on , you have to talk to the communities to understand their needs and their customs so you can build AROUND them not despite them . Something that work with some doesn’t work with everyone. And building out of flammable materials for literal FIRE elves is so dumb AF. Especially in the dessert where there’s little to not humidity so wood can literally catch itself on fire . Plus let’s not mention that wood is also hard to find in a dessert. This would be like building a summer house in the arctics with the excuse that you can turn the heating on. Unpractical, unfunctional and incompatible with the people living there.
Rayla acts (as if she is) and sounds more mature. If elves live for at least one century then shouldn’t she age slower? Rayla carries herself as if she’s gone to to California and found herself after 12 years while Callum seems like he’s aged 4 months since they broke up.
At least it would justify a bit why she doesn't understand Callum being so upset with her: "I was missing for just two years. Was that really so much for you?"
I just think her arrogance and literally not even speaking on the matter of “i ditched the guy i made fall in love with me for 2 years” kinda dragged her character down this season. She had just about as little f*cks to give about callum as she did in season 1 when they were both in the friend zone, she didn’t even pursue him after he was OBVIOUSLY a bit upset with her. Not to mention I sent the entire season believing she just dipped until she gave ONE line of speech: “I was searching for them for 2 years” and thats it. That’s all we get. After that she basically forgot her relationship even existed (again, as she did within the 2 years previous.. cmon writers, no magic letter spell for moon elves? No message in the sky for Callum? Nothing?) But regardless, the biggest slap in the face is her giving a bigger apology to fakin EZRAN than Callum. She gotta set them priorities smh
@@dryfox11 In the Bloodmoon Huntress novel, a young Rayla had to endure her parents leaving to join the Dragon Guard. Ethari explained her about duty, and why Tiadrin and Lain's choice was to protect their daughter as well. Just like Runaan's work as an assassin. Is not surprising grown up Rayla did the same to Callum while believing it was the right, noble thing: "I'm just keeping you and Ezran safe."
I'll admit, it would have been so much cooler if Calum had seen Aaravos in the mirror by himself, like before Rayla came in. Then he'd have a better reason to bring the mirror to the Dragon Queen's lair and it'd be much scarier for him when someone he thought could do nothing possesses him and claims him to be a puppet!
Yes! Tbh when He was using the book to translate the runs I ws hoping it would do soething, like the sya in the runs was some type of spell or whatever, idk... I would have aceptyed Callum seeing anyhign, but they could have shown Avaraos side of the mirror seeing Callum or sense what was callum doing. Idk, just a littl thing could have been at least some level of build up to the moment Avaron took control over him.
Karim's rebellion was *so* underwhelming. They could've built it up to make it seem more serious than it ended up being, maybe not to the point of *actually harming* Janai and Amaya's relationship(although the angst of that would've been so sweet), but it could've worked as one of the big arcs in the series(re-taking Lux Aurea and dealing with civilian unrest). Instead...well...as I said it was *very* underwhelming.
I kind of liked it BECAUSE it was underwhelming. At a certain point, you just knew that even if he won he wouldn't get anything out of it, which turns him from an actual threat into a petulant whiner that you can enjoy getting what comes to him.
Terry has no real reason to be supporting Claudia. He should know that Viren tried to kill the dragon prince, the destined protector of Xadia, but he just goes along with whatever she does anyways. We see him morally conflicted about killing the sky mage but I feel like he's a little too accepting of Claudia's gleeful gathering of magical flora and fauna just to turn them into dark magic fuel. Maybe he's aware of all this but chooses to go with her because he's in love, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel like his morality doesn't align with his group and their goals and this conflict is not adressed enough.
Honestly, I really liked the season...until it ended so abruptly. I originally didn't look up how many episodes it had, so I was just expecting a story to come out of it before it ended. 9 episodes later, I had barely any story, and no more new ones to watch. I think season 5 might be a redemption, or at least I hope it is going to be. Edit: The show means a lot to me, I've never felt so excited for a season to come out. I'm just saying that I'm looking forward to season 5 MORE than I was season 4.
Me too. My only issue is the fact that it ended too soon! After Rayla got the coins I was ready for more.... guess that's greedy, lol but after three years I was expecting more
I think I read on reddit that the next season is almost ready, so we might get another mediocre season before we can have the chance of getting back on track
Me too. It's not as bad for me but compared to the first arc (Seasons 1-3), it's a bit of a downgrade. The character designs took a bit of getting used to if I'm honest; couldn't even recognize Callum at first. Not sure if anyone felt like the redesigns were off.
14:3015:30 That's my issue as well. The conflict between Xadia and the Pentarchy has been going on for a millennia, and there is plenty of people on both sides who has suffered for it. Their actual grievances are never shown, and are supposed to be content with pretty speeches. For example, what about the Sunfire soldiers who Amaya killed the day she met Janai? Their families had far more reasons to be pissed off about their incoming marriage than some stupid traditions. Did Zubeia ever apologize to Callum amd Ezran for sending the elf assassin team? Are they fine with the chance of rescuing Runaan, Harrow's murderer, from the coin?
I actually think Terry is a terrible character. He actually enables Claudias evil behaviour. He does so much evil in this season and people don't seem to notice, calling him "a moral compas". Terry literally kills a dude by backstabing, enslaves Soren and cheers at Claudia's evil plans. Hell, he knows what Viren did, why would he align with him in the first place.
"Does so much evil"? Are you serious here? While he *did* kill someone, that was only because that person was about to *kill his girlfriend* and let's be honest here, *no one* would be able to just be a bystander when put in a scenario where you have to act or else your significant other will be killed in front of you, so can we really fault him there? And even after he did that he was clearly shaken by having actual blood on his hands and is traumatized about it, I mean the dude broke down *crying* after he did that, which is more remorseful than anything Viren has ever shown for any of his murderous acts. And "enslaved" Soren? Dude, Terry just tied up Soren with vines, he wasn't even seriously hurt, he was just bound for a couple hours max, stop being melodramatic and using words without actually knowing what they mean. If the simple act of restraining someone counts as "enslavement" to you than you seriously need to read a dictionary. Also cheering at Claudia's "evil plans"? Ah yes, because Claudia committed the *vile act* of… opening a cocoon. Truly that action is *Hitler levels* of *EVIL.* Like seriously, calling Claudia full blown evil is just thinking with a black and white narrative where no shades of grey exists. Like the only significantly cruel act that Claudia commits this season happens at the end and even then he *IMMEDIATELY CALLS HER OUT FOR IT.* To act as if Terry is this sinful villain for merely being affiliated with Claudia is just being a melodramatic fanatic who believes that merely breathing next to a villain makes you evil.
I just don't understand how an elf would be ok with hanging around dark mages. But well, the show doesn't care enough to show us more about the cultures of each elf and human nation/kingdom.
@@ryancarson6962 why are you so pressed and comparing a fictional character to hitler- terry is still definitely evil he is actively helping the people trying to wipe out his species
Honestly, Rex Igneous was my favorite part of the season. I was like, "Finally! An actual relevent obstacle in their path with common sense!" And then it ended stupidly with him attacking everyone when clearly there was only one enemy. Hurray, I guess. The whole thing would have more impact for me if Claudia had died, leading to Viren becoming evil again.
Haha...yea, Rex Igneous goes from "I am going to kill you because I don't like your gifts" to "You are my best friends, I'll do whatever I can to help you hohoho" to "I am going to incinerate each and everyone of you because Rayla gave me a little prick on my finger" and then just shrugs and leaves when Zubeia shows up. Maybe he was off his meds.
@@Shageemusic He wasn't going to kill them for the gifts. And he never called them his best friends--he walked out the moment they asked for the location to the most dangerous person in the world, which was a very reasonable thing to do. He is probably the only dragon who still thinks human can be good and he looked down upon dragons who would try to start unnecessary fights with them. He showed sympathy when he learned about what happened to said dragon, but never once did he promise to give them what they wanted. He never once said he was their best friends. He also never did threaten to kill them--but he did become angry after he was stabbed. Would you be? Sure, it was stupid that he immediately decided everyone in the room was his enemy. He was rational up until that point, but the main characters were also warned very early on that he was very irritable, so it's no real surprise, espescially when he was grumpy since day one. Zubeia yelling at him also just proved that they had been telling the truth, so he had no reason to continue quarreling with him and so he returned to his cave. He's a grumpy old man but he's the smartest and most believeable character in the series, and that's pretty much it.
@Bla Bla There's potential for it to happen that way if written well enough. Honestly, I thought the whole season was leading up Claudia dying and Viren taking it as inspiration to become evil again.
"As wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle" is probably the best way to describe this season. Its 3-4 episodes worth of actual content stretched into a full season and half the content that IS there feels almost half-baked because it has to make room for all the diversions along the way The Sun Elves storyline had so much potential, but it felt hollow because of how little setup there was *before* sh!t went sideways The "Dragang" and the antagonists are both on a glorified fetch quest with constant detours And the bits of lore and screentime we get on Aarovos , while interesting, don't make up for how pointless the first 3 episodes feel.
To be fair, I feel like Rayla feeling like a “shadow of her former self” might be intentional, and also very realistic to what one would do if they were very “down bad” like Rayla is
Yeah. It's understandable, but extremely boring. We got no grudges that affect decisions in the story, no emotional discussions, no drama. It's just a full season of side glances that pauses character development for seemingly no effect. It could have been used to mature Callum and Rayla and as a parallel to the sunfire plot - an illustration of how difficult reconciling the humans and elves is going to be if even these two struggle with it. Instead, both issues are apparently forgotten after episode 9. Callum hugs Rayla at the end and Janai tells her people (again) to fleave the past behind and just believe harder. We'll do it with the power of friendship! The show skips the important lessons and offers platitudes instead, changing barely anything about the status quo - which made the entire season feel pointless.
@@Stefan-xt5sk You making the assumption that all is forgiven with hug. Which not only is dumb but also naive. That is a problem in regards to your lack of objective assessment not with the show
@@bfedezl2018 Rayla didn't seem to have issues restarting their relationship, it was only Callum who blocked her out. His frequent glances and short smiles towards Rayla indicate to me that he already forgave her long ago, but just didn't want to admit it to himself because it would in a way invalidate the pain he has gone through. The shock of thinking she was actually dead when he wasted time sulking shook him out of this. I hope the conflict won't be forgotten in future seasons, but this essentially reverted their relationship to where it could have already been at the beginning of the season or maybe a few episodes in - if they had dealt with the issue instead of refusing to talk.
The biggest mistake of this season, to me, was the exposition dump on Aaravos. I loved that scene from somewhere in the previous seasons where Veran goes to the library to investigate and the pages ominously fill with ink to destroy any info that he would've been able to find on this mysterious figure. And then the dragon queen just spoilers all of us by spilling all the beans at once. Seriously.
I was super hyped for this season because when I heard that there was a two year time skip, I wanted to see Callum's magic and how he improved. There was such a buildup for Callum learning and using magic throughout the first three seasons, and the scene where he grew wings was so beautiful- but he only uses them once, to fly from one side of the castle to the other. Did he forget about them when they sent Zym to be their "eyes", resulting in his capture? Why risk the Dragon Prince when you have someone else who can fly? Besides his wings, I really wish there was more of a showcase of his magic. And I really wish Zym could speak, and acted less like a dog. He's cute and all- but he would've stopped being a mascot, and actually become a character for once. He immediately understood English as a hatchling, so what's stopping him from learning it over the span of two years?
The time skip was iffy. It seemed that the main plot that really benefited form the time skip was the plot with Amaya and Janai’s but even then it didn’t need a full 2 years. They also could’ve let the audience see more of their relationship form. I get that there were seeds of a relationship but we didn’t see them grow together into romance. I guess kinda the plot of Rayla coming back and things being awkward the time skip kinda helps. The time skip was a choice that I think wasn’t used in the best way. Time skips are difficult to handle but it didn’t seem super necessary. The main thing that I thought was crazy was that Claudia was dating Teri. I like him as a character but the dating didn’t need to happen especially off screen. I would not have thought Claudia would date an elf at this point in the story. He could’ve been someone that Claudia met and he helped her out with getting certain ingredients for her dad. He could’ve been one of the few elves that is more on Claudia’s side. I do at least appreciate that the writers were using him to help with some character development for both Claudia and Viren. They didn’t need to have him date Claudia. They could’ve had him be someone that Claudia thinks is useful to keep around bc he’s on her side. If they wanted to do a possibility of romance then maybe Teri could have a crush on Claudia and he could still save her and kill the guard. It doesn’t make sense for Claudia to start the season reciprocating the feelings partly bc she likely would have been too focused on saving her dad to care about romance. He could still have that conversation with Viren. They could’ve had either Viren or Teri get caught by Rayla. Once the cave was falling in. It could’ve been either one pointing out that Claudia was being too mean. If it was Viren then it could’ve been from him being shocked that his daughter who used to be a lot nicer was being super mean. If they had Teri to kinda help with his arc then that makes sense for him to look at it that way. I guess Teri does make more sense to be captured in that moment bc if it was Viren then Rayla likely would’ve straight up stabbed him. Maybe she would spare him for the sake of getting answers. They could still do the whole but don’t you want your parents back they are in this coins type thing.
I thought that the Sun elves plot was only cool for the world building and least getting some lore of the Sun Elves race. But I personally would much rather watch them retake Lux Aoria (whatever its called) and yet here I wonder WTF can’t they just take their damn shiny castle back. It’s not like there’s any new army of Darkness blocking it, but I guess they don’t have enough strong Fire magic or something to purify their old Sun C
I was literally saying the same thing about Janai and Amaya's relationship feeling like we didn't get to see it form at all on the upload of the first episode. Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels that way about it
I didn't mind season 4 and I don't think the series is ruined now or anything like some do, for me it felt like season one, where a lot of it was just set up for what'll come in later parts. Honestly when I rewatched the first three seasons in preperation for four you really do notice how much better it flowed together, making me think they probably write the three as one big season but only release parts. Which mind you is a problem and they shouldn't do that but I get it. Having said the pacing was still really slow but I thought that about season one and the following seasons developed the characters better and the pacing was smoother so I'll wait until next season to really complain too much though I get why people are upset.
The vibes of s4 was completely different. It was childish to the point of immaturity with the jokes they had. Terry’s character and entire existence was pure pandering to the trans community but not even done well. The relationship between Terry Claudia and Viren made zero sense. Claudia gives Soren a whole speech about how Elves could never be their friends, they see them as lesser beings, weak and pathetic but the very next second is “Thanks baby” smooching on her boyfriend? Terry’s moral compass is all over the place. He’s fine with Claudia killing magical creatures left and right and using their corpses as fodder for dark magic but when he kills someone himself, suddenly, he’s this soft baby boy who has big feelings and needs coddling. Viren being sympathetic to Terry’s trans story after a whole arc where we was willing to turn his own son into a monster to fight against and massacre the elves? Okay. Sure. And Soren not having a SINGLE piece of interaction with his Dead Dad after 2 years was a cop out of what would have been a very heavy conversation (even if it was short). A whole scene of black screen because they need to be in the dark so the creatures don’t get them? Wow. This is only SOME of the many points that really really made this season Bad. And I disagree with “writing the first three season as one big season and releasing it in parts is a problem.” This is how you have cohesion in a story. They should already know how this entire story plays out and ends so that all the plot holes are addressed. This is why Soren being gaslit by Viren in s3 and tricking Claudia into believing Soren misunderstood Viren about killing the princes was so good. They built the dialogue for that in s1 so that it could be twisted to benefit Viren. This s4 feels like people who haven’t really seen s1-3 were brought in, given a summary of what happened and were told to do whatever they want with s4. It was Bad dude.
@@nhi3259 I've always found the jokes to be a low point of the series, most of them tend to come off as really childish and ridiculous especially any with Claudia and Soren so that didn't really bother me. I agree on Claudia's speech to Soren like I was assuming maybe the end of the season would reveal she's just using Terry and doesn't actually want to date him or something but she took his opinions seriously so who knows, maybe that'll still be revealed later but for now yeah her speech doesn't really make sense. As for Terry and Viren though, I actually think they're handled pretty well, Terry is emotional and Viren tends to stay closed up but both of them are changing. Viren because of his death is starting to see things in a different light and though parts of his original self are still there I think him listening to Terry more as the season goes on is part of him opening up more. With Terry I read it more like it's one thing when Claudia is just using bugs and shit for dark magic, it's another when he actually has to kill a guy, at the end it was just to save Claudia but still he doesn't like killing people/elves. I also don't really see how he was pandering since him being trans barely came up. Like I forgot he was until I seen people talking about it Also they probably did write this season with the next ones in mind hell the thing people are criticizing is that it was a lot of set up, if the next seasons don't build on this you can find me here but until then I'll wait before pretending this season didn't really matter or isn't doing anything.
I don't know that I can say I felt it ruined anything. But it definitely made me not care about what comes next as much. I still enjoy the earlier seasons but its shown that the issues I had with them are not going away and that I just might not like the series. I orrigianally watched it as the spiritual successor of Atla and have had to admit its really not that. And this season made me confront that I only really like dragon prince conceptually and all of the execution has felt hamfisted or fell flat.
These are the questions that came to my mind when the camp sideplot began: Why are the sun elves living in camps made by humans two years after their capital city was taken and the army that took it no longer exists? Can't they retake their capital city because their sun is corrupted? If so, in which ways does that affect them? Do they lose their sun powers under the black light? Is it a reminder of their failure to protect it? Isn't there any other city of sun elves that they could make their new capital city? Did all the sun elves just live in a single city? Are they making efforts to build themselves a new city? How much progress was made in 2 years? Why was the camp made by a human architect? Are the sun elves incapable of making their own camps?
There are so many questions and implications about the world and the previous events that happened and the show doesn’t give them any time to breathe let alone answer them 😢
I have to disagree about the Karen and the candle thing. It was so incredibly forced and cringe. As I've seen other people point out, how does the architect in a Sunfire elf camp not realize that there's gonna be fire everywhere, especially having been living with them for 2 years at this point? And how, in these 2 years, did she not already know about the candle tradition for funerals? That entire plot point was conflict for the sake of conflict. I absolutely hated it.
Honestly, the sun elf plot felt like it takes place a month maybe two after the sun city fell. Like, why are all these problems only now coming to light. Meanwhile the other plots feel like they been a thing for longer then two years at points. There a huge pacing problem between the pots and it jarring.
The thing that really stood out to me this season was the writing. It felt very,,,,,unnatural and expositional, especially in the first couple episodes. I haven’t rewatched seasons 1-3 in a while, so maybe I’m wrong, but it felt so weird and contrived. Like, it would constantly tell us what was happened rather than show us,,,,and then tell us a couple more times in the same scene, if you didn’t get it the first 5 times. They refuse to let you work stuff out on your own, and instead have to spoon-feed every single instance, as though you won’t understand it from context clues alone. The scene that sticks out the most is right at the end of episode 2, when Callum discovers how the tome of translation works. He slams his hand down and knocks some ink on one side of the page, which then magically appears on the second side. At this point, you’re thinking “oh, that’s cool, you write something on one side and then it translates for you.” That’s where it should end - especially considering that Callum is an intelligent character in canon - but no, Bait has to visibly notice this, push the ink towards Callum to get him to notice, basically going “did you see that?! Something interesting happened!! Watch and we’ll explain it multiple times!!”. And then he has to say “What? That ink wasn’t on both sides? How did it get there?”. And then a camera shot to the mirror, incase you didn’t already guess what he’s gonna use it for. And then back to Callum with “Oh! Wow! You write something one side, and it translates it over! How can I use this?”. And then another shot of the mirror, but this time a close up of the runes, just to really hammer home what he’s doing, because they audience are clearly too stupid to understand what’s going on :). And then we finally get “I can use this to translate the runes on the mirror! Wow! Thanks bait!”. This scene lasted about 4-5 minutes, but it honestly could have been 2. AND IT DOESNT EVEN FUCKIN MATTER, BECAUSE ITS INFORMATION THAT WE ALREADY KNOW, AND A MUCH MORE INTERESTING PLOT POINT IS INTRODUCED IN THE SAME SCENE WITH RAYLA’S RETURN. The endless over explaining and spoon-feeding feels more at home in a kids show, along with all the second-hand cringe I got from literally most of Callum’s scenes, but it just doesn’t fit the vibe of the earlier seasons. The voice acting and conversations between characters also feel quite stiff and unnatural - pretty much all apart from Soren, who is pretty much the only character I can sit and enjoy without getting bored at this point - but I’m hesitant to blame the voice actors, as I have a lot of respect for them, and the dialogue in general is a large part of what makes it feel so stiff, because it’s not how regular people (or even the characters from the last 3 seasons) interact with each other. Of course people can still in enjoy the season, and I’m glad that they were able to find some happiness in it, but it just felt so clunky and contrived and unnecessary that I found it difficult to personally enjoy and get invested in it.
I am most worried about the decline of the animation quality. While I have hopes for the story to pick up I'm not sure if we are going back to season 3 animation quality. In this season all movements felt robotic, the facial expressions were less animated, the textures looked shiny instead of the painted look of the previous seasons.
Agreed, the show seems to have trouble deciding what it’s audience is. The show’s dialogue is meant for children but there are some scenes that are absolutely not. For example the scene where the sister of the current sun elf queen died. That architect getting their hands scorched. Kalium getting possessed. And many more. There’s blood and excessive violence. Sometimes I wish that the show just committed to being for a mature audience.
The seasons from 1-3 have always had jokes and comedy for 70% of the content, that is literally the same as Avatar the last Airbender where goofy and kiddy content was 80% of every episode and there were about maybe 10 episodes where the plot was 90% serious and broken up with small bits comedy cause that’s actually how really good shows do it and not become stale pieces of crap that take themselves too seriously... The drama with real and callum was needed because it sets up the whole dynamic of what we give up for revenge Which is a huge plot point for the show, in how vengeance only keeps a cycle of hate and pain going Rayla spent two years trailing Claudia after she could not find Virren’s body, becasue she had to make sure he was dead, as she blamed him for killing her parents the cost of her revenge was Callum’s love and etc When she comes back, Callum is the one having a hard time with letting go of his anger to be with her, until the end when he thinks she was killed and he realizes how pointless that was that is character development,
@@sepsam4556 I’m sorry sepsam i didn't realize you were the administrator of what humor was and is i must have forgotten that humor is subjective and thus not a real good measurement for criteria
The writing seems way more clunky this season. Maybe I miss the single episode arch’s of the characters learning something at the end of each episode, but I see it all starting with them failing to establish Rayla and Callum’s relationship. (I did not read the comic and was very confused.) At the very beginning they failed to set their king pin and at the last episode, the dominos fail to fall on their dramatic arch. Which is funny because they could’ve solved it with only a few tweaks. Imagine this: we flash back to a few days after the battle at the mountain. The celebrating is done and the morning rises on the day everyone is packing to leave. Rayla had trouble sleeping, so she has been up all night, sitting on a rock, thinking. Callum comes to tell her that the armies are packing and moving out, going back home. Rayla confirms her fears that Viren is still out there. Callum tells her the searches have been called off, but tries to assure her that their group would be ready if Viren or Claudia ever came back. Rayla can’t sit with that. She tells Callum she intends to go on her own to find Viren and Claudia, arrest them and bring them to justice. Callum and Rayla have an argument. It ends with Callum saying he is going home with Ezran. Rayla says she’s going on alone. They part ways sadly. Without this scene, we have no clue where their relationship is at! We have no idea why it should feel so awkward when Rayla suddenly shows up in Callum’s room two years later. (Also Callum nerding about magic when he believes there is a threat to his brother’s life does not make any sense. We know he likes magic! Him being high mage isn’t enough of a hint? Or him studying the magic mirror in his office? Callum would drop everything and not let anything get in his way if he believed Ezran was going to die right in that moment. That doesn’t make sense.) Anyway, now it makes sense why Callum is keeping his distance from Rayla. We feel his pain, but not at the expense of our empathy for Rayla too. Now their dynamic is set. Rayla is pursuing Callum, but Callum isn’t letting her in. She is trying to bridge the gap between them and she sees Callum is not. At this point, she should be the one trying to ‘get him back’. She could even be overcompensating and nervous and awkward, worrying what she could do to make it up to him. To prove her intentions. She never left to not be with him, she just needed to know Viren was dead. Or to find Claudia and arrest her. Something to conclude the story. While she is pursing him so hard, Callum is still keeping his distance, being rather cold at times. He could even say something very hurtful to her. Then by the time Rayla is alone with Soren and he brings up Callum, we understand why Rayla is feeling some anger and despair for their relationship. “Have I done too much damage? “ She is now pulling away from Callum and the pain the relationship is causing, hence why she’s reluctant to talk about it with Soren and ends up walking off on her own. Then by the time Rayla and Callum see Viren in Umber Tor, they can’t believe he’s alive. Rayla is so shocked that she can’t say anything. She stands there, torn. Go after Viren or stay with the group? Callum sees this conflict in her, squeezes her hand and tells her to go after him, nodding his approval. Touched, she squeezes his hand back, giving him a kiss on the cheek before running into the cave. Callum is slightly worried but has faith she’ll be okay. (The rest of the series is the same, but needs more dramatic flare, timing and performance.) So, with Rayla pursuing Claudia, she holds Terry at knife point. Claudia in turn, holds out the prison coins of Rayla’s foster dad and parents. Claudia threatens to throw the coins in the lava. (If we feel good about Rayla’s choice, then we should feel the despair of her not getting her family back. If we feel bad about Rayla’s choice, then we feel her loss was somewhat justified. Because we are supposed to want her family back, I’m going with the former, as a prompt.) Rayla thinks about the offer, but says she won’t make a deal with her. She doesn’t want to let Claudia continue her evil. Claudia throws the coin bag. But in that moment, we understand where Rayla’s loyalty truly lies. She lets Terrry go and jumps to catch the bag. For once, she is choosing her family over her duty. But upon catching the bag, Rayla sees the coins are just rocks. Claudia laughs, still with the bag, leaving Rayla despairing. She chose duty and lost her family. Then when Rex Ignious spits out Rayla’s knife on the ground, Callum rushes to grab it and cries over it, thinking Rayla didn’t get out of the mountain safely. He thinks that kiss was the last time he’d see her again. But then Rayla cries out from under the rubble and everyone rushes to dig her out. Callum holds her shoulder then drops into a hug. “I’m glad you came back,” he says, relieved.
This video really put into perspective for me how frustrating it is that the only characters that matter are the main characters. They constantly talk about "the people" all over the place, but "the people" never actually get to make their perspective heard. All we get are the elites and nobles talking on their behalf, seemingly just presuming to know what their feelings are without asking them.
Korra and The Dragon Prince are those few shows perfect for critical dissection. Its this mix of good and bad that some how exist together without destroying each other. Yet problems continue, and that ATLA cred still provides a comparison of when they knew how to fit pieces together.
Korra is simply worse then Avatar which is a high bar to reach anyway. The dragon prince is the epitome of mid. Mid animation, mid themes, mid pacing, and mid world building
Unfortunately, I think The Dragon Prince and Korra show the weaknesses of the creators when they're apart. The Dragon Prince had good writing and likeable characters which made it seem like the simple story was going somewhere deeper, even if the world building, lore, and themes aren't that interesting. Korra inherited the intriguing lore from ATLA and had it's own interesting ideas and themes, but the writing is so terrible it makes the characters unlikeable/boring and the story worse. It really goes to show how these projects are a group effort.
If im being completely honest the Janai and Amaya plot was my favorite out of all of them. The other ones just felt so rushed and unimportant, and while the sunfire elf plot wasn't super important to the actual storyline, it was the best developed one
I agreed, but once he pointed out a couple of the flaws, it was really obvious how bad the flaw is. We never see ANYTHING from any unnamed or side characters aside from the karen. Having the guards mumble about how brutish those elves were for doing this. Or, seeing the unnamed elves actually complaining in the background about Janai's leadership, justifying her brother's action. Also, for him to act like the brother is upset over the gay marriage is... strange. His brother isn't upset over the gay marraige. He's upset over the interracial marriage. And ripping on him for being the only actual racist elf we get to see matters.
@@ebilgaming I personally thought that the Sun elves plot was only cool for the world building and least getting some lore of the Sun Elves race. But I personally would much rather watch them retake Lux Aoria (whatever its called) and yet here I wonder WTF can’t they just take their damn shiny castle back. It’s not like there’s any new army of Darkness blocking it, so what’s the point of keeping it as New Mordor now, but I guess they don’t have enough strong Fire magic or something to purify their old Sun Core.
It's a nice side plot in theory, but we see so little and nothing changes between the beginning and the end. Janai offered nothing except platitudes and the power of friendship to appease the people who apparently hate each other (which we never really see). This show of leniency, without anything tangible for people to rally behind, should have cemented her as a weak leader in the eyes of many people, spreading discontent even more. It would be interesting to see her wrestle with what she thinks is best for her people and what she needs to compromise to stay in power long enough to achieve that goal. What if the growing discontent pressured her into promising to retake Lux Aurea despite having no idea how to do that yet? Where would she go for answers? I want to see those things!
I think it makes perfect sense for Callum to feel the way he does about Rayla still. Your first love is felt very intensely, specially as a 14 yr old, and in a medieval world it's a lot harder to meet someone else I imagine. It's not like he has tinder.
He's a prince though? I'm sure he definitely already saw some of his potential suiters to continue the bloodline. And also him being practically the prime minister now also boost his attractiveness to the ladies
@@Nameah321 That’s exactly what I was thinking, 2 years and that broad still hasn’t come back? SURELY some girls have been hitting up the first human ever to learn elf magic, on top of him yk BEING A PRINCE. At least there was somewhat a love triangle in the earlier seasons when Callum was still into Claudia, but now that she’s evil in his eyes, he just continues to struggle with Rayla-feels. I assume they’re trying to show that he’s committed and hasn’t moved on as it’s not easy to do, but would that “love” formed in a few weeks really last over 2 years with that many other options on the table? Kinda implausible if you ask me
Yeah I'm fine with them still being in love with each other deep down. It's totally fine and even expected for romantic relationships in fantasy adventure stories to be a bit heightened and dramatic compared to real life romance. But they needed to show us more of that conflict. Honestly that's the one main problem with almost everything in this season; nothing got the screen time it needed. We needed a flashback where we saw Callum the day Rayla left; we needed to see Rayla struggling with her decision on her own in the wilderness after she left; and we needed a few actual meaningful conversations between them about it after she came back. It's like we got the cliff-notes and it makes the plot-line lose all impact.
My biggest problem was the timeskip and how it made for too much "tell" and not enough "show". When Claudia told Viren about all the thing she's been doing and "I had to do things I never imagined I would be able to do", that's just bad writing because we didn't SEE any of it. It's why I didn't like Amaya and Janai getting together because we only just saw them starting to become friends and now they're getting married? imagine if we saw Season 1 Callum and Rayla, who are only starting to just get used to the idea of Elves and Humans being friends, suddenly say they love each other.
biggest problem is that aaravos only gets one proper scene (besides the intro), i think they could of at least included very short quick shots of him throughout or at least a quick shot at the end of the season since viren and the gang got the map
I was so confused over when Rayla and callum broke up. Now I know when, and I’m ticked off. I felt like I missed an entire season 3.5 the whole time I was watching. 😑
Yep, agree completely. I was quite disappointed with this "season." It felt like nothing actually happened. The proposal and wedding plot line felt totally out of nowhere and awkward. And the most unforgivable part of this season was that it's literally named after Aaravos and he's only 1 scene in the entire "season" just to possess Callum for a minute while he villain monologues.
thank god for this video. i was seriously going crazy over how disappointing season 4 was and how no one seemed to feel the same. there are still points in this that i don't necessarily agree with, but it's so therapeutic hearing my issues being voiced by someone else too
The comic actually passed me off. They put one of the most IMPORTANT story for 2 of the MAIN CHARACTERS in a side comic that not all fans can get it killed the moment.
What the hell did they do to Rayla? From a daunting, funny and complete character I admired in the first three seasons to a dainty lady who only expects in a kinda obsessed way to get Callum's attention. I can't get over this. No matter what next seasons will show us, I think that what creators managed to create is already wretchedly destroyed for good.
Almost all of the problems are because of the time skip. Imagine if we had begun on the 2 days instead of 2 years. We could have the aftermath of the battle (what happened to all the magic infused humans?), the start of the camp building (giving us REAL tension between the Sun elves and humans. We could see the elves refusing to take orders from human carpenters, workspeople etc), we could have had the dragon queen return the princes to the human kingdom (more tension, but like 'Here is the mate of the dragon that killed our king and queen, but... wait, she's brought the kind and prince back!?' to give us the whole 'letting go of previous anger' thing. We could then have HER discover the mirror, or, like, have Callum (or Soren) bring it up, with her reacting in a panic/shock about it because Aaravos, giving us a more natural flow into that, without the whole book of translation time waste. Our raylum could have been the pair reluctant to split up with Callum accompanying whomever to go and find Rex, while Rayla remains with the queen as a guard, but both of them sorta wanting to be with the other. Meanwhile, we could have skipped the whole mountain climb thing and just have the staff be with Claudia, and start THAT storyline with them waiting for the right time to open the cocoon. Our Viren plot could be him refusing to touch the staff and showing regrets and maybe not bringing it up with Claudia, who he sees as taking on his mantle. maybe not wanting to disappoint her by revealing that he has lost his drive/desire. We could even have Terry meeting up with some other earthbloods to drive home THAT conflict, maybe even doing the 'kill an elf to protect Claudia' with a bully of his? Could even have had the bully gang be called the Turfs as a fun tongue in cheek joke. But the ending of this season should have been episode 4 or 5 at most. This felt like half a season's worth of content. And it's a shame, because there was a lot of hype, for a middling at best set of filler.
I've heard that a book they released is supposed to be the content of the time skip, but I didn't get into this to purchase and read a book, but to watch the contained story they have on the screen.
This sounds like a way better handling of the material and I see a fellow hater of the time-skip, nice. The only "correction" (if we want to call this that) I would make is that Terry needed to be introduced to us and have time to develop feelings for Claudia ,and viceversa, especially if we started two days after the end of season 3.
@@MrReset94 They seriously did nothing to explain his motives. They try to play him like an innocent cinnamon roll, but he knows exactly who Viren and Claudia are. He knows what they're trying to accomplish. What possible reason could this man have to basically betray everyone? Is he just simping that hard for a girl with a fart fetish?
My problem isn't even the 3 main plots in theory, it's just that nothing feels fleshed out. In the previous seasons, to me it always felt like plots at least had consequences on the other plots and while you can kinda say that about the viren and dragon plots (not rly tho imo) the sun elf plot is just completely removed from everything. The world just doesn't feel connected anymore to me. Idk.
the real problem is that by the time you're feeling like something is going to happen the episode is over and so is the momentum... I really hope they fix these issues
My main problem with this season’s setup, is that everything that is happening with the humans and elves and dragons adjusting to live with each other. A lot of the problems they come across feel like conflicts they’d face in the beginning and not 2 years later. Like the whole human burning out the sun elf’s ceremony candle, I feel like that whole interaction would have happened in the beginning when humans and elves started out. It’s 2 years later and you’re telling me the elves haven’t at least attempted to share with the humans of their customs and vice versa? Or how come it took Ezran 2 years for the Queen of the dragons to visit the human kingdoms? Wouldn’t this be more in the start of the 2 years when they’ve made peace? Also if Rayla left Callum because she felt Viran wasn’t dead, how did she know he was alive when it took 2 years for Claudia to bring him back from the dead? The only realistic thing was Callum’s distant behavior once Rayla made an appearance after being gone for 2 years.
Hey! Don’t sell yourself short. I’m one of those people that discovered you through the Dragon Prince. I really fell in love with the content and the show. So, I’m sad that this season didn’t live up to the others. Fortunately, I do have hope for the following seasons, too. I’m still invested in the world and characters, so I will remain cautiously optimistic. Keep up the great work! I’m looking forward to the next video. Sending lots of love from Japan! Take care!
I hate how you have a buildup through 3 seasons, they established a relationship, and it is thrown out the window for a pointless side quest and drama.
For me, the major problem that this season (and a lot of other shows now that I think about it) is that the writers are sacrificing a lot for the plot. Because the season is only 9 episodes long and there are three major plots going on simultaneously, it's hard to get invested when it feels like not enough time was dedicated to each one. We can't focus on things like Callum and Rayla's rocky relationship, or the tension still remaining with elves and humans because it keeps getting pushed to the side in favor of the main plot. 9 episodes just isn't enough to handle everything.
SPOILERS AND RANTING: I think what really set my expectations for this season was the whole mountain climb ep. When Claudia says they need to go get his staff and it's on top of the mountain, I'm just wondering "oh, why didn't she do it sometime in the last 2 years? She even has like, a sidekick now. There must be some magic ritual reason that he has to get it himself or something. Maybe she'll explain on the way?" But after enduring that recurring fart joke (..why?) fear of heights, a whole existential crisis moment and 2 anxiety attacks where he just passes out, they basically get to the top and she tells him she doesn't need his help, and they'll just meet him at the bottom. WTF?? A. ) Why wait till you're at the top of the mountain to do this when he's clearly been struggling the entire time? B. ) It took you 2 years to bring this character back from death, and he has literally blacked out twice during the climb. But you think it's totally fine for him to just do the whole descent by himself??? What truly broke me, though, was when Claudia (who has presumably been killing a lot of innocent creatures lately) plays a trick on one of the heroes to save Terry who's being held hostage with a knife to his neck. And it is only THIS point, this incident where she actually doesn't end up hurting anyone and tries to save a life - HIS LIFE - that Terry thinks Claudia has gone too far. This is a character btw, that KILLED someone to save her earlier in the same season. just...what? And I know this is just B plot stuff but Amaya did that chick dirty not defending her AT ALL. Even saying nothing would've been less cruel. The architect was insensitive, but she said it herself that there was a rule about open flames within the camp that the elf broke. And she even pointed out that the reason for the rule was to protect the people living in flammable cloth tents. Surely there's an argument to be made that protecting the lives of hundreds of currently living people might have priority over a memorial for one singular already dead person, especially to one unfamiliar with the tradition. The council was comprised of Sun-Elves so it wouldn't be shocking if they still deemed her guilty despite any defense. Then Janai could step in and be the merciful leader, without making Amaya look like a total jerk for not even trying when a life was on the line. Janai could even show off her wisdom by explaining that her indentured servitude to build a shrine is not just a merciful alternative to execution, but also a useful solution to this problem in the future - a place for the Sun Elves to hold their ceremonies safely and a place for humans to respectfully learn about their religious customs. ( I don't know why this bothered me so much but it just felt out of character for Amaya ) Okay, rant over. Thanks for coming to my TED talk lol
On the Terry point, while I do think it was a weird moment with Claudia, I believe so far he could explain her actions as having no other choice. Even killing he did because Claudia's life was on the line but at the end Claudia tricked Rayla and was going to keep Rayla's parents hostage and was just messing with her
I think the issue with the Architect was that she was unwilling to learn, not that she didn't know. The elf straight up explains the situation and then she douses his recently dead mother's flame right after being told how terrible that would be for them.
I’m sorry but being an architect myself, the first thing you do is talk with the communities you’re working for, so you understand their needs and can design around them, that girl built a inflammable camp for FIRE elves , like seriously, I thought she deserved everything she got lol 😂
@@juanitacanon3120 I was SO confused about this as well! Like, they are called FIRE elves for a reason, it is not that difficult to come to the conclusion that fire might be important to them 😂 And all ofthis could have gone more in-depth about human culture and elf culture clashing/them not knowing much about the other. Like, more than just this _one_ conflict. Even if it all ended well in the end it felt lackluster because I imagine there still must be so many differences between both cultures that could make humans and elves clash. And the architect's dumbness made it basically impossible to understand/feel sorry for her
On the topic of things that don't really click with the season: How does Viren know who Rex Igneous is? Remember that moment in Season 2 or 3 (I can't remember which one because I haven't done a proper rewatch) where Viren is riding to the divide between the human lands and Xadia? Aaravos is asking about whether or not Viren killed Averzandum and Viren goes "I've killed no one of such name" implying he never knew the proper name of the dragons who the humans primitively referred to by primal names like "Thunder?" Yeah I remember. If he didn't know Averzandum's name, how the hell does he know the Great Earth Archdragon Rex Igneous? It's kinda implied that the archdragons all know each other so if Viren had some book about the archdragons he'd know Thunder's actual name. It's nitpicky, I know, but internal consistency is important when you're making a huge fantasy universe.
I actually really liked the Sunfire Elves story-line. I liked that it at least *tried* to address the human/elf racism we keep being told is happening. I also liked how Amaya's speech simultaneously acknowledged that the architect chose to be cruel while still asking for mercy. And I loved how they actually tried to improve human/elf relations by having the architect build the shrine, rather than just making yet another speech about connections and feelings. But I also agree with your criticism that we keep being told by Prince Karim (and only Prince Karim) the camp is a powder-keg waiting to erupt and that everyone's doubting Janai's leadership... and we never actually see it other than the one inciting incident. You'd think there would be at least some people protesting at the trial. And then all nuance goes out the window when it's revealed that Prince Karim just wants to stage a coup. It's also weird that this is only happening *now* after the two-year time-skip, rather than anytime beforehand. Were there seriously no human/elf incidents at all until now? Overall though, it at least tried to treat the human/elf racism as a problem and address it instead of just talking about it and making the occasional speech. I really wish the rest of the show did more of that.
You hit basically every nail on the head for my problems this season so kudos to ya for that! There are a ton of fan works that are far better excuses for season 4 than what we actually got, and while that makes me love the fandom more, it speaks very poorly for the writers, who I hope get their shit together for season 5. Also. Back in 2018-2019 I started watching your sarcastic summaries and am proud to have supported your channel! Keep up the great work
I got to playtest The Dragon Prince RPG at GenCon'21 and I got the vibe from Season 4 that it was written to flesh out their world in direct support for their RPG game
I am going to be honest; this season killed my interest in the show. I have no interest in seeing the rest anymore. they had 3 years to look through and consider the praise and criticisms that the show received, and what do they do? double down on the worst aspects (dark magic is always evil, telling and not showing, adding the dam lemur, etc) while moving away from the interesting aspects (Rayla and Callums relationship, grey morality, world building and so on). plus, there are actual plot holes this season. for example, why can't the dragon queen escort them to the earthblood elf village? I could rant for hours but I can't be here all day.
Same. The writing and humor are why off and worse in this season. I lost all interest. I haven't any finished season 4 and starting looking videos to see other reactions. Guess I'm not alone.
Kinda same, but I'll still be watching after this... Purely because of Aaravos, Soren, Viren & Terry, and maybe some Callum, Claudia and Rayla if they get better again. But why did they just drop all of Aaravos' lore in like a few minutes... It's so stupid and kills all mystery-element the show had. Also, because his lore was actually just BOOOORRRINNNGGG. 'Well actually he is just super evil forever and ever and every bad thing ever is his fault'. At least he's an enjoyable character, because man that's the most generic a villain backstory has ever been... I feel like you could go on 12 more hours about why this season just isn't good, but tbh it's just a waste of energy... I'm just gonna hope the rest of the show is better. Although idk what screwed them up here. Did they have a lot of trouble working during COVID? Or what went down here? Although tbh they should've just scrapped the entire fire elves, subplot is so boring and anti-climaxtic...
Yep. Tried to cach up today and bounced off hard. And usually I am more than willing to get over some problems with story as long as I find it interesting, but it was just too much.
I didn't know Terry was "trans," and I can't help but as, "trans-what?" But hearing that he allegedly is, coupled to the "gay marriage" plot line with "racism is bad and also a stand-in for homophobia, you bigots" shoveled in with zero impact on the actual story of the season, makes me wonder how much of the problem was the writers trying to shove in Sufficient Virtue Signalling that they just scrapped actual storytelling in favor of it. It's not _new_ to the series - the gay queens in the last season were a thing, for one, and I suppose we can be grateful that they didn't make Soren gay or even "discovering his - er, 'her' - trans-identity," but he also is the butt-monkey of the season if not the show, so making him either would probably be viewed as -phobic. I wouldn't say it all got in the way except that the plot centered around virtue signaling is literally the tumor that ate up too much screen time and went nowhere useful to the story! I can't help but wonder if they had to divert too many resources - production, not just run-time - to that plot in order to please some Woke-Quota, either their own internal desire to virtue signal or something mandated from on high, and that's what led to the atrocious pacing, writing, and the terrible choices in what to skip and what to present in the other plot lines. Also, frankly, they 1000% should have retconned the comic. Retell it, revise it, or skip it entirely, but don't waste Reyla as a character that way, and don't waste the viewers' time with confusion and nonsense that doesn't contribute anything to the story. It literally just resets Callum and Reyla to Season 2-3 in their arc, and that's not "romantic tension" or anything interesting. It's just obnoxious.
I didn't know about the book so i just assumed they broke Rayla and Callum because they didn't know how to do them as a couple so just did the "lets get back to will they/won't they again" like a lot of movies and shows do
I don't know which is worse: to go back to the "will they/ won't they" or to see their relationship becoming the boring fest that is season 3 Lumity. (I see a lot of death threats in my near future!)
@@lilil9752 even so the show is actively avoiding conflict in their relationship. I know the show doesn't have much time, but I don't think it wants to acknowledge the problems Luz and Amity's relationships has.
From what the creators said Rayla/Callum was a last minute thing that the fans and some of the creator like so they made it canon, so it was not planned. Some people I talk to and myself suspect that when Callum was alone and missing Rayla , it could have original been a scene that was writen with him missing Claudia. You know sense she was his long time childhood friend and former crush but for them to used it for Rayla they need a time skip and break Callum/Rayla up for it.
I think I don't mind the three stories thing because I'm so used to that as a Warrior Cat fan. Since Power of Three, we've ALWAYS had three POVs stories going on simultaneously. Since Broken Code, we've had those POVs be in other Clans. One in ThunderClan, one in ShadowClan, one in SkyClan. In A Starless Clan, it's one in ShadowClan, one in RiverClan, one in ThunderClan, soon to be two in ShadowClan. The pacing there is just slow enough to where you can get fully emersed in each clan POV though. But here it just jumps around too much.
One thing that always irked me about the Dragon Prince is how literally each scene ends on some kind of cliffhanger that cuts to the other subplot. It becomes so predictable, I watch KNOWING the scene will cut away and we'll get more info in a few minutes. Each scene lasts 1-2 minutes. That's a problem in all seasons, but just became unbearable in season 4
Ugh totally! I literally said aloud watching it "stop cutting away!!" It got so annoying!! Really ruined the flow and stopped me being invested in any stakes at all
16:48 instead of making rayla leave callum on a revenge mission, she could’ve stayed at the spire alone as a dragonguard (while callum stays back at the castle). that way, when claudia finally comes back to the spire with viren, rayla has a reason to go back to katolis and boom - season 4 is kickstarted without the unnecessary rayllum drama
Callum and Reyla were hit with complete character assassination the hardest because GOD FORBID we have a stable couple in a series. The writers completely butchered 3 seasons worth of character development in 1 fucking comic. This season was such a massive let down from S3
"I wouldn't have my first 1000 subscribers without this show." As number 247, I can confirm this is true. (12/12/19) "After 3 years, which felt like 9 ..." Good grief, how right you are. Also, Terry is how you declare a person is trans, not the hamfisted nonsense High Guardian Spice went for. Also, personal side note: Amaya did "who" and "cake" different than what I've been taught. (I'm almost certain she went for "cupcake" instead, actually.)
This season's problem is that it didn't feel like a season. It felt like a buildup to season 5.
Edit: What I'm saying is that it felt more like a buildup than a season. Were seasons 1 & 2 buildup? Yes. But they also felt like actual _seasons_ on their own. Season 4 doesn't.
Yeah this season felt like half of a season or one extra long movie
@@HellsingRuler Frfr
while i was binging the season i kept assuming it will have 20 episodes cuz of the pacing. i checked the episode count when i was at ep9. my first thought was: 'so when will something actually happen?!' i hope the 5th season wont take so long to come out
@@notafemalehungarian2923 I hope so too
It did not help that there was a 3 year wait, and it didn't meet our expectations.
I love how this season is called "Mystery of Aaravos" and yet the Dragon Queen just gives us all the answers in the first few episodes and then we just get nothing that is related to him
ohMyGoSH YES!!! 😵💫😵🥴
The story of avaros makes no sense
I was so excited to learn more about Aaravos, only to find out that they just copied Morgoth's backstory from the Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. No it wasn't an homage, or a reference, it was a straight up copy. Jesus this show is so uncreative in it's lore and worldbuilding.
Maybe that's because Zubeia wasn't telling the whole story?
literally theres no mystery lmao
man... this season just felt like it was being handled by a completely different team from the people behind the first 3 seasons, the childish humor is worst than it has ever been (Claudia having a fart fetish is just why) and almost nothing happen the whole season besides being setup, hell the fact that it's supposed to be focused on Aaravos and he shows up just once just feels like false advertisement even if his single scene is great... idk felt like we needed more
i hated the fart scene so much i almost turned off the tv
right? its so missleading i thought we would get a bit more info about star elves and aaravos :/
I'm pretty sure there's a new director
Actually, Claudia has always liked farts. "That wasn't the horse"
And the time she was really descriptive of Soren's bathroom break.
It had a different director
I hate how writers are so scared of main character having a stable relationship
Rule of drama taken to the extreme. They feel like stability equals boredom because we must have conflict to have a story. Of course the conflict could be an external one and the couple could support each other through it instead of arguing with each other, but writers are allergic to that idea.
@@TKDBoy1889 omg this is so true for alooot of shows
Yes, I was looking forward to cute romance. What was the point of the romance arc and end of season 3 if they just break up between seasons in a comic?!
That's why I love some of these K/C/J dramas these days. A few of them (Love O2O for example) are very big on the "nah, you can break us apart because we communicate and trust each other." Instead, the show's "drama" is more about helping friends or succeeding at life.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good "will they, won't they?" but not everyone likes being stressed out, and most people don't want to be stressed out ALL THE TIME. Having some junk food fluff shows is good, and those are the ones I watch over and over and over again. It's hard to do that with shows that are high drama because you have to be in the right headspace for them.
Yeah but they could hardly have Rayla being a bada** while pregnant
I agree about you saying "this season is allergic to skipping anything", but it doesn't skip unimportant scenes. It skips the important ones!!! Like Viren and Soren's reunion conversation happening OFF SCREEN is UNFORGIVABLE!!
If they do that to Runaan and Ethari's reunion I may cry 😢
I think it's insulting that Rayla apologized to Ezran on-screen and not to Callum. Almost as if Rayla can do whatever she wants, consequence-free and Callum is in the wrong for being rightfully upset with her ditching him on his birthday and, 🙄 of course, never writing him letters during the two years she was away from Callum
Thank god, i thought i was the only soul that thought this, i was about to think i was the weird one because i think that callum deserved a deep and truthful apology, but the nearest thing we got was "i know me leaving hurt you" everyone knows that, i think an apology should be the first step to be back together
@@Trexzaz Yeah after rewatching the season I agree we never really got any heartfelt apology or even a good conflict scene with them about Rayla's decision. The only thing we got close to being an argument was in episode 3 but the new monkey pet kind of ruined the scene before it could progress more.
Yeah for me it was that Rayla never apologized once to Callum and was oblivious as to why he was feeling some type of way about it. That and the constant jokes. I understand comedy is a good break in between serious sections. But it was every. single. scene. And there were waaayyy too many fart jokes
Man bad woman good
@@desmonides Youre missing the point entirely
My main problem with season 4 is that throughout the whole season callum and rayla have their relationship problems that won’t make any sense unless you read the book and by the time they resolve it the season’s already over. 😢 I also can’t help but feel that the B plot with the sun elves was used for just a little bit of padding.
No one asked
@@keithragin89 no one asked, wanted, needed or cared for your response but here we are
@@majesticmo5048 no one asked,wanted, needed, or cares for your response to his response but here we are
@@Pppppppp41037 no one asked, wanted, needed, or cares for your response to his response but here we are
Hey guys I want all of your opinions on everything. Where are we?
One of my main disappointments with season 4 was that they didn't explore Callum being a sky mage and the implications of this. As far as I can remember Veiran and Claudia have never seen him use his sky magic, something that they have always believed to be impossible for humans without a primal stone. I feel like Veiran and/or Claudia learning about Callum's magic could have caused an interesting story arc.
Also, I feel like Callum only used like 3 spells in the entire season which was disappointing as I wanted to see his progress with Sky Magic over the two year time skip.
When Claudia met Soren and told him that dark magic was the only way for humans to have power, I was SO sure that Soren would mention that it is, in fact, not the only way, and that Callum can do sky magic. And it just didn't happen.
Omg I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this. It was one of the previous seasons biggest issues, a major part of the history of the human/elf conflict, the motivations behind Viren/Claudia’s reasons for learning Dark Magic……AND IT NEVER GETS ACKNOWLEDGED?!? NOBODY ever talks about this? NO other human wants to learn magic? Nobody ever thinks about how this could change human society for better or for worse?? We’re just….not gonna talk about it? Ok then 😬
I'm really happy with Viren.
Like, he's the ONLY character I genuinely liked this season. Everyone else felt... more childish. More annoying.
Heck, I was hoping for a rebound with Soren, but Soren just... got back to his S1 self again.
Viren though strove to be different. Well, 'strove.' He saw his death. He felt the nothingness after. He didn't want to go, unfulfilled. And honestly, that's the most mature thing this season did.
Fr. Rayla got so….sentimental! Nothing at all like her. Ezra’s just stayed the same as last season but go taller and more hair. Callum is the same too. All the characters either stayed the same or git more childish but Virne actually….idk he got… better
Sry for all the typos btw
ikr... i was just waiting for every scene with him in it so i could actually enjoy the show lmao
One of my favorite theories for Viren this season is that after he died, all of the residual dark magic was drained from him. Therefore, he's back to the point where he wasn't tainted by the darkness we can see Claudia gradually being corrupted by and is now realizing he might have gone just a bit too far. Granted, I don't think we're going to see this come to anything as he uses dark magic again at the end of the season but I'm curious to see where Viren's arc ends. Probably somewhere close to the beginning of Claudia's equivalent of Azula's gradual decay of her mental stability we see in the later half of ATLA S3.
This entire season just felt like we're back at square one character development wise.
Honestly the biggest letdown for me was that Bait seemed to be more Callum’s pet then Ezran’s. I saw Bait and Ez interact once
@Bla Bla that monkey thing is there just because. Like it literally does nothing but be there. At least bait helped a bit
I interpreted that as two years changing the dynamic slightly, with Ezran more occupied by kingly matters and Bait being emotionally intelligent enough to react to Callum's grief by doing the opposite of abandoning him.
tbh I kind liked that
And what is wrong with that? Ez had Zym and Callum and Bait needed each other since Ez started to let them more alone.
@@raspiankiado3126 I mean it's not assuming since "he" is the pronouns used to refer to bait
I'm a little sad we didn't get Callum slowly being manipulated by Aaravos BUT that scene with possessed Callum with Aaravos roasting the cast was so worth it!!!
I think that might happen in the future
@Bla Bla
Man you're a downer
The roasting scene was kind of a breath of fresh air after the totally over kidified rest of the season. (I get it's geared towards kids but S4 was way overdone)
Leave out "little" and the last part of your sentence and you are correct. It would have been way cooler if Aaravos was hedging his bets and making Callum his main bitch.
@@JustAJinx-ci6hg Never heard someone say "over kidified" before, but that term nailed it. In fact it may even be an understatement. The dialogue and exposition is written like it was geared towards 6-8 year olds and the content matter of war, racial tension, weird romances, etc, just DOESN'T FIT that demographic, so it's made a jarring and disjointed story that just doesn't work for any age group on any level. For lack of a better term, it resulted in major "cringe."
"Rayla and Callum broke up off screen"
*I'm seriously at my limit*
Yes, it happened in a canon comic
i was wondering why the first 3 season hhad 90% + on rotten tomatoes and season 4 had 54% , this already sounds bad. im still going to catch up though
I know, season 4 was a huge "WTF is this" I couldn't stop looking at my phone and I'm not even that kind of person with an attention span of -1, looking at a phone every 20 secs. I actually leave my phone aside every time I watch a movie or a show. But this season was just unbearable
@@lorettabes4553 Cool, I don't care. I didn't start watching a show to have homework between seasons.
Hey C'mon it ain't over yet, let's just hope it has a better ending.
A lot of the issues with dragon prince is that they use a “tell don’t show” method for a lot of the issues. If I wrote season 4 I would made so that Callum stayed in Xadia to train with Ibis so that his death would’ve been more impactful. I would have written out the sun fire subplot, or at least make it have some lasting relevant consequences. Aaravos wouldn’t be a moustache twirling villain but rather someone who misguidedly gave humans dark magic to help them. And with his centuries of imprisonment he would grow bitter and vengeful like how he is in the show.
On another note I feel like the dragon prince needs to be a more mature show to take its themes more seriously.
I'm fine with Aaravos just being a manipulative asshole, the villain doesn't always need to be sympathetic and I think they actually do him just being evil well, hell we're just getting into his backstory too so there might actually be more to it. Not to mention we already have more grey villains with Viren, Claudia, and Terry.
@@mikemorro140 yeah villains don’t have to be sympathetic, but this show does explore people who make misguided choices. But they better give Aaravos some reasonable character motive for his actions, tho I would also be fine if he did it for shits and giggles.
@@joshuacouture479 I think they will explore that....Thats why its called "The Mystery of Aaravos" *Smacks head*
@@jkranites it still better be a good motive or I will cringe harder then I did watching the flossing scene
@@joshuacouture479 I do hope that Aaravos buildup comes to proper payoff in seasons 5-7 cause he’s one of the best players in this show.
Honestly I still like the show but the heroes (exclude Rayla and Soren) just feel so flat.
The Villains and Soren feel like the most fleshed out characters while our heroes just feel like cardboard to me. I still don’t care about Callum much as a protagonist cause he brings no depth to me. Tell me, what makes me WANT to care about what he’s going through? He has Sokka’s VA but none of his character or charm that made him a great character.
Wee Baby Ezran has the potential to be interesting being a child king after the death of his father but they don’t expand on that and soon he just gets out of that role and being the little cinnamon roll who loves animals, the morality of king hood completely tossed to the wayside, TWICE! Honestly Opelli is the real ruler of Katolis while Ezran is just a toxic positive figurehead.
I'm half way convinced Terry is being kept around as a sacrifice to bring Viren back to life. She needed a whole fawn to make Soren walk. She will eventually need a person to bring him back. What better way to get a sacrifice, then to befriend it and keep it around for later. Not gonna lie, I'm almost hoping this happens and Viren actually tries to stop her. I really think the series could end with his redemption. Also if Terry isn't a sacrifice then he is proof Claudia still has some good in her. The way I described her to a friend I'm trying to get to watch the show is either the writers are making an Azula or a Zuko, only time will tell.
God i hope terry dies. I cant deal with the fart jokes anymore
Omg Claudia using Terry to keep Viren alive would honestly be such a good twist
It would be such a good storyline and that twist would actually make sense from what we've seen so far.
And Viren stopping this because he bonded so well with Terry throughout that month would be even better tbh
It would makes sense because I never understood why she said something like "elfs dont like you. she is just deceiving you" or something like that
I wish the show would sacrifice Terry asap. I can't stand that character, and it makes no sense for Claudi to be with an elf, or anyone that weak. My theory was that she's using Terry for something. But until Terry stops existing in this show, I'm not watching it. Insufferable, nonsensical character.
@@potatospud9365 you dont like him? that's strange I thought he was perfect for her other than being an elf but evn still hes open minded about dark magic and shares her humor
The character writing suffered so hard. It feels like a completely different team behind it. They kept cramming in Avatar references, it feels like fans of the show and its past writers took over. Claudia has none of the conflict or depth that she used to. The scene where Callum was possessed by Aaravos is supposedly a big moment for Callum because he tells Rayla to kill him if he gets possessed again. But the scene where he’s possessed doesnt shoe Callum being scared or stressed or that he even cared about being possessed. What happened to this show? I did not wait 3 years for this
If you pretend that it's a phase 4 marvel movie when watching it, it gets a lot better. Try thay
I agree with this analysis. I think the voice for callum might have too much influence on the writing, as well as other avatar fan members on the writing team; they made callum's character feel too sokka at times every since the first season even though he lacks the same emotive expression. They also structured the seasons as "books" focusing on a single type of magic which limits the story to be stuck in that particular element, despite it being far too little to do anything with. They keep adding characters and unnecessary quests and jokes that feel strangely placed in- they might work in a book format, but are extremely dull visually, as they spend time on showing characters walking or talking too much rather than making each action mean something. It's all so clunky :( and extremely surface level despite it wanting to be really heavy
I agree, I'm so over the avatar references. I love atla with my whole heart but it's really getting old now, especially if they spend too much time on it like the boomerang reference. The background ones like Aang's glider was cool but if a joke would leave someone who hasn't seen avatar confused then it's gone too far.
I thought the same, it felt like different people made it
Fr tho
I really felt like the callum and Aaravos stuff was wasted. I expected to callum to find Aaravos mirror and properly meet him alone like Viren did but instead the dragon queen just told the entire group and Aaravos shattered his own mirror. I hope they do something with Callum and Aaravos in later seasons
When I first saw that scene I was expecting Callum to pull a viren and listen to aaravos try and help him, but Callum not knowing it was aaravos and I think it would have made a very interesting plot for them to all hunt aaravos without callum know he was helping him, all while aaravos is sabotaging all of them
@@ankleswallower7990 nah that sounds very complex for the directors seeking of the show as a kid show
I need to stop reading these comments, I'm wishing for things that will never happen 😭
Honestly, having a parallel between Claudia and Callum by having Aaravos whisper in both of their ear, and see how they react to it, would have been much more impactful imo
If season five don’t make up for this sorry excuse for a season, ima blow fr
This season felt like another example of Netflix cutting up full seasons in half
If that were the case we would only have had 5 episodes instead of 9. And I think that actually would have been beneficial because then instead of stretching what little important content they had, they could have instead been individual episodes devoted to those arcs instead of this overly stretched mess.
That's probably exactly what happened. Ypu knowbthey don't give full seasons just split one or two into multiple
@@dustinvance243 he means they cut down what could've been an 18 episode season where we would have time for these extra bits with actual plot, it got cut into 9 episodes where it wasn't as interesting
@@derpycloudlit8107 if you look at every other season, you'll see that season 4 is just as long as they were. Nothing was cut.
@@dustinvance243 cut as in story lines and potential lines were cut from the script for the season, it could of been a potential (18 episode) story but it *FELT* like it was cut
When the comic came out, the whole community wondered how they would explain the Rayllum breakup in S4.
Turns out they just weren't going to explain it at all :D
I also have a problem with Terry accepting Dark Magic, cause even considering what you said in the video, he still is an Earth Elf...the one race of elves that should be the most connected with life and nature cause of their magic, and Dark Magic is the magic that literally steals life to fuel its spells. So yes, it should be a big issue even for an outcast elf that is questioning elven paradigms.
Not really, the main villain of the series is a literal elf god of the stars, the purest form of being there is. Just being an elf does really not mean anything.
it definitely feels like he was written in to call back to that one joke from season two. That’s the only reason I could think of for this guy to be a part of the plot
I am sure that is because the earth elf trusts people too easily
Honestly it's due to the fact that he's in love with Claudia and he supports her no matter what.
@@zigazdovc6175his point was the EARTH elf specifically should have a problem because of its connection to nature and dark magic killing it
I notice that the Earth Dragon said that Thunder the Dragon King would often try to provoke conflict with the human so he can start a fight with human, Something he was critical of. Not alot of people seams to pay attention to this. He has no reason to lie to the human and he didn't know that Zym was their. He had no reason to expect that humans to be on the Thunder side. Also the theme of the show seams to be generational conflicts and shades of grey, so it would should mean Thunder did bad stuff as well. Also would that mean Viren was not crazy for viewing Thunder as a giant threat if Thunder was also instigating boarder conflicts.
Yeah, everything about Rex was great. He's an interesting subversion of the greedy dragon since he doesn't care about weapons and treasure, and he is the first dragon to really show any hatred for Avazandym. Easily the best new character from the season.
@@megabladechronicles962 makes me somewhat curious if we’ll see different viewpoints of Avizandum from other arch dragons though I am overestimating the show at that point.
Honestly that minor plot point was pretty interesting. It really makes me wonder if at some point we'll see Zim go on a quest or just have a side story with him discovering more about his dad.
I mean even us as the audience, we know WHAT Zim's dad did and WHAT he's capable of, but we don't know WHO he actually is.
Cliché by this point, but having a Rose Quartz situation with Zim's dad would be very fitting for this show.
I was expecting this show to grasp this topic seriously. Its not one side being all paranoid for no reason. The show doesn't want the dragons to be bad? But they made the elf-dragon side genocide the human side for a crimes of a small fraction of people. Literally nothing justifies this. Fine, dark magic is horrible, but help the humans then, no one fucking cared when they were struggling and originally dragons wanted to straight up murder all the humans, the elf moon princess suggesdted banishing them instead. These dragons that wanted people dead are still around! I like how it seemed that Aaravos was on the humen side because he sympasithed with them and hated how repressive dragons and elves were. So he sorta helped them and taught them to spite others. That led him imprisoned and humanity banished. Show wants Aaravos being irredemable? Fine, let this break him completely, losing everything, so then even if he is sympathetic, he won't stop, so he has to be stopped. But no, show keeps introducing this complicated gray topics and just 'actually its more black and white. just, just ignore the gray areas'. Heck Avatar did such a better job at this!
@DeathKitta
I'm fine with Aaravos being a straight jerk who took advantage of the state of humanity to spread his dark magic. Buy I wish the show acknowledging how the circumstances were created by Xadian racism and apathy.
In the first 3 seasons it actually felt like alot of stuff was going on at one especially since each season ended on a cliffhanger and the season opening continues exactly where we left off, this season felt like it was to little and not enough going on and the ending felt like a mid season finale. I was also really expecting callum and aaravos to have a proper greeting and acknowledgement of one another and keep in mind that callum has already lost his nother, father and step dad and almost his brother and several occasions. I understand him being upset rayla is gone but it's not like he's moping every second. Before his birthday celebration when we saw him, he was his normal happy cheerful self. It was only at the party he started to really sulk. Also the fact that Viren and soren reunited and we had no interaction between the 2
I felt the opposite. I felt like the season finishers were pretty anti climatic and only until season 3 did it feel like a culmination of the story so far. Im going to assume this is how the rest is structured
Yeah plus the only reason he sulks that much about Rayla on his birthday was because it was the anniversary of when she left, though I don't know if that lines up because I don't remember it being his birthday in that book
@@mikemorro140 it was, the worst part is she knew it was his birthday
Okay while I can accuse some parts of this season being just build up…….y’all seriously just…didn’t show us a interaction between Soren and Viren after it being 2 years since they last seen each other. 2 YEARS and even within those 2 YEARS Soren thought his neglectful dad was dead and that him and Claudia was free from his plans he had when he was corrupted messiah Viren. I’m just sad and disappointed that they miss out on the opportunity whether on purpose or not, to have a interesting conflict reunion between Soren and Viren(especially since Viren already feeling guilty and realizing he f-up as a parent).
OMG yes it was super weird that Soren was reunited with his dad and we got absolutely nothing from that
When Aaravos possessed Callum, he straight up read the entire room hard enough to make a best selling audio book.
Lmaoooo
Freaking loved that scene. Bro immediately chose violence.
What probably ended up bothering me the most was the "bad guy trio" retrieving the staff. Not that they did it at all, obiously, but when they chose to do it. Claudia KNEW that Viren would be on a timer once revived, so it would be wise to do all the preparations that could be done before that, you know, BEFORE THAT. The dragons were only leaving after they'd already begun ascending the mountain, and she clearly didn't need Viren himself to get the staff. Very small changes could have fixed that, but oh well...
Especially since Viren was having panic attack after panic attack, passing out TWICE. All for her to say he can wait at the bottom and she can get it?? I would get it if Viren needed to get it himself with a spell or something, but since he didn't why make him climb the mountain?
Honestly many things in this season just did not make sense. Like when they used Zym to look at stuff from far up (which got him captured), when Callum literally has wings now, and he was the one who came up with the idea??
@@Reonnex So he can smell Terry's farts, duh
I also was confused by the fact that they didn't do that earlier. Bringing Viren up that mountain for no reason felt not only unnecessary but also quite sadistic, in my opinion.
Poor Terry.
I’m scared for him because Claudia never liked elves. I have a theory that she’s going to use him for the dark magic she needs to permanently revive her dad at the end 😢
Yer I spent the whole season waiting for him to die. When Rayla had a knife at his throat I was definitely expecting Claudia being like 'go on, do it' and then when Rayla couldn't that would be when Terry would be like 'wait is Claudia evil?!'
Terry is a bad person.
I was more scared that Terry would be the useless comic relief character considering the jokes that oftentimes just felt off. The fart jokes were a first for me and it probably shows that they got super egregious in this season.
But the theory makes sense, but he could also be a sort of redemption for Claudia as she is showing that she somewhat cares about how he feels.
I am very sure that the spell to bring a loved one back permanently requires sacrifice of someone in love. She is so gonna kill him season 5-6 😅
Amaya not taking the situation seriously doesn't make a lot of sense. She likely would know that is an important tradition for the elves. From all the previous scenes it seemed like she knew it was a somewhat complicated situation and was going to try to get both sides of story. It seemed that one out of place character moment was only so Janai's brother could seem to have somewhat of a point
She goes from not taking it seriously at all (out of character for her) to not even weighing the logical reasons for the architects actions at all and just saying she's a totally indefensible villain in the next minute (also out of character)
@@Dumbledoresarmy13
I think her point was the architect was in the wrong for not really trying to talk it out. She just kept demanding the fire be put out and didn't even want to understand why he was doing it.
@@Dumbledoresarmy13 I mean , an architect is supposed to talk to the communities they’re working for so they can understand their needs and design around them , the fact she made a camp of flammable materials for literal FIRE elves in a desert where there’s little to no water is dumb Af and shows a colonialists mindset.
@Bla Bla
I think the point, and this was what Janai's brother was getting at, was that the humans were doing things their way and not thinking about the fire elves traditions
@Bla Bla ikr, there are so many issues with the sunfire elf conflict...
I wish it had been longer, and had way less annoying kiddy shit, but it at least progressed the story by a fair margin. I’ll still watch season five, but I think there is a good chance the show is going down hill.
This tbh
I agree the fart jokes were so annoying and its so weird that they added them since they weren't in the earlier seasons
same, i felt that they could've done way better that this shit
@@6Simply9 It's not shit...it's not as good as the other seasons.
I believe in the writers for the next season
@@akirahatson2593 agreed, its not going downhill. It was just really slow paced
Also, Rex outright told the main cast this "Avizandum love to provoke fights with humans, he enjoyed killing them!"
What was the main cast's reaction?: "😑 I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that and assume that Avizandum is a good person just because he's Zym's dad and pretend that he's not racist in any way whatsoever."
They've acknowledged Avizandum's problems in the past, I mean he did kill Ezran and Callum's mom after all. It's just Zym was there and they didn't want to get into it. Though I'd also point out that Rex is shown to chill out when he learns what happened which makes it seem like he was just talking shit
It's weird, how would they suppose to build new piece, when they want to acknowledge only the humanity wrong doings. It's like this show dropped 'dragons were as bad, even worse. oh SHOOT! dragons are cool though! we can't have dragons being the worse side. quick, ignore dragons being horrible even when it is shown/told you on screen!' Super disappointed, why am I supposed to care about racism when it is either not shown but retold, or no one reacts to racism crimes whatsoever?
@@DeathKitta I think part of it might be Ezran being a tad too positive. It's one thing to keep your chin up, it's another to disregard/deny the negative parts of life.
Ezran isn't bad,he just needs to improve on himself a bit
@@DragonGoddess18 The show needs to announce that though. Otherwise the shows agrees to let one side free.
@Bla Bla Yeah, Ezran was being pretty disrespectful on that. Zubeia was the one who ordered Runaan and the other Moonshadow elves to kill Harrow and Ezran. Has she even apologized to Ezran on-screen?
Why have Opeli around if he's not going to listen to her 90% of the time?
*”The Mysteries of Aaravos”*
And yet we only see him once throughout the entire season. I guess that is being pretty mysterious lol
Honestly, i felt like the amaya and janai subplot shouldve been its own series/mini movie that came after the season.
If it would be made more interesting sure, because as it was now it was just plain boring. Like actually feel like everything wrong with the other 2 plots could've just been fixed with more time, which they wouldve gotten if this subplot just wasn't here at all BECAUSE IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING AND ITS BORING AND ANTI-CLIMAXTIC AS SHIT
As Sarcastic Chorus said a few times, THAT plot should've been the tie-in comic, while we skipped the breakup and possibly even avoid the time skip. Give more time to the actual plot of the season. Maybe set up the Dragon Queen's visit as something to cap the season off with, rather than to start it with. Do the "elf/human racism tensions" thing with more Callum and Reyla travelling through Xadia, actually visiting places that show how vast and sprawling its populations and cultures are on their quest to find Ignis. Maybe Xim's run away to hang out with them and help with this quest, and his mother is frantic and they don't know it's trouble because she's keeping the fact that her son's disappeared quiet while mobilizing magical forces to hunt down his "kidnappers." (She blames the humans, of course.) Suggest in the Claudia plot that what she needs to bring her father back permanently is a source of life and magic, a sacrifice of something unique and precious...and imply that's Xim.
The mystery of Aravos should've been Callum's to investigate, because the Dragon Queen wasn't talking. WHen he figured it all out, and realized what Claudia was doing in seeking out his prison, that's when confronting the Dragon Queen near the end should've happened, and telling her what is going on and getting Xim to beg her for help would've let HER be one of those learning the lesson of unity.
I don't know if Terry is doomed or not, if Claudia really likes him or not, but I would've had their relationship start and develop throughout the season, in parallel to Callum and Reyla but also probably with Terry's quest being to find a lost family member who is implied - strongly - to have been the random elf Claudia used to bring her father back temporarily.
I had no idea why it was so underwhelming 😩 I was getting so hyped for something so short.
If Book 5 comes I hope we have more episodes and the show actually goes places. I still love the show though, it's just so weird.
😕I wouldn't expect this ever but It did do some good stuff like the Dragon Queen's character and the ongoing plot of the Dragon Queen's Quest.
You're right the show IS special. . Hopefully Book 5 will be great😞
You should watch the season and form your own opinion. There is nothing worse than bandwagoning on what others tell you about something. Don't make that mistake and ignore all opinions until you form yours
@@bfedezl2018 Ofc I followed my feels first and I say "Man this is short and empty" but I'm not all that down.
Things will look up later👆
@@bfedezl2018 But that is an opinion. Maybe you shouldn’t bully someone on faulty accusations.
This season to me felt like Disenchantment s3 or SU s5. Both of which feel like padding time and I just want to see the plot progress
The biggest issue i had with the Sun elf plot was the sheer stupidity of Jinai's brother. The Sun Elf queen marrying a human is only an issue if they were to have a mixed race kid. Then, maybe, it would be a succession issue, with magic being race-based. But no, its a gay marriage. Jinai's brother is next in line, no matter what, now. His children will inherit. And he's already in a relationship with one of the top Masks/Generals. And the whole thing with the Seed. It just stunk of a "if i can't get it within MY lifetime, it doesn't matter" mentality.
But we saw in the show that he doesnt want to wait he wants everything now
And that’s not even taking into account that Amaya and Jinai could decide to have a kid from another Sunelf or even adopt a child that could have been orphaned when Aaravos attacked the capital of the Sun Empire.
@@jaredhigham869
I don’t think that’s how royal succession works, but then again all the human and elf realms in the show seem rather absurdly progressive.
@@jaredhigham869 we don't even know how these things work in the show, it has magic in the show so they may very well be able to have a child that is biologically both of their child. just think of it this way. in real life scientists have figured out a way to take random cells in a human body and convert them into pluripotent cells, cells that can take on the properties of other cells. they can convert the cells from one person into sperm cells and than convert the cells into another person into an egg, than fertilize that "egg" and in theory implant it into the women, allowing for same sex spouses to have a child that is bioligically both parents. so who knows they may be able to use magic to have Jenai and Amaya have a biological chid together
@Allthenews ordeath
Have Roman style system, like Five Good Emperors where all of them are not directly related.
When Soren gave the speech while trying to open the door, I genuinely thought he was going to connect with an arcanum. I just wanted something to happen
Yo i thought this too! I thought maybe he would channel earth magic of some sort to connect it all a bit
no but he GENUINELY sounded like he was connecting to the Earth Arcanum during that. "in times like these the only strength that matters is the strength of your heart," followed by immediately shoving open a door that it takes two stone giants to open. like??? this scene was too big of a deal and he had too much of a focus on him for it to not be important
I thought that his legs were going to temporarily start glowing and grow stronger given that they were healed/infused with dark magic/life force of that deer. Thus giving more weight to the "Dark Magic saved you" dilema that Claudia said. This would deepen his character and inner conflict, and also giving him an upgrade in terms of power/abilities.
@@robm1993 that would be wild
What the heck!! I didn't even think of that. The writers really dropped the ball on that one for not including that. It would give Soren so much more meaningful development.
my biggest gripe with this season is one that can be easily fixed in the next season. That being that we never saw any interactions between Soren and Verin when the bad guys captured him. That scene where he just kept yelling no was the first “conversation” the two had since Verin tried to make Soren a lava zombie.
I agree! It should have been such a huge moment but they just. Dropped it
Ye I think this is kinda fixable in the next season, if it's actually a better season first of all... But also they can just kinda flashback it or smth and make that work.
I'm still convinced Claudia is keeping Terry around for spare parts. Like just knowing magic tropes and how dark magic works in Dragon Prince, I can see the spell being like "You transfer the remaining years of Y person into X person" and Elves having longer life spans why wouldn't she try and give her dad that little extra bonus?
honestly, i had been waiting for Claudia to meet Cullum and find out that he can use magic (not dark magic) because if am mistaken this should be a huge blow to her and make her question all the things she did/does when using black magic.
Good point, if her and Viren saw he figured it out with such ease they would’ve thought back to every living thing they had to take the life of for themselves, and since they haven’t, I theorize that Claudia is getting more evil. And since she does still hate elves, perhaps will be using Terry the same way she used the doe, to keep Viren alive a little longer
I loved how when presenting their gifts, Callum said that the staff was given to him despite the fact he stole it from his dead body
I think the one thing I most certainly didn't like was Soren didnt get a chance to confront his abuser. Soren's able to be pretty damn cheerful despite the crap he's had to deal with. His mother couldn't stand the sight of him, because Viren didn't let him die, so she left. His father thought he was worthless, because he wasn't a mage and was dimwitted, so he used and gaslit him at every turn. I felt he deserved either making Viren realize he's a crap parent. THe show's probably gonna push for Viren to become a better parent, or you know axe him...again. But even if that's the case, Soren deserves to say his piece, because he's had to hold back how badly he's been treated his entire life.
Viren wouldn’t let Soren die? 😦 When was that brought up?
@Bla Bla Idk that was never in the show or in the comics I read. Maybe they got that plot mixed up with another show that they were watching.
Oh don't even get me started on Soren. My favorite character, who'd had so much development over the first three seasons, just gets done dirty in this one. Apparently his reaction to finding out his dad came back to life was so unimportant we don't need to see it.
@@deen7530 Yeah, that was one if the worst issues with this series. Soren was reduced to nothing more than comedic relief and he wasn't allowed to be part of any truly serious scenes. He was pushed to the sidelines even though he was an important character with more depth in seasons 1-3
@@TheOptimistDelusion soren was badly hurt as a kid, injury was fatal
Viren usdd dark magic to heal him
His mother never looked at him the same
Edit showrunner info
Unless they retconned it
But claudia does mention the dark magic saving his life
I have mixed feelings on this season. There was some stuff that I did like. Example; I liked some of the character beats. Example; Viren's PTSD and him humbling himself for a bit, and realizing how short his is on earth and how people should cherish their time was a good writing. Kind of wish they had done more with that. This show is also doing a good job of showing how corrupt Claudia is becoming and her strong dislike of elves.
That speech she gave Callum when tied up was great. I'm also glad that the season didn't pretend like everything was okay between the elves and the humans. I appreciated scenes like Erzan's speech about people being angry contrasting with Claudia's battle on the mountain.
But then...you have stuff like how the pacing was rushed, and there was barely any time for stuff to breathe. Anyone else feel like the seasons (particularly this one) need more then 9 episodes? Heck; I would be fine with a 13 episode season that trimmed the fat and fleshed out things more. Get rid of trash like the fart scenes and characters messing around, and focus more on scenes with character building and interactions. For example; Soren sees his dad alive and literally his only reaction is, "Nooooo". That's it? Why not give us more depth to Soren seeing that his father has returned? And then when the show does act like it's going to take it seriously, with stuff like Callum saying the Rayla, "I need you to kill me", with his fear of being possessed, it's treated like a joke with Rayla's, "Just don't get controlled". Really writers?
Claudia's strong dislike of elves? Um... she's dating one?
@@JustAJinx-ci6hg Yes, but Claudia had that whole speech to Callum (when she was tied up) about how elves took away everything from humans and how the human and their hatred for elves is justified. It's a good example of how you can date someone of a (in a real life example) a different ethnicity but still have biases towards the race.
@@Stew91 Fair. Was still kinda weird
my main problem is that the humor and dialoges have become so dumb and meaningless. And every damn scene that could have any emotional impact got wasted by a fart joke or stuff like this. It looks like Netflix dont trust the audience to handle consequences and emotions. They seemingly have learned from Disney
@@MyBrainGlows Eh, even Disney did go this far so often
another (though comparatively minor) problem i had with janai and amaya this season: i feel like it was kind of a weird choice that in doing the timeskip the show just like... skipped an entire stage in their relationship. like they went from liking each other in the end of season three to getting engaged in the first episode of season four. ik their romance isn't the most important thing but the fact that they didn't spend ANY time showing them in the dating stage was kinda weird (unless you count one of the short stories they put out but that's on a similar level to rayllum breaking up in a comic lmao).
This is another reason the entire arc feels like forced virtue signalling. "Oh, no, the may have just seemed like friends, but OBVIOUSLY that means they're lovers!"
The whole arc should've been off on its own, if done at all. Personally, I don't think it really was worth canonizing, but I could have shrugged at it if it weren't an anchor on an already foundering season.
I know certain people have tendency to call any sort of LGBT representation as pandering... Man, is that what they felt like. Like it would be better to just cut their subplot out entirely, for how little it contributes, so it feels like they are actually just there to say there is a queer couple, IMO.
Katolis has fire and candles for some rituals revolving around death (at least the elites do). It feels odd the the engineer lady and Amaya wouldn’t know this.
I think what's even odder is that they set up a camp for Sun Fire elves, a group that can magically set their own bodies on fire, and plenty of fire based weapons and rituals, yet the architect didn't think of using fire proof materials to build the camp
@@oliviamorales9406 because that would be a waste of resources. This is supposed to be a temporary camp, not a permanent settlement. Resources like that would be better used on actual homes.
@@dustinvance243 meh they could of made temporal homes out of clay or rocks tbh
@@juanitacanon3120 if you're working with stone, you're building an actual house. Camps use easier to harvest materials like cloth and wood because the point of a camp is that it's meant to be temporary and portable. The architect was likely working with what was available to her and built this camp with that in mind. She's not the one in the wrong here. The sun elf could have lit his mother's candle outside of the camp or better yet, built a fire pit to contain it. He put his religious beliefs before the safety of the group. He was clearly being irresponsible, but he's painted as the victim because of stupid racial coding.
@@dustinvance243 i don’t see it that way , I am an architect and there are various ways you can make temporal shelters out of clay and stones. I’ve seen desert communities build temporal ranches out of sun drying clay. The work of an architect is to build spaces people can live on , you have to talk to the communities to understand their needs and their customs so you can build AROUND them not despite them . Something that work with some doesn’t work with everyone. And building out of flammable materials for literal FIRE elves is so dumb AF. Especially in the dessert where there’s little to not humidity so wood can literally catch itself on fire . Plus let’s not mention that wood is also hard to find in a dessert. This would be like building a summer house in the arctics with the excuse that you can turn the heating on. Unpractical, unfunctional and incompatible with the people living there.
Rayla acts (as if she is) and sounds more mature. If elves live for at least one century then shouldn’t she age slower? Rayla carries herself as if she’s gone to to California and found herself after 12 years while Callum seems like he’s aged 4 months since they broke up.
At least it would justify a bit why she doesn't understand Callum being so upset with her: "I was missing for just two years. Was that really so much for you?"
@@raistlin3462 this could’ve been so good!
@@raistlin3462 strangely that was also the only plotline I likd in RIngs of Power.
I just think her arrogance and literally not even speaking on the matter of “i ditched the guy i made fall in love with me for 2 years” kinda dragged her character down this season. She had just about as little f*cks to give about callum as she did in season 1 when they were both in the friend zone, she didn’t even pursue him after he was OBVIOUSLY a bit upset with her. Not to mention I sent the entire season believing she just dipped until she gave ONE line of speech: “I was searching for them for 2 years” and thats it. That’s all we get. After that she basically forgot her relationship even existed (again, as she did within the 2 years previous.. cmon writers, no magic letter spell for moon elves? No message in the sky for Callum? Nothing?) But regardless, the biggest slap in the face is her giving a bigger apology to fakin EZRAN than Callum. She gotta set them priorities smh
@@dryfox11
In the Bloodmoon Huntress novel, a young Rayla had to endure her parents leaving to join the Dragon Guard. Ethari explained her about duty, and why Tiadrin and Lain's choice was to protect their daughter as well. Just like Runaan's work as an assassin.
Is not surprising grown up Rayla did the same to Callum while believing it was the right, noble thing: "I'm just keeping you and Ezran safe."
I'll admit, it would have been so much cooler if Calum had seen Aaravos in the mirror by himself, like before Rayla came in. Then he'd have a better reason to bring the mirror to the Dragon Queen's lair and it'd be much scarier for him when someone he thought could do nothing possesses him and claims him to be a puppet!
Yes! Tbh when He was using the book to translate the runs I ws hoping it would do soething, like the sya in the runs was some type of spell or whatever, idk... I would have aceptyed Callum seeing anyhign, but they could have shown Avaraos side of the mirror seeing Callum or sense what was callum doing. Idk, just a littl thing could have been at least some level of build up to the moment Avaron took control over him.
Karim's rebellion was *so* underwhelming.
They could've built it up to make it seem more serious than it ended up being, maybe not to the point of *actually harming* Janai and Amaya's relationship(although the angst of that would've been so sweet), but it could've worked as one of the big arcs in the series(re-taking Lux Aurea and dealing with civilian unrest).
Instead...well...as I said it was *very* underwhelming.
I kind of liked it BECAUSE it was underwhelming. At a certain point, you just knew that even if he won he wouldn't get anything out of it, which turns him from an actual threat into a petulant whiner that you can enjoy getting what comes to him.
Terry has no real reason to be supporting Claudia. He should know that Viren tried to kill the dragon prince, the destined protector of Xadia, but he just goes along with whatever she does anyways. We see him morally conflicted about killing the sky mage but I feel like he's a little too accepting of Claudia's gleeful gathering of magical flora and fauna just to turn them into dark magic fuel. Maybe he's aware of all this but chooses to go with her because he's in love, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel like his morality doesn't align with his group and their goals and this conflict is not adressed enough.
Honestly, I really liked the season...until it ended so abruptly. I originally didn't look up how many episodes it had, so I was just expecting a story to come out of it before it ended. 9 episodes later, I had barely any story, and no more new ones to watch. I think season 5 might be a redemption, or at least I hope it is going to be.
Edit: The show means a lot to me, I've never felt so excited for a season to come out. I'm just saying that I'm looking forward to season 5 MORE than I was season 4.
I feel like we are the same person 😭 this is exactly me
Me too. My only issue is the fact that it ended too soon! After Rayla got the coins I was ready for more.... guess that's greedy, lol but after three years I was expecting more
I really hope this season is just one of those "weird seasons" and the rest of the show is just back to the normal greatness we're used to.
Agreed.
We hoped for that in GOT and what did we get
@@richardallot3134 yeh, I'm trying to hold hope but I might just be disappointed in the end
I think I read on reddit that the next season is almost ready, so we might get another mediocre season before we can have the chance of getting back on track
Me too. It's not as bad for me but compared to the first arc (Seasons 1-3), it's a bit of a downgrade. The character designs took a bit of getting used to if I'm honest; couldn't even recognize Callum at first. Not sure if anyone felt like the redesigns were off.
14:30 15:30 That's my issue as well. The conflict between Xadia and the Pentarchy has been going on for a millennia, and there is plenty of people on both sides who has suffered for it. Their actual grievances are never shown, and are supposed to be content with pretty speeches.
For example, what about the Sunfire soldiers who Amaya killed the day she met Janai? Their families had far more reasons to be pissed off about their incoming marriage than some stupid traditions.
Did Zubeia ever apologize to Callum amd Ezran for sending the elf assassin team? Are they fine with the chance of rescuing Runaan, Harrow's murderer, from the coin?
They don't know about Runaan yet and Zubeia made peace with them when they brought back her son
They really did Rayla so dirty this season and she’s my favorite
Fr i loved her the first three seasons and was so disappointed this one 😢
I actually think Terry is a terrible character. He actually enables Claudias evil behaviour. He does so much evil in this season and people don't seem to notice, calling him "a moral compas". Terry literally kills a dude by backstabing, enslaves Soren and cheers at Claudia's evil plans. Hell, he knows what Viren did, why would he align with him in the first place.
Exactly
"Does so much evil"? Are you serious here? While he *did* kill someone, that was only because that person was about to *kill his girlfriend* and let's be honest here, *no one* would be able to just be a bystander when put in a scenario where you have to act or else your significant other will be killed in front of you, so can we really fault him there? And even after he did that he was clearly shaken by having actual blood on his hands and is traumatized about it, I mean the dude broke down *crying* after he did that, which is more remorseful than anything Viren has ever shown for any of his murderous acts. And "enslaved" Soren? Dude, Terry just tied up Soren with vines, he wasn't even seriously hurt, he was just bound for a couple hours max, stop being melodramatic and using words without actually knowing what they mean. If the simple act of restraining someone counts as "enslavement" to you than you seriously need to read a dictionary. Also cheering at Claudia's "evil plans"? Ah yes, because Claudia committed the *vile act* of… opening a cocoon. Truly that action is *Hitler levels* of *EVIL.* Like seriously, calling Claudia full blown evil is just thinking with a black and white narrative where no shades of grey exists. Like the only significantly cruel act that Claudia commits this season happens at the end and even then he *IMMEDIATELY CALLS HER OUT FOR IT.* To act as if Terry is this sinful villain for merely being affiliated with Claudia is just being a melodramatic fanatic who believes that merely breathing next to a villain makes you evil.
I just don't understand how an elf would be ok with hanging around dark mages. But well, the show doesn't care enough to show us more about the cultures of each elf and human nation/kingdom.
@@ryancarson6962 why are you so pressed and comparing a fictional character to hitler- terry is still definitely evil he is actively helping the people trying to wipe out his species
@@ulaznar Terry saw a goth wizard and said F*** it 😏 lmao only explanation
Honestly, Rex Igneous was my favorite part of the season. I was like, "Finally! An actual relevent obstacle in their path with common sense!" And then it ended stupidly with him attacking everyone when clearly there was only one enemy. Hurray, I guess. The whole thing would have more impact for me if Claudia had died, leading to Viren becoming evil again.
Haha...yea, Rex Igneous goes from "I am going to kill you because I don't like your gifts" to "You are my best friends, I'll do whatever I can to help you hohoho" to "I am going to incinerate each and everyone of you because Rayla gave me a little prick on my finger" and then just shrugs and leaves when Zubeia shows up.
Maybe he was off his meds.
@@Shageemusic He wasn't going to kill them for the gifts. And he never called them his best friends--he walked out the moment they asked for the location to the most dangerous person in the world, which was a very reasonable thing to do. He is probably the only dragon who still thinks human can be good and he looked down upon dragons who would try to start unnecessary fights with them. He showed sympathy when he learned about what happened to said dragon, but never once did he promise to give them what they wanted. He never once said he was their best friends. He also never did threaten to kill them--but he did become angry after he was stabbed. Would you be?
Sure, it was stupid that he immediately decided everyone in the room was his enemy. He was rational up until that point, but the main characters were also warned very early on that he was very irritable, so it's no real surprise, espescially when he was grumpy since day one. Zubeia yelling at him also just proved that they had been telling the truth, so he had no reason to continue quarreling with him and so he returned to his cave.
He's a grumpy old man but he's the smartest and most believeable character in the series, and that's pretty much it.
@Bla Bla There's potential for it to happen that way if written well enough. Honestly, I thought the whole season was leading up Claudia dying and Viren taking it as inspiration to become evil again.
"As wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle" is probably the best way to describe this season.
Its 3-4 episodes worth of actual content stretched into a full season and half the content that IS there feels almost half-baked because it has to make room for all the diversions along the way
The Sun Elves storyline had so much potential, but it felt hollow because of how little setup there was *before* sh!t went sideways
The "Dragang" and the antagonists are both on a glorified fetch quest with constant detours
And the bits of lore and screentime we get on Aarovos , while interesting, don't make up for how pointless the first 3 episodes feel.
To be fair, I feel like Rayla feeling like a “shadow of her former self” might be intentional, and also very realistic to what one would do if they were very “down bad” like Rayla is
Doesn't make her an enjoyable watch.
Yeah. It's understandable, but extremely boring. We got no grudges that affect decisions in the story, no emotional discussions, no drama. It's just a full season of side glances that pauses character development for seemingly no effect.
It could have been used to mature Callum and Rayla and as a parallel to the sunfire plot - an illustration of how difficult reconciling the humans and elves is going to be if even these two struggle with it. Instead, both issues are apparently forgotten after episode 9. Callum hugs Rayla at the end and Janai tells her people (again) to fleave the past behind and just believe harder. We'll do it with the power of friendship! The show skips the important lessons and offers platitudes instead, changing barely anything about the status quo - which made the entire season feel pointless.
@@Stefan-xt5sk You making the assumption that all is forgiven with hug. Which not only is dumb but also naive. That is a problem in regards to your lack of objective assessment not with the show
@@bfedezl2018 Rayla didn't seem to have issues restarting their relationship, it was only Callum who blocked her out. His frequent glances and short smiles towards Rayla indicate to me that he already forgave her long ago, but just didn't want to admit it to himself because it would in a way invalidate the pain he has gone through. The shock of thinking she was actually dead when he wasted time sulking shook him out of this. I hope the conflict won't be forgotten in future seasons, but this essentially reverted their relationship to where it could have already been at the beginning of the season or maybe a few episodes in - if they had dealt with the issue instead of refusing to talk.
Honestly feels like copium
The biggest mistake of this season, to me, was the exposition dump on Aaravos. I loved that scene from somewhere in the previous seasons where Veran goes to the library to investigate and the pages ominously fill with ink to destroy any info that he would've been able to find on this mysterious figure.
And then the dragon queen just spoilers all of us by spilling all the beans at once. Seriously.
I was super hyped for this season because when I heard that there was a two year time skip, I wanted to see Callum's magic and how he improved. There was such a buildup for Callum learning and using magic throughout the first three seasons, and the scene where he grew wings was so beautiful- but he only uses them once, to fly from one side of the castle to the other. Did he forget about them when they sent Zym to be their "eyes", resulting in his capture? Why risk the Dragon Prince when you have someone else who can fly?
Besides his wings, I really wish there was more of a showcase of his magic.
And I really wish Zym could speak, and acted less like a dog. He's cute and all- but he would've stopped being a mascot, and actually become a character for once. He immediately understood English as a hatchling, so what's stopping him from learning it over the span of two years?
The time skip was iffy. It seemed that the main plot that really benefited form the time skip was the plot with Amaya and Janai’s but even then it didn’t need a full 2 years. They also could’ve let the audience see more of their relationship form. I get that there were seeds of a relationship but we didn’t see them grow together into romance. I guess kinda the plot of Rayla coming back and things being awkward the time skip kinda helps.
The time skip was a choice that I think wasn’t used in the best way. Time skips are difficult to handle but it didn’t seem super necessary. The main thing that I thought was crazy was that Claudia was dating Teri. I like him as a character but the dating didn’t need to happen especially off screen. I would not have thought Claudia would date an elf at this point in the story.
He could’ve been someone that Claudia met and he helped her out with getting certain ingredients for her dad. He could’ve been one of the few elves that is more on Claudia’s side. I do at least appreciate that the writers were using him to help with some character development for both Claudia and Viren. They didn’t need to have him date Claudia. They could’ve had him be someone that Claudia thinks is useful to keep around bc he’s on her side. If they wanted to do a possibility of romance then maybe Teri could have a crush on Claudia and he could still save her and kill the guard. It doesn’t make sense for Claudia to start the season reciprocating the feelings partly bc she likely would have been too focused on saving her dad to care about romance. He could still have that conversation with Viren.
They could’ve had either Viren or Teri get caught by Rayla. Once the cave was falling in. It could’ve been either one pointing out that Claudia was being too mean. If it was Viren then it could’ve been from him being shocked that his daughter who used to be a lot nicer was being super mean. If they had Teri to kinda help with his arc then that makes sense for him to look at it that way. I guess Teri does make more sense to be captured in that moment bc if it was Viren then Rayla likely would’ve straight up stabbed him. Maybe she would spare him for the sake of getting answers. They could still do the whole but don’t you want your parents back they are in this coins type thing.
I thought that the Sun elves plot was only cool for the world building and least getting some lore of the Sun Elves race. But I personally would much rather watch them retake Lux Aoria (whatever its called) and yet here I wonder WTF can’t they just take their damn shiny castle back. It’s not like there’s any new army of Darkness blocking it, but I guess they don’t have enough strong Fire magic or something to purify their old Sun C
Yh, Terri's existence was purely just to be the token trans character. Makes no sense for Claudia to have a whole bf at this point...
I was literally saying the same thing about Janai and Amaya's relationship feeling like we didn't get to see it form at all on the upload of the first episode. Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels that way about it
It's called the "Mystery of Aaaravos" but then they just revealed his secrets in the season. Like what??
I didn't mind season 4 and I don't think the series is ruined now or anything like some do, for me it felt like season one, where a lot of it was just set up for what'll come in later parts. Honestly when I rewatched the first three seasons in preperation for four you really do notice how much better it flowed together, making me think they probably write the three as one big season but only release parts. Which mind you is a problem and they shouldn't do that but I get it. Having said the pacing was still really slow but I thought that about season one and the following seasons developed the characters better and the pacing was smoother so I'll wait until next season to really complain too much though I get why people are upset.
THANK YOU. I 100% AGREE WITH YOU
This tbh
The vibes of s4 was completely different. It was childish to the point of immaturity with the jokes they had. Terry’s character and entire existence was pure pandering to the trans community but not even done well. The relationship between Terry Claudia and Viren made zero sense. Claudia gives Soren a whole speech about how Elves could never be their friends, they see them as lesser beings, weak and pathetic but the very next second is “Thanks baby” smooching on her boyfriend? Terry’s moral compass is all over the place. He’s fine with Claudia killing magical creatures left and right and using their corpses as fodder for dark magic but when he kills someone himself, suddenly, he’s this soft baby boy who has big feelings and needs coddling. Viren being sympathetic to Terry’s trans story after a whole arc where we was willing to turn his own son into a monster to fight against and massacre the elves? Okay. Sure. And Soren not having a SINGLE piece of interaction with his Dead Dad after 2 years was a cop out of what would have been a very heavy conversation (even if it was short). A whole scene of black screen because they need to be in the dark so the creatures don’t get them? Wow. This is only SOME of the many points that really really made this season Bad.
And I disagree with “writing the first three season as one big season and releasing it in parts is a problem.” This is how you have cohesion in a story. They should already know how this entire story plays out and ends so that all the plot holes are addressed. This is why Soren being gaslit by Viren in s3 and tricking Claudia into believing Soren misunderstood Viren about killing the princes was so good. They built the dialogue for that in s1 so that it could be twisted to benefit Viren. This s4 feels like people who haven’t really seen s1-3 were brought in, given a summary of what happened and were told to do whatever they want with s4. It was Bad dude.
@@nhi3259
I've always found the jokes to be a low point of the series, most of them tend to come off as really childish and ridiculous especially any with Claudia and Soren so that didn't really bother me.
I agree on Claudia's speech to Soren like I was assuming maybe the end of the season would reveal she's just using Terry and doesn't actually want to date him or something but she took his opinions seriously so who knows, maybe that'll still be revealed later but for now yeah her speech doesn't really make sense.
As for Terry and Viren though, I actually think they're handled pretty well, Terry is emotional and Viren tends to stay closed up but both of them are changing. Viren because of his death is starting to see things in a different light and though parts of his original self are still there I think him listening to Terry more as the season goes on is part of him opening up more. With Terry I read it more like it's one thing when Claudia is just using bugs and shit for dark magic, it's another when he actually has to kill a guy, at the end it was just to save Claudia but still he doesn't like killing people/elves. I also don't really see how he was pandering since him being trans barely came up. Like I forgot he was until I seen people talking about it
Also they probably did write this season with the next ones in mind hell the thing people are criticizing is that it was a lot of set up, if the next seasons don't build on this you can find me here but until then I'll wait before pretending this season didn't really matter or isn't doing anything.
I don't know that I can say I felt it ruined anything. But it definitely made me not care about what comes next as much. I still enjoy the earlier seasons but its shown that the issues I had with them are not going away and that I just might not like the series.
I orrigianally watched it as the spiritual successor of Atla and have had to admit its really not that. And this season made me confront that I only really like dragon prince conceptually and all of the execution has felt hamfisted or fell flat.
These are the questions that came to my mind when the camp sideplot began:
Why are the sun elves living in camps made by humans two years after their capital city was taken and the army that took it no longer exists?
Can't they retake their capital city because their sun is corrupted? If so, in which ways does that affect them? Do they lose their sun powers under the black light? Is it a reminder of their failure to protect it?
Isn't there any other city of sun elves that they could make their new capital city? Did all the sun elves just live in a single city?
Are they making efforts to build themselves a new city? How much progress was made in 2 years? Why was the camp made by a human architect? Are the sun elves incapable of making their own camps?
There are so many questions and implications about the world and the previous events that happened and the show doesn’t give them any time to breathe let alone answer them 😢
I have to disagree about the Karen and the candle thing. It was so incredibly forced and cringe. As I've seen other people point out, how does the architect in a Sunfire elf camp not realize that there's gonna be fire everywhere, especially having been living with them for 2 years at this point? And how, in these 2 years, did she not already know about the candle tradition for funerals? That entire plot point was conflict for the sake of conflict. I absolutely hated it.
Honestly, the sun elf plot felt like it takes place a month maybe two after the sun city fell. Like, why are all these problems only now coming to light. Meanwhile the other plots feel like they been a thing for longer then two years at points. There a huge pacing problem between the pots and it jarring.
The thing that really stood out to me this season was the writing. It felt very,,,,,unnatural and expositional, especially in the first couple episodes. I haven’t rewatched seasons 1-3 in a while, so maybe I’m wrong, but it felt so weird and contrived. Like, it would constantly tell us what was happened rather than show us,,,,and then tell us a couple more times in the same scene, if you didn’t get it the first 5 times. They refuse to let you work stuff out on your own, and instead have to spoon-feed every single instance, as though you won’t understand it from context clues alone.
The scene that sticks out the most is right at the end of episode 2, when Callum discovers how the tome of translation works. He slams his hand down and knocks some ink on one side of the page, which then magically appears on the second side. At this point, you’re thinking “oh, that’s cool, you write something on one side and then it translates for you.” That’s where it should end - especially considering that Callum is an intelligent character in canon - but no, Bait has to visibly notice this, push the ink towards Callum to get him to notice, basically going “did you see that?! Something interesting happened!! Watch and we’ll explain it multiple times!!”. And then he has to say “What? That ink wasn’t on both sides? How did it get there?”. And then a camera shot to the mirror, incase you didn’t already guess what he’s gonna use it for. And then back to Callum with “Oh! Wow! You write something one side, and it translates it over! How can I use this?”. And then another shot of the mirror, but this time a close up of the runes, just to really hammer home what he’s doing, because they audience are clearly too stupid to understand what’s going on :). And then we finally get “I can use this to translate the runes on the mirror! Wow! Thanks bait!”.
This scene lasted about 4-5 minutes, but it honestly could have been 2. AND IT DOESNT EVEN FUCKIN MATTER, BECAUSE ITS INFORMATION THAT WE ALREADY KNOW, AND A MUCH MORE INTERESTING PLOT POINT IS INTRODUCED IN THE SAME SCENE WITH RAYLA’S RETURN.
The endless over explaining and spoon-feeding feels more at home in a kids show, along with all the second-hand cringe I got from literally most of Callum’s scenes, but it just doesn’t fit the vibe of the earlier seasons. The voice acting and conversations between characters also feel quite stiff and unnatural - pretty much all apart from Soren, who is pretty much the only character I can sit and enjoy without getting bored at this point - but I’m hesitant to blame the voice actors, as I have a lot of respect for them, and the dialogue in general is a large part of what makes it feel so stiff, because it’s not how regular people (or even the characters from the last 3 seasons) interact with each other.
Of course people can still in enjoy the season, and I’m glad that they were able to find some happiness in it, but it just felt so clunky and contrived and unnecessary that I found it difficult to personally enjoy and get invested in it.
I am most worried about the decline of the animation quality. While I have hopes for the story to pick up I'm not sure if we are going back to season 3 animation quality. In this season all movements felt robotic, the facial expressions were less animated, the textures looked shiny instead of the painted look of the previous seasons.
I noticed that too, episode 1's animation was super weird and in general I didn't like the look of the show.
This season was so disapointing. I didn't like it, it had too many jokes, and the drama with rayla and callum was unnecesary
I agree. I usually don’t like break up drama when it can badly ruin the pacing. Raylum and maybe, Kelly x Marco are the 2 examples of this
Too many unfunny jokes. I didnt crack a single smile and was regularly whispering to myself how horrible this was.
Agreed, the show seems to have trouble deciding what it’s audience is. The show’s dialogue is meant for children but there are some scenes that are absolutely not. For example the scene where the sister of the current sun elf queen died. That architect getting their hands scorched. Kalium getting possessed. And many more. There’s blood and excessive violence. Sometimes I wish that the show just committed to being for a mature audience.
The seasons from 1-3 have always had jokes and comedy for 70% of the content, that is literally the same as Avatar the last Airbender where goofy and kiddy content was 80% of every episode and there were about maybe 10 episodes where the plot was 90% serious and broken up with small bits comedy
cause that’s actually how really good shows do it and not become stale pieces of crap that take themselves too seriously...
The drama with real and callum was needed because it sets up the whole dynamic of what we give up for revenge
Which is a huge plot point for the show, in how vengeance only keeps a cycle of hate and pain going
Rayla spent two years trailing Claudia after she could not find Virren’s body, becasue she had to make sure he was dead, as she blamed him for killing her parents
the cost of her revenge was Callum’s love and etc
When she comes back, Callum is the one having a hard time with letting go of his anger to be with her, until the end when he thinks she was killed and he realizes how pointless that was
that is character development,
@@sepsam4556 I’m sorry sepsam i didn't realize you were the administrator of what humor was and is
i must have forgotten that humor is subjective and thus not a real good measurement for criteria
The writing seems way more clunky this season. Maybe I miss the single episode arch’s of the characters learning something at the end of each episode, but I see it all starting with them failing to establish Rayla and Callum’s relationship. (I did not read the comic and was very confused.)
At the very beginning they failed to set their king pin and at the last episode, the dominos fail to fall on their dramatic arch. Which is funny because they could’ve solved it with only a few tweaks.
Imagine this: we flash back to a few days after the battle at the mountain. The celebrating is done and the morning rises on the day everyone is packing to leave. Rayla had trouble sleeping, so she has been up all night, sitting on a rock, thinking. Callum comes to tell her that the armies are packing and moving out, going back home. Rayla confirms her fears that Viren is still out there. Callum tells her the searches have been called off, but tries to assure her that their group would be ready if Viren or Claudia ever came back. Rayla can’t sit with that. She tells Callum she intends to go on her own to find Viren and Claudia, arrest them and bring them to justice. Callum and Rayla have an argument. It ends with Callum saying he is going home with Ezran. Rayla says she’s going on alone. They part ways sadly.
Without this scene, we have no clue where their relationship is at! We have no idea why it should feel so awkward when Rayla suddenly shows up in Callum’s room two years later.
(Also Callum nerding about magic when he believes there is a threat to his brother’s life does not make any sense. We know he likes magic! Him being high mage isn’t enough of a hint? Or him studying the magic mirror in his office? Callum would drop everything and not let anything get in his way if he believed Ezran was going to die right in that moment. That doesn’t make sense.)
Anyway, now it makes sense why Callum is keeping his distance from Rayla. We feel his pain, but not at the expense of our empathy for Rayla too.
Now their dynamic is set. Rayla is pursuing Callum, but Callum isn’t letting her in. She is trying to bridge the gap between them and she sees Callum is not. At this point, she should be the one trying to ‘get him back’. She could even be overcompensating and nervous and awkward, worrying what she could do to make it up to him. To prove her intentions. She never left to not be with him, she just needed to know Viren was dead. Or to find Claudia and arrest her. Something to conclude the story.
While she is pursing him so hard, Callum is still keeping his distance, being rather cold at times. He could even say something very hurtful to her.
Then by the time Rayla is alone with Soren and he brings up Callum, we understand why Rayla is feeling some anger and despair for their relationship. “Have I done too much damage? “ She is now pulling away from Callum and the pain the relationship is causing, hence why she’s reluctant to talk about it with Soren and ends up walking off on her own.
Then by the time Rayla and Callum see Viren in Umber Tor, they can’t believe he’s alive. Rayla is so shocked that she can’t say anything. She stands there, torn. Go after Viren or stay with the group? Callum sees this conflict in her, squeezes her hand and tells her to go after him, nodding his approval. Touched, she squeezes his hand back, giving him a kiss on the cheek before running into the cave. Callum is slightly worried but has faith she’ll be okay.
(The rest of the series is the same, but needs more dramatic flare, timing and performance.)
So, with Rayla pursuing Claudia, she holds Terry at knife point. Claudia in turn, holds out the prison coins of Rayla’s foster dad and parents. Claudia threatens to throw the coins in the lava.
(If we feel good about Rayla’s choice, then we should feel the despair of her not getting her family back. If we feel bad about Rayla’s choice, then we feel her loss was somewhat justified. Because we are supposed to want her family back, I’m going with the former, as a prompt.)
Rayla thinks about the offer, but says she won’t make a deal with her. She doesn’t want to let Claudia continue her evil.
Claudia throws the coin bag. But in that moment, we understand where Rayla’s loyalty truly lies. She lets Terrry go and jumps to catch the bag. For once, she is choosing her family over her duty. But upon catching the bag, Rayla sees the coins are just rocks. Claudia laughs, still with the bag, leaving Rayla despairing.
She chose duty and lost her family.
Then when Rex Ignious spits out Rayla’s knife on the ground, Callum rushes to grab it and cries over it, thinking Rayla didn’t get out of the mountain safely. He thinks that kiss was the last time he’d see her again.
But then Rayla cries out from under the rubble and everyone rushes to dig her out. Callum holds her shoulder then drops into a hug. “I’m glad you came back,” he says, relieved.
This video really put into perspective for me how frustrating it is that the only characters that matter are the main characters. They constantly talk about "the people" all over the place, but "the people" never actually get to make their perspective heard. All we get are the elites and nobles talking on their behalf, seemingly just presuming to know what their feelings are without asking them.
Korra and The Dragon Prince are those few shows perfect for critical dissection. Its this mix of good and bad that some how exist together without destroying each other. Yet problems continue, and that ATLA cred still provides a comparison of when they knew how to fit pieces together.
Korra at her worst was still miles ahead of whatever this new season was.
Korra is simply worse then Avatar which is a high bar to reach anyway. The dragon prince is the epitome of mid. Mid animation, mid themes, mid pacing, and mid world building
Even the worst episode of Korra S2 was halfway as bad as TDP S4. I don't really think it's fair to comapre these two.
@@Treck533
It's also not over yet
Unfortunately, I think The Dragon Prince and Korra show the weaknesses of the creators when they're apart.
The Dragon Prince had good writing and likeable characters which made it seem like the simple story was going somewhere deeper, even if the world building, lore, and themes aren't that interesting.
Korra inherited the intriguing lore from ATLA and had it's own interesting ideas and themes, but the writing is so terrible it makes the characters unlikeable/boring and the story worse.
It really goes to show how these projects are a group effort.
If im being completely honest the Janai and Amaya plot was my favorite out of all of them. The other ones just felt so rushed and unimportant, and while the sunfire elf plot wasn't super important to the actual storyline, it was the best developed one
I agreed, but once he pointed out a couple of the flaws, it was really obvious how bad the flaw is. We never see ANYTHING from any unnamed or side characters aside from the karen. Having the guards mumble about how brutish those elves were for doing this. Or, seeing the unnamed elves actually complaining in the background about Janai's leadership, justifying her brother's action.
Also, for him to act like the brother is upset over the gay marriage is... strange. His brother isn't upset over the gay marraige. He's upset over the interracial marriage. And ripping on him for being the only actual racist elf we get to see matters.
@@ebilgaming I personally thought that the Sun elves plot was only cool for the world building and least getting some lore of the Sun Elves race. But I personally would much rather watch them retake Lux Aoria (whatever its called) and yet here I wonder WTF can’t they just take their damn shiny castle back. It’s not like there’s any new army of Darkness blocking it, so what’s the point of keeping it as New Mordor now, but I guess they don’t have enough strong Fire magic or something to purify their old Sun Core.
It's a nice side plot in theory, but we see so little and nothing changes between the beginning and the end. Janai offered nothing except platitudes and the power of friendship to appease the people who apparently hate each other (which we never really see). This show of leniency, without anything tangible for people to rally behind, should have cemented her as a weak leader in the eyes of many people, spreading discontent even more.
It would be interesting to see her wrestle with what she thinks is best for her people and what she needs to compromise to stay in power long enough to achieve that goal. What if the growing discontent pressured her into promising to retake Lux Aurea despite having no idea how to do that yet? Where would she go for answers? I want to see those things!
Outra coisa estranha é não ter nenhum sinal do Sol Regem, já que ele odeia humanos
Nahhh boring and dragged out.
I think it makes perfect sense for Callum to feel the way he does about Rayla still. Your first love is felt very intensely, specially as a 14 yr old, and in a medieval world it's a lot harder to meet someone else I imagine. It's not like he has tinder.
He's a prince though? I'm sure he definitely already saw some of his potential suiters to continue the bloodline. And also him being practically the prime minister now also boost his attractiveness to the ladies
I just wish they would've actually shown Rayla leaving and the imact it had on him instead of just telling us after the fact.
@@Nameah321 That’s exactly what I was thinking, 2 years and that broad still hasn’t come back? SURELY some girls have been hitting up the first human ever to learn elf magic, on top of him yk BEING A PRINCE. At least there was somewhat a love triangle in the earlier seasons when Callum was still into Claudia, but now that she’s evil in his eyes, he just continues to struggle with Rayla-feels. I assume they’re trying to show that he’s committed and hasn’t moved on as it’s not easy to do, but would that “love” formed in a few weeks really last over 2 years with that many other options on the table? Kinda implausible if you ask me
Yeah I'm fine with them still being in love with each other deep down. It's totally fine and even expected for romantic relationships in fantasy adventure stories to be a bit heightened and dramatic compared to real life romance. But they needed to show us more of that conflict. Honestly that's the one main problem with almost everything in this season; nothing got the screen time it needed. We needed a flashback where we saw Callum the day Rayla left; we needed to see Rayla struggling with her decision on her own in the wilderness after she left; and we needed a few actual meaningful conversations between them about it after she came back. It's like we got the cliff-notes and it makes the plot-line lose all impact.
To be fair, Amaya’s iconic misunderstanding of the proposal was pretty thoughtful foreshadowing for that part of the plot.
My biggest problem was the timeskip and how it made for too much "tell" and not enough "show". When Claudia told Viren about all the thing she's been doing and "I had to do things I never imagined I would be able to do", that's just bad writing because we didn't SEE any of it. It's why I didn't like Amaya and Janai getting together because we only just saw them starting to become friends and now they're getting married? imagine if we saw Season 1 Callum and Rayla, who are only starting to just get used to the idea of Elves and Humans being friends, suddenly say they love each other.
Been waiting for SC to return to this once it came out
biggest problem is that aaravos only gets one proper scene (besides the intro), i think they could of at least included very short quick shots of him throughout or at least a quick shot at the end of the season since viren and the gang got the map
I was so confused over when Rayla and callum broke up. Now I know when, and I’m ticked off. I felt like I missed an entire season 3.5 the whole time I was watching. 😑
Yep, agree completely. I was quite disappointed with this "season." It felt like nothing actually happened. The proposal and wedding plot line felt totally out of nowhere and awkward. And the most unforgivable part of this season was that it's literally named after Aaravos and he's only 1 scene in the entire "season" just to possess Callum for a minute while he villain monologues.
I really think that Callum asking Rayla to kill him so that Aaravos won’t use him would work better if it was done multiple times
thank god for this video. i was seriously going crazy over how disappointing season 4 was and how no one seemed to feel the same. there are still points in this that i don't necessarily agree with, but it's so therapeutic hearing my issues being voiced by someone else too
No one seemed to feel the same? Buddy you should've seen the reddit 2 days after season 4 dropped. Damn near everyone was complaining😂
@@okita_souji_alter i have since discovered the reddit and by god, does it feel so good being right
I do want to say I quite like the stone dragon guardians. They’re pretty fun side side characters
The comic actually passed me off. They put one of the most IMPORTANT story for 2 of the MAIN CHARACTERS in a side comic that not all fans can get it killed the moment.
What the hell did they do to Rayla? From a daunting, funny and complete character I admired in the first three seasons to a dainty lady who only expects in a kinda obsessed way to get Callum's attention. I can't get over this. No matter what next seasons will show us, I think that what creators managed to create is already wretchedly destroyed for good.
It felt like 1/2 or 1/3 of a season. Also should have been called Mysteries of Rex Igneous considering that's more of what it felt like.
Almost all of the problems are because of the time skip. Imagine if we had begun on the 2 days instead of 2 years. We could have the aftermath of the battle (what happened to all the magic infused humans?), the start of the camp building (giving us REAL tension between the Sun elves and humans. We could see the elves refusing to take orders from human carpenters, workspeople etc), we could have had the dragon queen return the princes to the human kingdom (more tension, but like 'Here is the mate of the dragon that killed our king and queen, but... wait, she's brought the kind and prince back!?' to give us the whole 'letting go of previous anger' thing. We could then have HER discover the mirror, or, like, have Callum (or Soren) bring it up, with her reacting in a panic/shock about it because Aaravos, giving us a more natural flow into that, without the whole book of translation time waste. Our raylum could have been the pair reluctant to split up with Callum accompanying whomever to go and find Rex, while Rayla remains with the queen as a guard, but both of them sorta wanting to be with the other.
Meanwhile, we could have skipped the whole mountain climb thing and just have the staff be with Claudia, and start THAT storyline with them waiting for the right time to open the cocoon. Our Viren plot could be him refusing to touch the staff and showing regrets and maybe not bringing it up with Claudia, who he sees as taking on his mantle. maybe not wanting to disappoint her by revealing that he has lost his drive/desire. We could even have Terry meeting up with some other earthbloods to drive home THAT conflict, maybe even doing the 'kill an elf to protect Claudia' with a bully of his? Could even have had the bully gang be called the Turfs as a fun tongue in cheek joke.
But the ending of this season should have been episode 4 or 5 at most. This felt like half a season's worth of content. And it's a shame, because there was a lot of hype, for a middling at best set of filler.
This all sounds absolutely amazing god they should’ve hired you for this season
I've heard that a book they released is supposed to be the content of the time skip, but I didn't get into this to purchase and read a book, but to watch the contained story they have on the screen.
This sounds like a way better handling of the material and I see a fellow hater of the time-skip, nice. The only "correction" (if we want to call this that) I would make is that Terry needed to be introduced to us and have time to develop feelings for Claudia ,and viceversa, especially if we started two days after the end of season 3.
@@MrReset94 They seriously did nothing to explain his motives. They try to play him like an innocent cinnamon roll, but he knows exactly who Viren and Claudia are. He knows what they're trying to accomplish. What possible reason could this man have to basically betray everyone? Is he just simping that hard for a girl with a fart fetish?
This is much better!
My problem isn't even the 3 main plots in theory, it's just that nothing feels fleshed out. In the previous seasons, to me it always felt like plots at least had consequences on the other plots and while you can kinda say that about the viren and dragon plots (not rly tho imo) the sun elf plot is just completely removed from everything. The world just doesn't feel connected anymore to me. Idk.
the real problem is that by the time you're feeling like something is going to happen the episode is over and so is the momentum... I really hope they fix these issues
My main problem with this season’s setup, is that everything that is happening with the humans and elves and dragons adjusting to live with each other. A lot of the problems they come across feel like conflicts they’d face in the beginning and not 2 years later. Like the whole human burning out the sun elf’s ceremony candle, I feel like that whole interaction would have happened in the beginning when humans and elves started out. It’s 2 years later and you’re telling me the elves haven’t at least attempted to share with the humans of their customs and vice versa? Or how come it took Ezran 2 years for the Queen of the dragons to visit the human kingdoms? Wouldn’t this be more in the start of the 2 years when they’ve made peace? Also if Rayla left Callum because she felt Viran wasn’t dead, how did she know he was alive when it took 2 years for Claudia to bring him back from the dead? The only realistic thing was Callum’s distant behavior once Rayla made an appearance after being gone for 2 years.
On the Rayla point that's from the comics, she got visions of Viren stoll bring alive
Hey! Don’t sell yourself short. I’m one of those people that discovered you through the Dragon Prince. I really fell in love with the content and the show. So, I’m sad that this season didn’t live up to the others. Fortunately, I do have hope for the following seasons, too. I’m still invested in the world and characters, so I will remain cautiously optimistic. Keep up the great work! I’m looking forward to the next video. Sending lots of love from Japan! Take care!
I hate how you have a buildup through 3 seasons, they established a relationship, and it is thrown out the window for a pointless side quest and drama.
For me, the major problem that this season (and a lot of other shows now that I think about it) is that the writers are sacrificing a lot for the plot. Because the season is only 9 episodes long and there are three major plots going on simultaneously, it's hard to get invested when it feels like not enough time was dedicated to each one. We can't focus on things like Callum and Rayla's rocky relationship, or the tension still remaining with elves and humans because it keeps getting pushed to the side in favor of the main plot. 9 episodes just isn't enough to handle everything.
SPOILERS AND RANTING:
I think what really set my expectations for this season was the whole mountain climb ep. When Claudia says they need to go get his staff and it's on top of the mountain, I'm just wondering "oh, why didn't she do it sometime in the last 2 years? She even has like, a sidekick now. There must be some magic ritual reason that he has to get it himself or something. Maybe she'll explain on the way?" But after enduring that recurring fart joke (..why?) fear of heights, a whole existential crisis moment and 2 anxiety attacks where he just passes out, they basically get to the top and she tells him she doesn't need his help, and they'll just meet him at the bottom. WTF??
A. ) Why wait till you're at the top of the mountain to do this when he's clearly been struggling the entire time?
B. ) It took you 2 years to bring this character back from death, and he has literally blacked out twice during the climb. But you think it's totally fine for him to just do the whole descent by himself???
What truly broke me, though, was when Claudia (who has presumably been killing a lot of innocent creatures lately) plays a trick on one of the heroes to save Terry who's being held hostage with a knife to his neck. And it is only THIS point, this incident where she actually doesn't end up hurting anyone and tries to save a life - HIS LIFE - that Terry thinks Claudia has gone too far. This is a character btw, that KILLED someone to save her earlier in the same season. just...what?
And I know this is just B plot stuff but Amaya did that chick dirty not defending her AT ALL. Even saying nothing would've been less cruel. The architect was insensitive, but she said it herself that there was a rule about open flames within the camp that the elf broke. And she even pointed out that the reason for the rule was to protect the people living in flammable cloth tents. Surely there's an argument to be made that protecting the lives of hundreds of currently living people might have priority over a memorial for one singular already dead person, especially to one unfamiliar with the tradition. The council was comprised of Sun-Elves so it wouldn't be shocking if they still deemed her guilty despite any defense. Then Janai could step in and be the merciful leader, without making Amaya look like a total jerk for not even trying when a life was on the line. Janai could even show off her wisdom by explaining that her indentured servitude to build a shrine is not just a merciful alternative to execution, but also a useful solution to this problem in the future - a place for the Sun Elves to hold their ceremonies safely and a place for humans to respectfully learn about their religious customs. ( I don't know why this bothered me so much but it just felt out of character for Amaya )
Okay, rant over. Thanks for coming to my TED talk lol
On the Terry point, while I do think it was a weird moment with Claudia, I believe so far he could explain her actions as having no other choice. Even killing he did because Claudia's life was on the line but at the end Claudia tricked Rayla and was going to keep Rayla's parents hostage and was just messing with her
Man that b plot with the architect annoyed me to no end.
I think the issue with the Architect was that she was unwilling to learn, not that she didn't know. The elf straight up explains the situation and then she douses his recently dead mother's flame right after being told how terrible that would be for them.
I’m sorry but being an architect myself, the first thing you do is talk with the communities you’re working for, so you understand their needs and can design around them, that girl built a inflammable camp for FIRE elves , like seriously, I thought she deserved everything she got lol 😂
@@juanitacanon3120 I was SO confused about this as well! Like, they are called FIRE elves for a reason, it is not that difficult to come to the conclusion that fire might be important to them 😂
And all ofthis could have gone more in-depth about human culture and elf culture clashing/them not knowing much about the other. Like, more than just this _one_ conflict. Even if it all ended well in the end it felt lackluster because I imagine there still must be so many differences between both cultures that could make humans and elves clash. And the architect's dumbness made it basically impossible to understand/feel sorry for her
On the topic of things that don't really click with the season: How does Viren know who Rex Igneous is?
Remember that moment in Season 2 or 3 (I can't remember which one because I haven't done a proper rewatch) where Viren is riding to the divide between the human lands and Xadia? Aaravos is asking about whether or not Viren killed Averzandum and Viren goes "I've killed no one of such name" implying he never knew the proper name of the dragons who the humans primitively referred to by primal names like "Thunder?" Yeah I remember. If he didn't know Averzandum's name, how the hell does he know the Great Earth Archdragon Rex Igneous? It's kinda implied that the archdragons all know each other so if Viren had some book about the archdragons he'd know Thunder's actual name. It's nitpicky, I know, but internal consistency is important when you're making a huge fantasy universe.
This season feels like it was written by Twitter comments.
@Bla Bla it does 💀
this season happened so quickly it literally felt like a recap
I actually really liked the Sunfire Elves story-line. I liked that it at least *tried* to address the human/elf racism we keep being told is happening. I also liked how Amaya's speech simultaneously acknowledged that the architect chose to be cruel while still asking for mercy. And I loved how they actually tried to improve human/elf relations by having the architect build the shrine, rather than just making yet another speech about connections and feelings.
But I also agree with your criticism that we keep being told by Prince Karim (and only Prince Karim) the camp is a powder-keg waiting to erupt and that everyone's doubting Janai's leadership... and we never actually see it other than the one inciting incident. You'd think there would be at least some people protesting at the trial. And then all nuance goes out the window when it's revealed that Prince Karim just wants to stage a coup. It's also weird that this is only happening *now* after the two-year time-skip, rather than anytime beforehand. Were there seriously no human/elf incidents at all until now?
Overall though, it at least tried to treat the human/elf racism as a problem and address it instead of just talking about it and making the occasional speech. I really wish the rest of the show did more of that.
Thank you for putting my felling's into words, for me this was a 5/10 season. Really hope season 5 saves the show again.
You hit basically every nail on the head for my problems this season so kudos to ya for that! There are a ton of fan works that are far better excuses for season 4 than what we actually got, and while that makes me love the fandom more, it speaks very poorly for the writers, who I hope get their shit together for season 5.
Also. Back in 2018-2019 I started watching your sarcastic summaries and am proud to have supported your channel! Keep up the great work
I got to playtest The Dragon Prince RPG at GenCon'21 and I got the vibe from Season 4 that it was written to flesh out their world in direct support for their RPG game
I am going to be honest; this season killed my interest in the show. I have no interest in seeing the rest anymore. they had 3 years to look through and consider the praise and criticisms that the show received, and what do they do? double down on the worst aspects (dark magic is always evil, telling and not showing, adding the dam lemur, etc) while moving away from the interesting aspects (Rayla and Callums relationship, grey morality, world building and so on). plus, there are actual plot holes this season. for example, why can't the dragon queen escort them to the earthblood elf village? I could rant for hours but I can't be here all day.
Same. The writing and humor are why off and worse in this season. I lost all interest. I haven't any finished season 4 and starting looking videos to see other reactions. Guess I'm not alone.
Kinda same, but I'll still be watching after this... Purely because of Aaravos, Soren, Viren & Terry, and maybe some Callum, Claudia and Rayla if they get better again.
But why did they just drop all of Aaravos' lore in like a few minutes... It's so stupid and kills all mystery-element the show had. Also, because his lore was actually just BOOOORRRINNNGGG. 'Well actually he is just super evil forever and ever and every bad thing ever is his fault'. At least he's an enjoyable character, because man that's the most generic a villain backstory has ever been...
I feel like you could go on 12 more hours about why this season just isn't good, but tbh it's just a waste of energy... I'm just gonna hope the rest of the show is better.
Although idk what screwed them up here. Did they have a lot of trouble working during COVID? Or what went down here? Although tbh they should've just scrapped the entire fire elves, subplot is so boring and anti-climaxtic...
Yep. Tried to cach up today and bounced off hard. And usually I am more than willing to get over some problems with story as long as I find it interesting, but it was just too much.
I didn't know Terry was "trans," and I can't help but as, "trans-what?" But hearing that he allegedly is, coupled to the "gay marriage" plot line with "racism is bad and also a stand-in for homophobia, you bigots" shoveled in with zero impact on the actual story of the season, makes me wonder how much of the problem was the writers trying to shove in Sufficient Virtue Signalling that they just scrapped actual storytelling in favor of it. It's not _new_ to the series - the gay queens in the last season were a thing, for one, and I suppose we can be grateful that they didn't make Soren gay or even "discovering his - er, 'her' - trans-identity," but he also is the butt-monkey of the season if not the show, so making him either would probably be viewed as -phobic.
I wouldn't say it all got in the way except that the plot centered around virtue signaling is literally the tumor that ate up too much screen time and went nowhere useful to the story! I can't help but wonder if they had to divert too many resources - production, not just run-time - to that plot in order to please some Woke-Quota, either their own internal desire to virtue signal or something mandated from on high, and that's what led to the atrocious pacing, writing, and the terrible choices in what to skip and what to present in the other plot lines.
Also, frankly, they 1000% should have retconned the comic. Retell it, revise it, or skip it entirely, but don't waste Reyla as a character that way, and don't waste the viewers' time with confusion and nonsense that doesn't contribute anything to the story. It literally just resets Callum and Reyla to Season 2-3 in their arc, and that's not "romantic tension" or anything interesting. It's just obnoxious.
I didn't know about the book so i just assumed they broke Rayla and Callum because they didn't know how to do them as a couple so just did the "lets get back to will they/won't they again" like a lot of movies and shows do
I don't know which is worse: to go back to the "will they/ won't they" or to see their relationship becoming the boring fest that is season 3 Lumity. (I see a lot of death threats in my near future!)
@@valentinkambushev4968 i mean, season 3 has only one episode until now and it wasn't focussed on their relationship so i wouldn't judge it so fast
@@lilil9752 even so the show is actively avoiding conflict in their relationship. I know the show doesn't have much time, but I don't think it wants to acknowledge the problems Luz and Amity's relationships has.
From what the creators said Rayla/Callum was a last minute thing that the fans and some of the creator like so they made it canon, so it was not planned. Some people I talk to and myself suspect that when Callum was alone and missing Rayla , it could have original been a scene that was writen with him missing Claudia. You know sense she was his long time childhood friend and former crush but for them to used it for Rayla they need a time skip and break Callum/Rayla up for it.
@@valentinkambushev4968 again, it´s only been one episode in season 3 for now
I think I don't mind the three stories thing because I'm so used to that as a Warrior Cat fan. Since Power of Three, we've ALWAYS had three POVs stories going on simultaneously. Since Broken Code, we've had those POVs be in other Clans. One in ThunderClan, one in ShadowClan, one in SkyClan. In A Starless Clan, it's one in ShadowClan, one in RiverClan, one in ThunderClan, soon to be two in ShadowClan. The pacing there is just slow enough to where you can get fully emersed in each clan POV though. But here it just jumps around too much.
One thing that always irked me about the Dragon Prince is how literally each scene ends on some kind of cliffhanger that cuts to the other subplot. It becomes so predictable, I watch KNOWING the scene will cut away and we'll get more info in a few minutes. Each scene lasts 1-2 minutes. That's a problem in all seasons, but just became unbearable in season 4
Ugh totally! I literally said aloud watching it "stop cutting away!!" It got so annoying!! Really ruined the flow and stopped me being invested in any stakes at all
@@mallymay9439 right!? I was literally like "They're gonna cut away now, I can tell" and I was right. Every. Time.
@@Walking_Spinel it was like they thought it would build suspense but it literally killed all potential tension
16:48 instead of making rayla leave callum on a revenge mission, she could’ve stayed at the spire alone as a dragonguard (while callum stays back at the castle). that way, when claudia finally comes back to the spire with viren, rayla has a reason to go back to katolis and boom - season 4 is kickstarted without the unnecessary rayllum drama
Callum and Reyla were hit with complete character assassination the hardest because GOD FORBID we have a stable couple in a series. The writers completely butchered 3 seasons worth of character development in 1 fucking comic. This season was such a massive let down from S3
"I wouldn't have my first 1000 subscribers without this show." As number 247, I can confirm this is true. (12/12/19) "After 3 years, which felt like 9 ..." Good grief, how right you are. Also, Terry is how you declare a person is trans, not the hamfisted nonsense High Guardian Spice went for. Also, personal side note: Amaya did "who" and "cake" different than what I've been taught. (I'm almost certain she went for "cupcake" instead, actually.)
lmao I remember you commenting in the original DP Summary. Thanks for sticking by me all this time!