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ferrous-ironclaw · 1 year

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The Dragon Prince Book Four: Earth (Mystery of Aaravos) - A critique

Introduction

First off, this post is going to contain spoilers. Don’t read this if you haven’t seen all of Book Four yet.

So I recently got done watching Book Four with my partner. I binged my way through books 1-3 after she told me she wished she had someone to appreciate the new season with, and I bought into the world of The Dragon Prince with a great deal of eagerness. I love the world they’ve set up and that’s why I felt so let down by Book Four. I wanted to write this post to explain some of my feelings on some of the odd choices I feel were made and point out how I feel the show’s potential could have been better used.

The Critique

So this isn’t an exhaustive list of the issues I had with the show, but I’ve broken it into categories to highlight the key issues I had with it.

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD

Pacing and Tone

This was possibly the biggest deal breaker for me - Every character seemed to get the bad end of the gag character stick at least once this season, often at times where it felt out of place or tone deaf. The Great Gate guards were just awkward comic relief from the outset, whilst Terry and The Being often were relegated to being the butt of the joke when Claudia and Viren needed some screen time that wasn’t about the mission (more on that later). Soren’s stupidity continues to be an amusing gag, although it felt overplayed. The biggest offenders though were the questionable (and occasionally downright absurd) scene interjections in “Rex Igneous” and “Escape from Umber Tor”. Cutting from tense Dragon negotiations to Janai and Amaya making smalltalk was jarring, and some of the beats had me actively cringing when they were injected into what was supposed to be a dramatic scene (Sludge Tarts and Soren’s foot smell to name but a handful).

At the opposite end of the spectrum - “Rebirthday”, “Fallen Stars” and “Breathtaking” all felt like they could have been condensed into two episodes. The awkward diplomacy between Zubeia and the Kingdom of Katolis could have been summed up in a few scenes rather than being dragged out, leaving us more time to deal with the show’s resolution, which felt like it was rushing to get all the beats wrapped up.

There are really far too many things I could list here, so I’ll just summarise: For most of the season, I felt myself getting tonal whiplash and being hurried along on a rollercoaster that couldn’t decide what story it wanted to tell in that particular episode, which is a real danger when you have so many subplots and not enough focus.

Terry: Wasted on the Bad Guys

Oh boy, where to start on this one. From his introduction in “Rebirthday”, right up until the ending scenes of “Beneath the Surface”, I found myself questioning why Terry was within a hundred miles of Claudia. A life-loving, caring Earthblood that was seemingly OK with Claudia’s dark magic, dubious obsession with resurrection, and the creepy chrysalis on her cave-bedroom wall. From a storytelling point Terry is clearly there to humanise the villains, but it feels unnecessary. We know Claudia and Viren’s motivations and failings, it’s been illustrated throughout Books 1 and 2, so rehashing it through Terry feels weird and against everything we’ve been taught about Elf culture.

To me, it would have made sense for Terry to be the one who was Team Zym’s guide into the Pit and Path of Despair (as N’than already feels shoehorned and serves pretty much the same purpose), only to be kidnapped for the villains before the conversation with Rex Igneous and highlight what Claudia and Viren are going through. Having Terry see the compassion still in Claudia and appeal to her better nature through Viren would have been so much more impactful if he hadn’t been OK with all the dark magic and murder up to this point.

There’s also the introduction of Terry as the first visible trans character in TDP, which the more I think about the less happy I am about its execution. His coming out to Viren in “Beneath the Surface” feels like we’re supposed to take this reveal as part of an explanation as to why he’s so determined to support Claudia - because he knows how it feels to be treated as different? Which feels like a weird justification, and gets a little lost in the moment because it immediately is overwritten by a gag moment and the rush to save Claudia. It feels like a disservice to what should have been a momentous character moment, and again feels like it should have been something that was played with Callum, Rayla and Ez to riff off of.

Mystery of (what the hell) Aaravos (actually did this season?)

So when I saw that Season 4 would be titled “Mystery of Aaravos” I was very pumped. Aaravos is quite possibly one of the most interesting characters in TDP, and I was hoping this would be the season we got to see him flex his arcane muscles, especially when we saw him hop inside Callum’s head during “Through the Looking Glass”. Instead we were treated to… glorious nothing. Aaravos is suspiciously absent for comment, even to Claudia and Viren whose primary efforts are in rescuing him. Despite the display of power at the start of the season, he has little to no influence or contribution, when it feels like he should be the one reaching out to manipulate Claudia and Viren through each other.

This links somewhat into the “out-of-place” role as comic relief for Terry and The Being, as well as taking Terry out of the Bad Guy party - Imagine what we could have seen if The Being had been puppeted by Aaravos on occasion to egg on Claudia and psych out Viren, rather than Terry trying to sympathise with them and The Being just being a wordless Gollum. Rather than Claudia finding a “boyfriend” in Terry, what if Aaravos had been providing the praise and recognition she craves from her absent father figure. Celebrating her accomplishments where Viren is horrified. Gaslighting Viren whenever Claudia’s back was turned, telling him how much his daughter is relying on him for all this, that he is to blame. Show our villains for what they are - powerful, yet disposable tools to Aaravos.

The Future of Lux Aurea - A victim of sub-plot slaughter

The Janai/Prince Karim conflict is one of the best parts of Book Four, but it’s tragically butchered by being a B-Plot. The motivation behind Lucia extinguishing the flame is flimsy, and would have been more convincing if we’d seen any evidence of cultural conflict before this point. I mean, these people have been living and travelling together for almost two years at this point - a single other instance of racial/cultural conflict being mentioned or shown would have made much more sense to promote Karim’s reaction. To add insult to injury we watch Amaya, a character who is not only deeply in love with Janai but has also been shown to be compassionate and understanding of conflict and tensions, actively mocking a serious situation which just felt WRONG. It just feels like they were struggling for reasons to push a conflict in this substory, when they knew that Prince Karim was using this for his own reasons anyway and could have kept him as the primary antagonist to begin with.

Additionally - this plot needed to be given a handful of its own focal episodes. Trying to have a bunch of conversations about romance and duty juxtaposed against Team Zym trying not to get massacred by an enormous dragon detracted from both plots, and would have been better served by being kept apart save for the final conflict. It was a good plot thread to show how far the Sunfire Elves have come, but suffered for all of the above.

Rex Igneous and the Sequence of Rushed Plot Contrivances

This was the most egregious series of missteps that had me and my partner angrily jabbing fingers at the screen. The whole sequence with Team Zym approaching Rex following the events of “The Great Gates” is a series of plot contrivances that forces the party to muddle about in ways that don’t really make sense. It feels forced that the rockslide prevents them from going in with Zubeya (could we not have had some Dragon Etiquette reasons instead?), the Drakeriders are a one-note baddie that don’t really serve any purpose other than to give Soren an excuse to bump into Claudia, and the Path of Despair offers some Faux-Peril that whilst aesthetically very pretty is a self contained plot device that is over in less than an episode and is subsequently glossed over when Claudia and Viren need to catch back up. The conversation with Rex Igneous feels like they wanted to avoid a trope about Dragons and hoards and unintentionally just played right into it, and the entire final antagonism between Team Zym and Claudia just felt arbitrary (Why was Zym unaffected? Why did Rayla fall for this trick again when we know she’s aware of how it works?). This is followed by a very weird sequence with Rayla & Claudia over the Soul Coins: Why does Rayla give up her chase after being tricked? Why is THIS the one thing that Terry draws the line at? Why the hell does Claudia turn around to give them back?

It feels like this entire sequence is rushed and simultaneously is grasping to find conflict. Bait “heroically throwing his weight” onto opening the door feels forced to fit with Soren’s comedic bit, only for them to be Deus-Ex-Machina’d by Zubeia anyway (why not just have the cool dragon confrontation be the reason they’re saved rather than the weird moment with the Glow Toad). How did Rayla get to the surface at the same time as the heroes to be trapped in the rubble, when she clearly left the lava chamber AFTER Rex Igneous? It’s just too many contrivances and nonsensical beats that leaves the ending feeling disjointed and a bad taste in my mouth.

Conclusion

I love TDP. It’s such a great world, like Avatar meets fantasy world politics, and I’m actually taking large amounts of inspiration from it for my next D&D campaign. Which is why it hurts so much that Book Four falls short of its promise.

I hope that Book Five realises the mistakes it made and adapts the storytelling to better serve the pacing they perfected in the earlier books. Bring us more of the Katolis/Xadia & Magic/Non-Magic politics that made the downtime of the other series so compelling. Don’t fall into the gag character trap. Let Aaravos and his puppets return to being the ominous dark threat of the series, rather than trying to rebuild the sympathy for their motives.

This has been a rant from a fan. Thanks for listening.

#the dragon prince #tdp season 4 #tdp #spoilers #the dragon prince season 4 #mystery of aaravos #book four #critique #commentary #honestly kind of a rant

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