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dragon prince season 7 being like the human countries are a shithole because they made it a shithole (that's why they're so desperate to invade xadia with their brutish foreign ways) *ahem* no wait can we crush our anti immigration villain so people don't question our narrative. we're good guys we swear.

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again, i'm not a hatewatcher, but it's kinda funny to pretend watching a 9 episode 25 minute children's show is some deep time investment, especially done so rarely. and then the rest of the time i don't think about it or engage only with the parts i do like. 'don't like, don't watch' or 'you must have secretly liked it to have watched' are not very constructive comments ... i agree that being nonstop in a fandom for a thing you hate is exhausting but thinking that something is created solely for the dominion of & consumption by fans who refuse to critique it is an empty opinion. discourse (in an academic sense) requires certain sacrifices from the 'reader' or 'viewer' if you want to be part of the conversation -- and this discourse can be a tool for honing something you do enjoy.

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this made me snort btw omgggg what do you MEAN you built a world where the magical system is INHERENT TO THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND PLOT and you didn't think explaining powers the main character has would be like. important or wanted.

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this season was just 4 images to me really ....

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Seven years ago The Dragon Prince started and I tweeted that I really enjoyed the start; Amaya was sexy and Soren and Claudia as contrasting siblings were a lot of fun. I did not go into this series with hate in my heart; in fact, I'm not a hatewatcher at all. I watch things I enjoy and though I critique everything I watch, it's normally from a place of academic engagement more than anything. The Dragon Prince changed this for me because I unfortunately became very invested in Viren and his family's story and this shackled me to paying attention to the rest of this show as it became more and more unbearable.

Now it's 2025 and I finally forced myself to watch the (god willing) last season of this show. I don't have that much to say. It's a boring and predictable final run swaying back and forth like a building built on shaky foundations. There was nothing they could do to save this show at this point that wouldn't radically alter the show itself to a degree that would discredit the previous six seasons. All I can say is it lowkey felt like they were reading my blog (waves hello) and tried to once again respond to my loudest criticisms, but I can't say it did much for me. As ever, I'll begin my recap with what I liked of Season 7:

THE GOOD

Aaravos switching up his possible elf disguises was funny. They had that man Jojo posing. Save him from this series.

The final look they went for was very warlock (in a WoW kind of way) which I found fun. It's interesting that the pale skin and grey eyes and grey-brown hair gave him a passing resemblance to Viren. Also interesting that they did a Snow White gag with him; reminds me of the discussions on here of Viren's Disney villain coding. [Which has its own negative implications ...] With how quickly he took to calling himself Claudia's dad, it really feels he was Single White Female-ing Viren.

Ezran actually got to be angry so that's nice I guess ...

Ezran's face when Rayla was trying to explain how assassins are good guys and not just murderers. See what I mean about them responding to criticisms? Lmao.

Self-eating was a cool concept.

I liked the unicorn skeleton.

I liked Rayla being willing to kill Callum.

Zubeia finally dead! We all cheered!

Claudia! Claudia, Claudia, Claudia ... generational slay and the consistently best part of the season. Acknowledging her father won't want to come back (thus setting her ambitions apart from his legacy) but continuing on; stabbing her fake mom; giving Callum the business; her absolutely peak dragon look; that she spares Soren.

"I'm still nice, I'm still me" is interesting. I'm not sure how much irony we're meant to read into it but it reminds me of David in FX Legion's "I save them -- I save everyone, I save love, I'm a good person" where he tells himself these stories while slipping further into his selfish, destructive ways. Claudia does visibly restrain herself, does make the right choice, and I do believe she doesn't want to hurt her brother as she's very family-motivated, but at the same time, how much is she invested in maintaining this illusion of heroism when nothing she was helping Aaravos do seemed liable to really help anyone? I like characters who really want to believe they're doing good.

THE BAD

No Viren 💔💔💔

They still eating them bugs huh.

Annoying fucking baitlings.

I cannot tell you how aggravating it is that Zym is just constantly in the background making Concerned Animal Faces as a moral weathervane. Seven seasons to let this character talk because they don't know how else to do anything engaging with him? Such a waste of screentime.

I get the gag is that Gren's keeping things PG, but I don't like that he censors Amaya's words. Not his job as a translator.

This show's tonal issues + unfunny writers plagued it to the very end.

Like how bonkers is it to have a character go "I know I sap swore" about KILLING HIS OWN SISTER?!

Aaravos didn't feel like a proper threat. He got owned so easily all the time. Imagine if Ozai was getting bowled over every five seconds before the end of ATLA.

Aaravos's devotion to Claudia feels a little unearned since it does seem to be genuine. I just don't get this guy really. Love to hear more explanation on his evil ghost-based plan.

Yet more moralizing about what Claudia is 'willing to do' from people who, MIND YOU, were willing to let her drown at the ocean or manipulate her emotionally or come at her with intent to kill. I don't mind the idea of a Claudia redemption but I hope she gets some bonds with new people who aren't nasty hypocrites.

This series sense of empathy and/or pacifism are unearned in a way that will be difficult for me to explain in a bullet point but like ... it feels shallow because can they really prove it? Our biggest bads are Viren, Aaravos, and Claudia, and in the end, none of them are really treated with true empathy. Viren saves himself. Claudia is still in the wind. Aaravos is just a big event villain. Our heroes can't even maintain a degree of admirable empathy for their own allies. How ridiculous to portray Ezran as mad with grief and anger to want consequence for Runaan's actions -- that they say "give Ezran some time" but never actually do -- that they expect him to capitulate immediately.

This makes all the Talk no Jutsu not work for me. Nobody has to try they just say one thing and it works. Closest it came to being earned was Runaan begging at the end of the season but like lmao all that just to undercut it by having Harrow Not Actually Be Dead.

This whole season was just more 'elves and dragons do no wrong, humans are vile' ... elves are allowed to be selfish in ways humans aren't, dragons continue to get a pass ... the way I cackled when Callum pointed out Ezran forgave Zubeia for sending the assassins as if this was ever a thing that was discussed before now? As if this goofy ass show didn't have the first thing Zubeia does upon waking up be exclaim joyfully at the sight of humans? Notice how Ezran has no response to that because he was presumably thinking "Wait, Zubeia sent the assassins?" and was too embarrassed to admit he never put two and two together.

Rayla continues to value elves over everything (see selfish elf point above.) Tell me why she had to bring Runaan's ass to Katolis at all. What did she think was going to happen? What? She just didn't want to go straight to the Moonshadow elves because she was banished and her shame of that is more important than Ezran's grief over losing his father? (Ezran was also going to be a Runaan victim, mind you.)

This of course means her relationship with Callum only continues to work because he perpetually capitulates to her, her people, her culture, her beliefs ... they just don't work otherwise.

Like, Callum, and by extension 'humans-and-magic' ... what the fuck, right? I discussed in this post how dark magic becomes a necessary and noble sacrifice and that's exactly what they did with Callum here, continuing his mirroring of Viren by saying he will die as a final absolution after this 'necessary evil' ... and like .... okay? This is the best humans can do, the show says: use the weapons of the enemy and destroy themselves to do it (the sword also falls under this.) The 'necessary' second-class citizens of this magical world, required to submit to a world order that knows better and continues to favour the 'deserving ones' in this top-down structure? #IMWITHAARAVOS

Don't get me started on Karim. These insidious writers are well aware they've created exactly this kind of inequity and so to excuse themselves they make him (black character btw) espouse these on the nose anti-immigrant sentiments to say 'See? We condemn this!' as if they didn't give us such heartwarming plots as 'human woman tries to put out a candle and gets 3rd degree burns and then is put on trial and somehow this is a both sides are bad situation' and 'arming yourselves after a dragon nukes your capital (and not a single Xadian offers aid or reparations) is a sign of a deteriorating moral core and not a tragic reminder of how deeply powerless humans are in this world.'

The best solution this show can think of for "Xadian-human equality" is to create Dvrstyvlle and promise 'everyone will have a voice' and continue its weak handwaving of centuries of bad blood and the historical banishment of humans with 'the average Xadian has no bigoted feelings towards humans' and 'well anyways humans did all this awful stuff which we'll emphasize heavily this season so you remember they Had It All Coming' ... like, full stop, these are writers who simply NEVER should have tackled the subject of colonialism. The moment they invoked the Trail of Tears every single decision they've made going forward is genuinely echoing hateful rhetoric. They didn't need to do all that, but they did, and this whole show's legacy is one of pro-colonialism.

That giving humans magic would be such an obvious way to help even out the disparity of this world but nah ... of course I'm sure they have never even planned on why humans lack magic and why they have to jump through such hoops for it. Like I get that TPTB don't WANT humans to have magic but that's not an explanation. Maybe they're saving it for The Dragon King. LOL.

The end of the season with the I hope every child in the dark is loved is NOT the gag they obviously thought it was ... when they use Leola as Aaravos's motivation out of the blue, make it so they only one really fighting for her is portrayed is a cruel and senseless, when the world order that killed her remains the status quo, when Claudia is loved only by villains and her absent mother is used to emotionally manipulate her ... what are we doing? If Aaravos is really meant to be sympathetic purely through this love of his child, why does he receive such a cruel death, why is he just the cackling villain most of the time? The tonal issues of this show ...

Aaaaand in the end conveniently all their villains are killed by someone else so their hands stay clean. Heartwarming. ❤️

This show's pacing is overall delirious btw why are they begging for more seasons. SEVEN SEASONS. SIXTY THREE EPISODES. **TWO EPISODES MORE THAN ATLA.** Did you feel how slow this last season felt? My notes for the last episode are "how are there twenty minutes left" and then "how are there ten minutes left" and thinking back over the show's run I can't believe it took this long to do so little. You can't compare this desired continuation to Korra because Korra was a true sequel series, the same setting and some familiar faces but a large time gap and a whole new cast and Scenarios. TDK is just going to ... continue the story of the crew fighting Aaravos?! HELLO? Let's wrap it up! It's not like he even felt that serious a threat considering how easily he was taken out. Maybe it's time stop ...

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Are you planning to be active at all and post your criticisms when season 7 gets released? I always love your commentary on the show.

I finally finished season 7 because I saw that the team of deluded hacks are begging the fans to fund more seasons of this godawful show and I wanted to hate with full knowledge and a clear conscience. It was deeply boring (not just because of a lack of Viren, though that didn't help) and painfully predictable. I will share my thoughts forthwith. Thank you for the ask and saying you like my commentary!

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i'm under stars

peeling off my skin

to rid my scars

it's the first time

i am reborn,

but i am not me

no identity,

and i am finally free

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trying to find reference pictures of Viren and 90% of them he's in ominous lighting girl go stand in some direct light so i can check my colours

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🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼

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🪻send this to ten blogs you think are wonderful🪻

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💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

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i want you to know when i watch this show with my hater friend she apologizes to me for being such a hater because i'm the laidback one who gives the show a chance while we watch #FAIRANDBALANCED

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Ok I kind of hate the whole show giving the fandom too much fanservice like can the show please start to focus on important things like developing the characters instead of a cringe ship monologue?!?!?!

Okay, I don't know any C/R shippers personally but did they like that ship monologue? Surely not, right? I also thought it was cringe but more importantly mildly insulting. A real "Okay, time to calm down," moment. Shippers can be annoying but they're fired up about a ship YOU peddled to them and demanded they be invested in. You made your bed, stop with this tongue in cheek BS. Pandering, but in a very patronizing way.

Honestly, I have no idea if the creators actually like Callum and Rayla as a ship or if they just feel some imaginary obligation to give C/R a lot of screentime for reasons of pandering to their last large block of vocal fans of the show. My vibe is they do like them but they wanted to take it slower, but who knows.

Anyway, an unfortunate truth is that social media has dissolved the boundaries between creators and audience to an unhealthy degree. Either they're fighting with fans or they're pandering to them, but either way, it's embarrassing. You know, as wretched as Luke and Laura are, at least in the past responding to fans was like "People want this couple" ... now it's a lot more "Responding to everything our fans loudly say in our show." Shit's annoying. Just tell the story you want to tell without making me feel like the fourth wall's being broken. Whatever happened to being immersed in a story?

This is part of the show's overall problem with constantly pulling back from anything that feels very real, either because they're afraid of scaring the child audience or because they have a regrettable practise of trying to shove humour into every minute of screentime. This doesn't help our characters and their journeys at all.

Thank you for the ask! ♥ I hope that season 7 gives every main character a real episode to highlight their journey as it matters to them, and there's zero fan response, but we'll see!

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Season 4 ruined TDP for me and I haven't been able to drum up the interest to watch it since, so maybe this is an out of date take but...

Terry is kind of a pointless character. His role is sort of presented as being Claudia's last tether to her morality, but his actions are otherwise so ride-or-die it seems weird when he calls her out or gets upset about what's happening (especially since they've seemingly been together a while so he should be familiar with how Claudia operates). Plus there was already a character who could serve this role: Soren.

After season 3 I was excited to see their sibling bond evolve as their outlooks were beginning to diverge. And then with Viren resurrected I wanted to see how that affected things. I was deeply disappointed when the established familial relationships fell by the wayside in favor of a timeskip romantic one (and I usually LOVE romantic plotlines).

See, I get Soren leaving his family behind and hopping to Team Hero and thus becoming unavailable to Claudia as someone to bounce off of. I don't love the execution because I think he feels rootless and lacking in significant depth in his relationships with the main cast, but I think it works for his character. He's a prodigal young knight who swore vows to defend his king and his nation, and he's a very straightforward guy. He shares pragmatic qualities with his family, but at the same time, their pragmatism operates on an abstract level he doesn't exactly understand. Once he was forced to choose between family and what he's always known and how he's vowed to live his life, I can see him making the very hard choice to pull away from them. I think him staying as Claudia's morality pet would have been a disservice to his character, though he may have more interesting things to do just because Team Dark Magic are always doing interesting things ... but again, that's more to the execution than the conceit. I don't mind characters moving apart from people they were closest to at the start of the series, and like when they can bond with new people.

I think the limited number of episodes + breakneck pace of the plot does leave their lack of interactions more noticeable, but also more inevitable. Technically, we've seen all this: Soren and Claudia have met again and fought over their differences, and Soren and Viren got their chance to hash it out a little bit. We've been informed of the status of their relationships and their feelings for one another. For a nine episode twenty minute children's animated TV show, this is relatively decent screentime offered to their relationships considering they've been apart so long. I'm not necessarily defending it as 'good' because I'll gladly say this show has very weak screenwriting with my whole chest, but the Magefam would have to be proper protagonists and not just deuteragonists to the Main Three for the screentime to really shift in their favour. But they're not, and you can't even imagine stuff happening off screen because almost everything in the plot happens one after another barring the mid-season timeskip -- and not a whole lot of interesting things happened during that.

(Like, seriously, other than some romantic relationship statuses changing characters are basically the exact same post timeskip as they were before it. It's like ... okay!)

I hope this doesn't sound like I don't get your frustrations because I do; the Magefam are one of my favourite parts of the show and it's always better when some combination of them are on screen together. And it's like, sure Viren and Claudia were hanging out in the later seasons, but he was borderline comatose for most of that, so it doesn't feel like they were. The fracturing of a family is interesting, but you always hope for more of a resolution or at least a sense of poignancy this show is never quite going to master. I'll actually say that my feelings still hinge on season 7 or god forbid the final arc. If we see Soren and Claudia get more than one or two scenes as all our players move into place for the final confrontations -- if Soren were to learn what Viren wouldn't tell him -- if Claudia gets to have a properly satisfying confrontation with Aaravos about the death of her father if she learns the truth ... if Soren and Claudia get to mourn their father together, even if it's briefly -- if we have Claudia have complicated feelings if she were to learn about Soren asking Viren to do the spell -- of Soren offering his heart, but Viren sacrificing himself instead ... I mean, all of that could be really good, and for me it would serve as a kind of epilogue to tie together the seasons of separation and growing apart from each other.

How hopeful am I for any of this? Well, about as hopeful as I am for this show ever pleasing me. But hey! I do think it's possible, with the narrative they've already established.

Anyway, to get to the Terry of it all: I think he serves a purpose as not just Claudia's tether to morality but as someone to work off of, so I get why he's here. I also think Claudia getting a random elf boyfriend is still extremely funny and charmingly quirky of her. As I said in response to a previous ask I think Terry could use more personal development but I like his dynamic with Claudia. People call him an enabler but he does offer her some pushback, generally gently. He's just someone who loves Claudia enough to stick with her, and hey, I love Claudia too so that's nice to see. Honestly, even if Soren were around, you're obviously going to have a different relationship with a romantic partner than you would a sibling, so Terry could easily fit in the group that held Soren as well.

This season Karim (love him) was like "Janai is my sister! Of course I love her! But I'm still going to depose her violently!" and like that is great. That's siblingcore. That's I love you but I want to beat you up. That's no matter how far apart we drift you're still bound to me. Soren and Claudia are this. Meanwhile Terry and Claudia are your first serious relationship. They're young and passionate and desperate to make it work because who else would match their freak quite this way? But if they fall out there's nothing to keep them together anymore. They'll just be forced to move on. Soren can walk away from Claudia and know that on some level they are always close; if Terry walks away from Claudia he may end up meaning nothing to her. So, just like real life, there's a lot of stuff they're willing to overlook and rationalize because they WANT to keep wanting each other ... and Claudia can use someone like that on her side, as we see Soren and Viren both leave her in time.

I think Terry being down to clown but taking issues with some things is fine; he often frames his objections around the harm they will cause Claudia, and that's nice. The one thing I still don't get is his reaction to Claudia threatening the coins. I will preface this by saying I can believe he's more sensitive to elf death after he murked Ibis, and doesn't like reminders of the differences between him and Claudia when it feels very her, a human, against an elf. Yet whenever I rewatch it, I still find his censure unusually stern for him, and it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the writer's doing as they do best, that is not knowing how to write from their own established lore and character motivations.

Like, in-show it says, Claudia was cruel to mockingly threaten the lives of Rayla's loved ones, and trick her into thinking they nearly burned in agony, not offering her the real coins. Is that cruel? Sure, sure. What's the context? Oh? Rayla was THREATENING TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT? Rayla, the Moonshadow elf ASSASSIN they have every reason to think would go through it, even if we the viewer know Rayla probably wouldn't? Hmm! If Claudia is cruel, Rayla is a monster. Rayla, who was offered the coins in fair trade as she THREATENED TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT, but refused. Like, Terry? Are you this mad at Claudia because she did an actually extremely reasonable thing to save your life (+ her father's life) in as pacifist a way as possible, or are you mad because the writers need to tell the audience This Was Bad and ensure Rayla gets the real coins while not having to change that emotionally charged sequence they were probably really proud of writing? I still think this was Terry's characterization faltering just so they could get the outcome they wanted.

Ultimately, I see Terry as someone who is lacking in prejudice, maybe due to his own presumed desire to be taken at face value. He can date a human and not have a kneejerk reaction to dark magic, but he isn't amoral. Nothing he's really seen has been enough to push him away but he is cautious that Claudia may stop walking the knife's edge and fall off of it. He's realized even he can do terrible things out of love and this has bound him more tightly to Claudia. He's someone who is CHOOSING to join this life, and wasn't just pre-built loyal as a sibling would be. All of this does give him a role in the narrative that's pretty unique to him and their dynamic, and I like that. Again, I hope he gets more to do beyond just being Claudia's partner, but I really don't mind him existing.

Thank you very much for the ask! ♥ Really don't blame you for dropping the show post season 4 .... if I wasn't Virenpilled I would have dropped it after season 1 I think.

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reading any interview for the dragon prince always gets me like

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and you know what.....................................IT WAS GOOD!!!!!!!

when some combination of viren claudia and/or aaravos kill sol regem it's gonna be sooooooooooo