#claudia walking in his footsteps and surpassing him and getting swallowed up by the red wave

[lilcetis]

viren's 2 episode long dream was kinda the most beautiful thing i seen in television,, like ever. like the dragon prince does dreams in such a unique way but viren's? single handedly changed my opinion on his character it was so so so good

[toknowthatimatter]

Viren is gonna live and here’s how

I’ve been thinking, technically Aaravos never says Viren has to be the one to kill the child because otherwise the spell won’t work. Yes, he says “You will sacrifice your other child” and “You must make the sacrifice” because in the moment he’s talking to Viren, but I don’t think the “you” is necessarily the important part - all that matters is the ingrediant the spell was named after. That the child is the sacrifice. And just like you can sarifice a lamb to a God despite not being a lamb parent yourself, the child can be sarifised by someone else. The ‘You’ is more of a red-herring. And the reason I think that is because of the foreshadowing in Viren’s dark-magic-dream-thing.

In his dream he sees Claudia walk into a body of water, which later actually happens and kinda breaks him out of his stupor. Two things are important here:

1. The order in which things are happening in his dream 2. When exactly the events in his dream are happening compared to what’s happening in reality

1. We see Claudia following Viren, saying “Daddy, look! I’m following in your footsteps!” while doing so quite literally and figuratively, essentially growing up. Her appreance changes but (!) it changes to how she’s looking at the time in the story, with her hair half white, her face completely normal. She’s walking straight past Viren (perhabs even surpassing him), not listening to him/unable to hear him, towards the black sun which coincidentally looks like the light of the Sunforge - as well as the light of the staff, obviously - after Aaravos corrupted it.

While she’s walking towards the sun/dark magic/Aaravos/you get the idea, Viren is unable to reach her and both get swallowed by the wave, that she either simply cannot see or doesn’t recognize as the danger it is.

Even under water he still cannot quite reach her - instead the scene cuts aways when he barely brushes her finger tip.

And leads directly to this:

Now, her hair is completely white (which we haven’t seen so far - Kpp’ar’s and  Ziard’s hair still has it’s natural color just with white strands, and Viren’s is mainly grey, not completely white despite suffering from a very early on set of the effects of dark magic), she’s pale, she’s covered scaring. And she’s carrying the corrupted black sun staff.

She repeats Viren's mantra of “I'll do anything for our family, Dad. Whatever it takes. However dangerous, however vile“.

(I will.)

And after saying this, Viren once more reaches out to her

but she just vanishes, becoming completely unreachable.

2. While Viren is trying to save Claudia from drowning in his dream, Claudia is doing the same thing with him in reality. With one very important difference: Viren cannot reach Claudia, he cannot save her, cannot stop her from turning completely towards dark magic but Claudia saves his life.

Claudia is already dangerously close to Aaravos, telling Soren how great he is. And we had this wonderful foreshadowing in season 3:

Which, by the way, happens right after this:

In Katolis, she told Viren she’s there for him. In Xadia, it was “We're all that's left of our family, and I won't let anything break us apart.“ On top of the spire, she promised “I brought you back from the dead, and I am not about to let you go!“. And at the lake, right before walking into the water, she said “We've come a long way, dad. And I know this is hard on you but hang on.”

Claudia is doing what Aaravos told her because he told her he would save her dad. If he doesn’t, if Viren dies, I don’t think “oh well, I wanted to save him but he refused to kill Sir Sparklepuff and it had to be him, I couldn’t do anything lol too bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you have a new brother now though!” will quite cut it.

Aaravos knows in order to get Claudia, which seemingly is at least part of what he wants, he has to save Viren. That’s why he calls her a valuable asset right after she talks about how she’ll be there for Viren, showing how important he is to her.

Viren is - in Claudia’s eyes - her only family. The only one who never left her (at least not willingly). Aaravos knows he’s the key, the only key, to her. And just like Viren was willing to do anything to save Soren, Claudia will be willing to do anything to save Viren.

The only way for Claudia to still be on Aaravos side after Viren dies would be in some kind of a revenge plot against group Callum and Xadia for killing her dad but a) even then I don’t see why she wouldn’t be angry, at the very least, at Aaravos too and b) why this couldn’t have happend right after Viren died for the first time anyway. If Aaravos could just manipulate her into seeking revenge there wouldn’t be a point in bringing Viren back in the first place.

Aaravos needs Claudia to fully turn to dark magic, to him, which she will do by performing the powerful spell of making Viren’s life permanent again. And at that point, despite being the reason all of this happened, even Viren - just like in his dream - won’t be able to get through to her anymore.

(and I don’t mean this in a ‘Claudia-is-going-to-be-irredeemable-rest-in-peace’ way but rather like ‘despite-Viren-being-done-with-Aaravos-she-won’t-be-done-with-him’)