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Thoughts on the Book 6 teaser

[I know I’m like 3 days late but I need to write down my silly little theories somewhere]

First of all, just so y’all know where I stand on this - I doubt we’ll get a clear, real answer to whether Viren’s dead or not in any of the promo material. His fate is the cliffhanger of Book 5. Revealing the answer before we even get to see Book 6 would make having any cliffhanger at all completely nonsensical. And would, quite frankly, be an odd narrative choice.

That being said, I have two different theories regarding the new scene in the teaser. The second theory is my favourite, especially because it goes hand in hand with my how Viren is going to survive theory but let’s start with

Theory 1: It’s not real

If Viren dies, there’s no reason for Claudia to look like this. If curing Soren and resurrecting Viren for 30 days didn’t get her to this level of exhaustion, no other spell short of saving another life for good, is going to. She either saves Viren and starts to look like this or she doesn’t and still looks like she does at the end of book 5.

I do believe Aaravos wasn’t entirely truthful (surprise) when insisting Viren is the one who has to kill Sir Sparklepuff, that Claudia actually can do it as well.

Therefore the only way for her to look like this and for Viren to die at the same time is that she does perform the spell but it fails. Which makes no sense.

Viren is already an incredibly powerful mage. As far as we know, Aaravos is the most powerful character on the show and yet even he is impressed that Viren found a way to kill Thunder when he himself never managed to. And, in my humble opinion, Claudia is (going to be) an even greater mage than her dad. On a pure skill level there’s no reason for her to fail the spell.

So, if Viren is gone, why does she still look like this?

Because it’s not real. It’s a dream or vision either Claudia or Terry has, depicting the inevitable demise of Claudia and/or their relationship if she continues to head down the path she’s currently chosen.

But what if the scene is real and actually happening?

Theory 2: It’s a red herring.

As mentioned before, I do believe Claudia is capable of saving her father’s life and that this is in fact what’s going to happen.

Still having the book 5 finale in mind, most viewers will naturally assume that the scene in the teaser is taking place quite early on in book 6. And that therefore Claudia having lost her dad refers to his death.

After all, she does say “And now my dad is gone.”

And in fact, he is gone.

But he isn’t dead.

And the scene takes place in a later episode.

Claudia does manage to save Viren’s life. And he’s horrified by it.

Viren has just come to terms with realising he can stop. That he does have a choice. That he’s free to choose. He didn’t want to die but he wanted to continue choosing one evil over another other even less. He didn’t want Sir Sparklepuff to die. And certainly never wanted his daughter to head down the same path and feel the same level of exhaustion he does.

But now she does. She looks exactly like she did in his dark magic induced dream.

And it’s his fault. Not only did he teacher her dark magic and pulled her down this path with him but she only ended up performing the spell because he specifically chose no to.

He constantly insisted he was willing to do anything to protect his family, no matter how cruel or vile - and the one time he chose to no do anything at all, he failed to protect his daughter by doing so.

Naturally, he doesn’t leave her over this.

He loves her, she’s his daughter. She only did what she did to save him. Because she loves him and he’s everything she has left of their family. He knows that.

And he wants to help and protect her.

He sticks with her and tries everything to free her for several episodes but at this point a she’s too far gone, too manipulated by Aaravos to truly listen to him.

So he ends up leaving.

Not because he’s giving up on her but because he realised he cannot help her and now tries to reach out to the people he thinks might be able to.

Soren and his friend, who took him back after what he’s done. So who’s to say they wouldn’t do the same thing for Claudia?

But Claudia doesn’t see that he’s leaving her temporarily for her.

To her, he left like everyone else.

To her, her dad - now too - is just gone.

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Claudia doing everything she can to keep the one person who never left her in her life is just ruining me.

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as we have yet to get the family hug I yearn for I had to make my own [high resolution]

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forget about Aaravos, the true mastermind in the Dragon Prince universe is the giant in the puzzle house who played the (very) long game of ensuring Avizandum would get killed by giving Claudia the map, it's all coming together now

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the first half of Puzzle House is essentially just

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sending thoughts and prayers to Sir Sparklepuff, who just had to witness his parents divorce

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I have always been ready to do anything to protect my family, however dangerous, however vile. But there is an aching pain mixed with love that you feel in these moments.

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Every time he enacted this ritual, Viren was reminded of the first time he had performed it. He remembered his relief when it worked, restoring his appearance. He remembered how he'd been filled with hope, certainty even, that this would change everything. He remembered hurrying home, ready to be forgiven.

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My personal headcanon is that since Viren obviously didn't grew up very privileged, if not straight up poor, he might actually know what real hunger feels like. Which is why Viren (unlike Harrow for some reason??) knows/keeps track of how much food Katolis has, why - according to the novel - he's disgusted that Harrow refuses to not let the people of Katolis suffer from hunger instead of protecting them from it and why, after consulting Harrow about it and being shut down, he's apparently the only person who's actually dead set on ensuring no one has to starve at all, while everyone else is just like "welp, we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Because, let's be real, a) he was never tasked with finding a solution to all of this, it's not his job and b) neither he nor his children would have to starve, just like Harrow and his family wouldn't have to. Viren doesn't have to do any of this. Don't get me wrong, I think he would have at least tried to find a solution regardless of his past, but the entire thing seems more personal to me. Like, look at him :C

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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’)

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I have nothing left to lose. / I am free. And so are you.

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