Review: THE DRAGON PRINCE Book 4: Earth is a solid entry in the series

Season four of The dragon prince is now available to stream on Netflix. This season begins the story arc titled Mystery of Aaravos and titled Book 4: Earth. The series is created by Aaron Ehasz And Justin Richmond featuring animation by Bardel Entertainment and cutting-edge production by Wonderstorm. Fans have been clamoring for the season as it’s been around three years since season 3 fell. The entire season is only 9 episodes and three additional seasons are on the way. Below, you can check out my thoughts on the season. Note that there will be some spoilers below.

Very quick, before the spoilers, I thought I’d make some very general comments. First, it’s great to see more of the Sun Elves. It’s also great to meet the Blood of Earth Elves and another dragon. The season has a lot going on and there have been some choices in editing that have made it a lot crazier than I think I would have liked. Basically, the team took the approach of following each storyline for at least a few minutes in each episode and then returning to each story mode at least one more time. So basically each storyline typically has at least two segments per episode (or at least it looks that way). Also, animation is still something that seems to need more refinement. It still feels unstable and stiff at many moments, which is shocking to me as Netflix was willing to give it a total of 7 seasons. Overall, it’s a solid season preparing us for this second story arc. Just remember that this is creating an entire story arc and so while season 3 has been very fast-paced and action-packed, season 4 is a lot slower and a lot more focused on story creation.

Now that I’ve got it out of the way, let’s dive in a little more. Book 4: Land of The dragon prince it starts with a fair number of changes. Ezran has grown taller, Callum is the High Mage, Soren is the leader of the Crownguard, Rayla is missing, etc. Many of these changes are guaranteed as we have had a 2 year time jump. If you’ve read the graphic novel, Through the Moon, then you’ll understand better why we don’t see Rayla at the start of the season. We will call this group of characters plot A. Then, we have Claudia who has just resurrected Viren from her death after two years and her boyfriend Terry. These three we will call them plot B. Finally, we have Amaya and Janai making up plot C at the Sun Elf camp.

As I said before, each plot takes some time in each episode. This is not bad in itself and is definitely a thing of personal taste. I’m not 100% sold on it, although simply because they would start with one storyline, switch to another after about 5 minutes, jump to the third, then go back to the first and sometimes yet another jump or two. Sometimes it works as well as when Claudia and Mallow are arguing and this overlaps with Ezran giving a speech about violence. Other times he just seemed a little more confused.

Some of the things I liked least about the season are coming up now. First, the animation. I have already mentioned that he still felt stiff and unstable. I could understand it in the first few seasons, but now that it’s been discontinued and revamped, I was hoping it wasn’t as unstable as it was before. Some of the characters’ movements also seemed stiff and blocky with less expression, particularly in combat. I also hated the way episode seven, “Beneath the Surface” ends with Soren being captured by Terry and Claudia and then seeing Viren and saying “No”. So, episode eight, “Rex Igneous” opens to storyline A. What’s worse is that the moment never gets a payoff in the season. We never go back and see the conversation between Soren and Viren that I’m sure he followed or whatever. I guess in the next few seasons we will have a little more revelation about what happened in those moments, but I felt fooled by some great moments of the character.

Now let’s talk about some of my favorite things from Book 4: The Earth. I loved the way they superimposed the fight between Mallow and Claudia on Ezran’s speech on pain and violence. It is really well done. I also really liked the way Viren has been handled this season. For the past three seasons he has been quite confident and focused. This season, he is much more hesitant. He was brought back to life and told he is only 30 days old unless they get Aaravos’ help and instead of getting excited and helping Claudia immediately, he finds there is quite a bit of work to keep. his life and starts rethinking things and thinking about making the most of the time he has left. He never takes an active role in keeping his life alive and even refuses to take his staff after Claudia took him from Storm Spire until the season finale, “Escape from Umber Tor”. Even then, he only grabs it when no one else will. All season he has considered that he is not an evil idiot and then in the last episode, when the critical moment comes, he makes a deliberate choice to once again embrace his dark past and become an instrument of the evil he affirms. to be legal. There are a lot of moments and character growth this season and I really appreciate that. Viren seems to be one of my favorites.

I haven’t even talked about plot C. I think this plot will be more important later, but the main idea is that Janai and Amaya get engaged, but there’s a lot of turmoil because Janai’s brother Karim is too busy from tradition and the past so that any change is productive. He even challenges Janai to an illegal duel in an attempt to take the throne and fails. It honestly seemed like a lot Black Panther to me if Killmonger lost the first match against T’Challa.

The dragon prince has a good fourth season. It’s slower than Season 3, but it’s needed due to the story structure. Yes, there are things that I think could be done better, but none of them spoil the story or make things super complex or confusing. If you’ve enjoyed the series so far, you’ll love this season and look forward to future seasons with me and everyone else.