Our trio of heroes, the young prince Ezran (Sasha Rojen), his older half-brother Callum (Jack DeSena), and former-assassin-turned-ally, Moonshadow elf Rayla (Paula Burrows), have made a few new friends, the most important of which is the newly-hatched (and super adorable) Dragon Prince, Azymondias, or Zym. They recuperate with the Moonshadow elf, Lujanne (Ellie King), who is kind and knowledgeable, with just a shade of kooky from her years of solitude guarding an abandoned temple. She dispenses wisdom about magic to Callum, who is eager to learn new techniques since he destroyed the primal stone in order to hatch Zym and save the day. Lujanne makes it clear that humans cannot practice true magic without a primal stone, unless they resort to dark magic, which Callum is resistant to.
Claudia (Racquel Belmonte) and Soren (Jesse Inocalla) catch up to the trio and Rayla clashes with them before the group comes to an impasse. These two had an interesting trajectory for me this season; in the first season, I compared them to Avatar’s Zuko and Azula, but that comparison doesn’t fully translate. Where Zuko and Azula were competitive and antagonistic and came to represent the dichotomy of good and evil, Claudia and Soren are loyal to each other and on a slippery slope that could go either way for both of the siblings. At this time, they are still blindly following the orders of their father, the king’s former advisor, Viren; Claudia wants to return the Dragon Prince to Katolis and Soren struggles with the idea of killing Ezran, who doesn’t know he is the crown prince. Before he is successful in orchestrating a cowardly accident, Rayla saves the day and the trio and siblings part ways for a while, but not before Claudia reveals to Callum that King Harrow has died.
Throughout season 2, Viren alternates between manipulating the Pentarchy–a council that represents the five human kingdoms–at a summit he has called to address the elf problem, and being manipulated by a Moonshadow elf named Aaravos, whom he has summoned through a magic mirror. While the latter plot mostly serves to set up conflict for next season, the former primarily served as a glimpse into the past. The Pentarchy is comprised of four additional kings and queens, including the young Queen Aanya of Duren (Zelda Ehasz), an orphan whose mothers, the former queens, fought alongside King Harrow and Queen Sarai in the ill-advised battle that took the lives of all three queens a few years earlier.
Although the exposition-heavy two-parter slowed things down a bit in the middle of the season, it was a necessary diversion. Duren and Katolis formed an alliance when Duren was suffering from a famine. Viren had offered to use dark magic to save both kingdoms but it required slaying a Xadian titan. The loss of all three queens was a heavy one, especially when you consider that Sarai in particular traded her life for Viren–the man who is responsible for the present-day chaos in the kingdom. I’m also beyond pleased with the introduction of Aanya, a remarkably-composed precious child who holds her own when verbally sparring with the shady Viren during the summit. She puts the other three adult rulers to shame by seeing through his facade and I look forward to seeing much more of her in season three and beyond.
While Viren is plotting–to varying degrees of success, the trio and Zym embark on a sea voyage with a blind captain and his incorrigible pet parrot Berto (also voiced by Paula Burrows), who honestly steals every scene he is in. Callum is keeping the secret of the king’s death from Ezran, who is too busy trying to teach Zym how to fly to notice.
At the conclusion of their voyage, they run into Claudia and Soren once more but everything falls apart when Rayla decides she must free a dragon the village has captured. She attempts to do it herself, but Callum assists, using a small amount of dark magic that frees the dragon and sends him into a comatose state. In the scuffle, Soren is also paralyzed and a frantic Claudia eventually resorts to desperate measures to heal him, showing the dangers of dark magic all around.
Corvus (Omari Newton), an ally from Katolis sent by the boys’ aunt Amaya, joins the trio and the death of King Harrow is revealed to Ezran, the last of the trio to find out. Ezran, grieving and feeling betrayed, runs away for a little bit to deal with the shocking news, but, being the precocious child he is, he returns with the resolve to depart from the mission and return to Katolis to claim the throne. This is a very promising storyline for season three, because it will be a gargantuan task for Ezran to keep the throne away from scheming Viren, help his grieving kingdom, and relinquish the naivete that has defined him. Hopefully, he will interact with Aanya and she will help him navigate the unthinkable.
Callum recovers from his foray into dark magic and continues the quest with Rayla and Zym, reaching the perimeter of Xadia by season’s end. Callum’s struggles with magic also promise some very interesting things for the future of The Dragon Prince. Seeing how much damage was inflicted by just a sliver of dark magic really puts Viren into perspective. It is not hard to see how he and Harrow could have been so close before dark magic corrupted Viren and transformed him into the ambitious and morally-bankrupt character we’ve known since the start.
Luckily, Callum’s exploration of dark magic may have already come to an end, as he manages to connect with the Sky Arcanum, one of the six sources of primal magic that were thought to be denied to humans. There is so much to explore in this idea, as the concept of a human relationship with primal magic is unheard of in the Dragon Prince universe. Although the transition was predictable, it was more than welcome to see Callum succeed and feel good about himself. I hope we see so much more from him now that he has reached Xadia.
Season two kept up the anachronistic references that didn’t sit right with me from season one, but I’ve gotten used to them and in time, I may even come to accept and look forward to them. Certainly, the creators are having a blast slipping their geeky references into the story.
Overall, it was a very productive and–with nine short episodes–very bingeable season that made me laugh and kept me engaged, even though it still feels like a setup to bigger things yet to come. Certainly, though, the payoff would not be worth it without that setup, and I hope this show has the time to fully explore the world it has painstakingly put forth.
