One of Netflix's most popular original animated series is The Dragon Prince, which has transported audiences to the fantasy world of Xadia for two seasons of adventures full of myths, magic and monsters. The third season of the acclaimed series arrives Friday, as the exiled princes venture deeper into the fantastical world, with a baby dragon in tow, to prevent war between humans and elves, while the scheming sorcerer Viren plots to expand his conquest.

In an interview with CBR, creators and showrunners Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond teased what to expect in Season 3, how they increased the scale and intensity of the series, and what to expect for the future of The Dragon Prince.

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CBR: You guys really dial it up this season, action-wise and with intensity and emotion. Was it always designed to have that kind of crescendo?

Aaron Ehasz: I think in the kind of big picture story we've been planning, we knew that the first kind of culmination of major acute kind of threats and questions was going to be at the end of Season 3. So we kind of knew there were going to be new mysteries and questions and the bigger, epic, kind of timeless threat was going to be better understood but the initial conflict between the [dragon] egg being supposedly destroyed and having to be returned to its mother, we knew we were going to come to the end of that story by the end of Season 3.

Justin Richmond: We were very excited to do it in the way that it got done. Bardel Entertainment, who's our co-production partner and helped us make the show, went crazy and were like, "What if we got all this awesome new software to render new armies?" and all this huge stuff that we got to do. So we got to tell it in a way that was even more exciting than I think I was even anticipating when we started writing.

To that point, you dial up both the smaller fights and the larger scale, epic Lord of the Rings-esque battles. Justin, you come from a video game background. How was it choreographing all that action on such an epic scale?

Richmond: Good question! So the coolest thing about working in TV as opposed to video games is that you don't have to plan for the players breaking everything all the time. So it was really nice to work with the directors and animators at Bardel, in particular, Villads [Spangsberg], who's our series director, and Giancarlo [Volpe], who's our producer here. Working with those dudes, we were able to plan out every single thing that would happen. On a video game, you'd do that and then be like, "And then the player will break all these things and you're totally screwed." On a show, you can just show that stuff and have it come out super awesome. And it's really exciting, in particular, just to work with those guys.

The team at Bardel really went all in and hired extra people to work with the armies and all that kind of stuff. Even in the [storyboards] when we were doing it, it was like holy crap, this is going to be amazing. And it came out even better! I was really, really excited that we were able to do it the way that we did.

Ehasz: There's credit to Netflix here too which is to say, the team at Bardel came back and said, "If we had these resources, we could do this. If we had a little more time, we could do this and we could make it awesome by doing that." So we said let's ask Netflix and Netflix was just like "Yes, absolutely do it." And they supported it and they helped us deliver the finale to Season 3 that we thought the fans deserved.

Yeah, there's part of me that like "How are you guys going to top this?" [laughs]

Richmond: [laughs] Thank you! Hopefully every season is better than the one before it. So now we've got to figure out what happens next and make it even cooler.

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You mentioned this is kind of the end of that first stage. With every season taking its name after these elemental namesakes, would it be safe to assume it'll be a [six-part] series overall?

Ehasz: Yeah, so there's six primal sources plus dark, so seven, that's what our plan is now.

All kind of plotted for about nine episodes apiece?

Richmond: It could vary. We like how it feels right now with those nine episodes but if it needs to be a little bit longer or whatever, then we'll absolutely do that. But yeah, around that length, I think, is correct.

Without giving the game away, this is the first time we see Rayla with her family; we see Ezran deal with his own legacy at such a young age. We even see a bit of Callum's history, especially in regards to the dragons. What made you want to shine a light on that halfway through the series?

Ehasz: At the beginning of the series, we spent a lot of time and doing exposition around world-building, at the situation, and kind of initial introductions to the characters, and you hope to grab the audience's attention and captivate them enough that they'll come along for this longer journey. But the real kind of pleasure and enjoyable part of it is when you start to get deeper into those characters and you have the opportunity to say, "Hey, I kind of knew these superficial things about you and now I understand a little more about who you are, why you act the way that you do, and why this character is so special or so brave."

If you can bring the audience along long enough, it gets to the great part where you get to know these characters. We were working on a scene for a future season with some of these characters -- I won't spoil anything -- but they really are revealing and show their growth and depth and it just gets more pleasurable to write as you get further into a story with the same set of dimensional, amazing characters.

What characters have really surprised you as you've broke story and written more into the series or enjoyed writing more than you initially thought?

Ehasz: I have two answers. One is Ezran. Some of it is his arc but, I think, we saw him as the younger brother and the sidekick and when we got to the end of Season 2, we just kind of knew that this old soul was going to step up and try to take responsibility. Even though he's a child, he was going to try to grow up and change things; that's so powerful. And [voice actor Sasha Rojen's] performance is part of what inspired us and let us see this character could be so strong and such a great leader. That character really, really becomes an important generational leader in future seasons.

The other character I would quickly call out as a side note is Corvus. Again, some that has been working with actor Omari Newton has brought such a layer performance to this character, that is both kind of funny and deep and you can tell this character is someone who is loyal and strong and just. That's the one that jumps to mind as someone who surprised me that seemed more like a side character but now I love that character.

Richmond: I think my answer is a little bit weird but bear with me. So Chris Metzen from Blizzard plays Thunder and we were just sort of able to get him on board; we're really excited about it. And he just brought this incredible depth to the character. And having him come in as a guy I had kind of looked up to my whole career and then he went absolutely emotional [with the character] and that was awesome.

So definitely Thunder and the other one is Claudia. Raquel [Belmonte] is amazing and every time we get to work with her in the booth, she just brings so much dimension and depth to that character. She has a bunch of really interesting choices that we sort of discovered this season and I really just enjoy the time working on her character and her work is nowhere near even done. There's obviously a post-credits scene and that kind of stuff. There's just so many interesting places to go with Claudia.

Ehasz: She starts from a much more innocent, delightful place and, over the course of the episodes we have planned, she's getting pulled into darker decisions.

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I remember at the Season 3 premiere at New York Comic-Con, as soon as Amaya came on screen, the entire audience cheered. What do you think it is about those kind of characters that really strikes a chord with audiences three seasons deep?

Richmond: I think Amaya is really special for a lot of reasons but I also think she's just super fun to watch. So the animators spend enormous amounts of time trying to get her right and nail it. We worked with all these different people to make sure the character felt authentic to as many people as we possibly could. But the big thing was she's just super fun to watch; she's badass. She has this great relationship with Gren, she kicks butt, she's funny. She tells off-color jokes. I think she's just really, really fun to watch. You've seen this whole season so you know she obviously gets an even bigger arc this season which I think is really exciting too.

You've increased the variety of environments. You've got volcanic, lush forests, rocky mountains. What was it about developing that variety in visuals you found important, especially this season?

Ehasz: I think we've been promising people Xadia [laughs]! We knew that we were writing this season, we had to see that there was this place that was rich in its fantasy elements. There would be a lot here to explore and hopefully suggest there's a lot more. So we knew we definitely needed to deliver some Xadia in a lot of different ways and definitely let people know this was a special, magical place.

Did you have extra lead time in developing both the action sequences and environments?

Richmond: We didn't have lead time but we did have extra time towards the end of the season to add stuff so you'll see the last episode is significantly longer than our normal episodes, things like that. As you're making the show, the problems that existed in terms of rendering and craziness in animation and how make it -- just the physical aspect of making the show -- you don't know what you're doing when you start. You're throwing everything at the wall just trying to get it to work and make sure the rendering looks great and all that stuff. As time goes on, you can spend more and more time on the actual artistry of it and less time worrying about the technical stuff.

As a nice dovetail, we've kind of figured out our rendering timeline, we figured out how to animate the show, we figured out the things we really liked, and how to push everything else even further. Sometimes that doesn't happen but, with this project, it did and it was really nice that it went that way.

You've on this thing for three seasons now and you've mentioned you're working pretty far ahead, at least in terms of breaking story and all that. What are the things you're most proud about and what lessons have you learned moving into Season 4 and beyond?

Richmond: The fact that I got to work on a show with the crew that we have; we just have an amazing, amazing writers room. We also have an amazing number of people working at Bardel. Wonderstorm is very, very small and just having this crew of amazing people that wanted to jump in and make amazing stuff and put our mark on fantasy. I'm really, really proud of everything that we put on screen. When I got to see Season 3 in its entirety, just fully render, I was like oh, this is super awesome.

Going forward, I hope we get to keep pushing the boundaries of this type of animation. We're making something that is a little different than a lot of other stuff that's out there and I want to keep doing that, pushing on character and amazing fantasy stuff and getting deeper into Xadia and more magic. We're sort of at the end of this arc but the future is enormous and I can't wait for people to get into where we're headed next.

Ehasz: The team and the way every level of people have brought their vision, passion, and commitment to this; I think you can see it, you can see it all over this. It took hundreds of really passionate people to do this. The other thing I'm proud of has been the response of our fans and the community and the audience and the way people have embraced this world and this show and there's been such a spirit of positive healing feelings around it and that's something that's really important to us.

Featuring the voices of Jack DeSena as Callum, Sasha Rojen as Ezran, Paula Burrows as Rayla, Jesse Inocalla as Soren, Racquel Belmonte as Claudia, Luc Roderique as King Harrow of Katolis and Jason Simpson as Viren, The Dragon Prince Seasons 1 and 2 are available now on Netflix. Season 3 arrives Nov. 22.

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