The following contains major spoilers for The Dragon Prince: The Mystery of Aaravos, streaming now on Netflix.
After a nearly three-year hiatus, The Dragon Prince is back with its fourth season, the first in an epic storyline that will culminate with the show's seventh season, already officially ordered by Netflix. Featuring an in-story time jump, Season 4, subtitled The Mystery of Aaravos, offers something of a reset to the status quo while maneuvering the pieces for what's shaping up to be a darker tale that is poised to be more sweepingly bombastic and intimately personal. In conjunction with a spoiler-filled interview about the season with series creators Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, here's a spoiler-filled review of the season and how its themes inform the direction of the hit animated series moving forward
Coming out of the gate, it's clear that The Mystery of Aaravos takes advantage of the narrative time jump to shake up the status quo of its main characters. Everyone is certainly recognizable, but they're all in a far different place, either physically or mentally, than viewers had seen each of them before. Ezran confidently leads his people as king, while Callum has dived headfirst into his magical work as the High Mage of Katolis in the wake of Rayla's sudden disappearance between seasons. The Mystery of Aaravos is very much The Dragon Prince as fans know it, but, coming off the fiery intensity of Season 3, it has a different feel right down to slight changes to character design to reflect the passage of time.
.jpeg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5)
This fresh start sensibility extends to the season's overarching tone, which generally comes off as more light-hearted than the preceding season. For those watching Seasons 3 and 4 back-to-back, this shift may be jarring, but The Mystery of Aaravos truly is the beginning of a new chapter in the ongoing Dragon Prince story that features its own escalation of stakes and conflict. This is perhaps best exemplified by the introduction of the new major character Terry, who starts the season as a happy-go-lucky figure engaging in literal fart jokes with his girlfriend Claudia, only to murder someone approximately halfway through the season. In a way, Terry's shift -- and the tonal change -- is an accelerated form of what the other Dragon Prince characters experienced in the preceding three seasons. By the end of The Mystery of Aaravos, the overall tone is leaning towards darker territory though not without the occasional joke to cut the tension.
Similarly, there isn't quite as much bombastic action in The Mystery of Aaravos as in Season 3, and the action that does exist is much more intimate in nature than Season 3's big sweeping battles. The action highlight of this season is a high-flying chase between Claudia and her brother Soren through the Drakewood on the backs of drakes leading to an emotional conversation between the two estranged siblings on how far their paths have diverged. The other show-stopper has Claudia face Rayla in the season finale, underscoring how personal and dangerous their antagonistic dynamic has become, likely setting them up for a rematch in the near future.
Four seasons deep, The Dragon Prince is still dedicated to world-building, offering greater insight into the culture and hierarchy of the Sunfire Elves while exploring the Drakewood and its resident Earthblood Elves. The Dragon Prince has steadily added to its own mythos across the entire series run, and even with a time skip and soft reset, it continues to fill out its fantasy world of Xadia. With Wonderstorm and Bardel Entertainment back at the helm, the animation behind these environments is as gorgeously rendered as ever, from the fiery halls of Rex Igneous to the sun-beaten capital of Lux Aurea.
The Dragon Prince: The Mystery of Aaravos is a reintroduction of sorts, marking the start of a new story picking up from the threads of Season 3's climactic Battle of Storm Spire that reassembles its pieces on the board. This tonal change may catch some viewers off-guard, but given the time skip and preceding season's conclusion, it makes sense that the show needs to take a moment to breathe and reestablish itself before escalating the proceedings again. There is a bigger, darker story coming for The Dragon Prince in the promised seasons to follow, and the underlying message in The Mystery of Aaravos is to enjoy the relative peace and lightness while it lasts.
Created by Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, the first four seasons of The Dragon Prince are available to stream on Netflix. The series has been officially renewed for three additional seasons.