Netflix is absolutely KILLING IT on the animation front these days. Seriously, if you haven’t dipped into any of their animated content in recent months, you should do yourself a favor and do that…and then keep an eye on the barrage of series coming on the way in the months to come. One such surprise came in the form of The Dragon Prince, a show from the head writer and director Aaron Ehasz as well as Justin Richmond.

The Dragon Prince has already sported two solid, nine-episode seasons on Netflix since its September 2019 release day, with its third season officially announced just a few days back at WonderCon 2019. The synopsis for the third season is as follows:

“Season 3 finds Rayla and Callum finally at the cusp of entering Xadia, while young Ezran returns home to take his place on the throne. Meanwhile, Lord Viren begins to realize the influence and power of his new ally – the mysterious Startouch elf, Aaravos. As several storylines unfold in big ways, this season will be massively epic.”

It was while at WonderCon LRM Online‘s Dennis Magat had a chance to sit down with creators Ehasz and Richmond to discuss The Dragon Prince announcements, some in-world deep cut details, the show’s diversity, and potential future seasons to come.

As of right now, Season 3 doesn’t have a release date, but if the show is news to you, be sure to check out the first two seasons on Netflix!

LRM Online: Season 3 announcement. You guys got a video game coming out. That all is amazing on top of all of that. Awesome. Like yes, we need more. If I had more time to play games, I would actually be more excited. I wish I had more time to play video games.

Ehasz: You should definitely not have children then (laughs).

Richmond: That is the thing. For sure.

LRM Online: I’m not sure how much more you can speak upon those and also as a fan of the story, I don’t want to know more than we already have. I try to stay away from spoilers.

Ehasz: We’re not going to let you spoil. Tell us what you want, we’re not going to spoil anything.

LRM Online: I asked friends to help out with some questions too. Like if you could ask them something, what would you ask? And they kept asking way too … ‘I’m like, dude no, you can’t ask that if we’re going to eventually see that.’

Richmond: Just ask away and we can take it out if we can’t answer it.

Ehasz: Give me an example of one of those questions.

LRM Online: Is Callum the first human who learned Primal Magic without the use of a stone? And will he be the last?

Ehasz: It certainly is rare enough that that is a valid question and it is rare enough that it, if it has happened before, it’s been a century or more.

LRM Online: It’s been awhile.

Richmond: You don’t talk about history for sure.

LRM Online: Good. Then I will take that answer because I also don’t want to put story ideas in anyone’s heads.

Richmond: Don’t worry. We can handle it.

LRM Online: As big of a fan as I am of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I’m going to try to trim how many of those questions I ask because this is not an Avatar thing. But it’s awesome that you were able to get Jack DeSena. He’s one of my favorite voice actors from that show. Has there been a fan outcry to be like, what if you got a voice reunion just as cameos or something like that?

Richmond: That sounds awesome. I have not heard that. Have you? I have not heard it.

Ehasz: No, I think people love that Jack is part of this because he’s a familiar voice and they love that he’s funny and vulnerable and emotional and dramatic and that he can do all this. But I think people, they hear Sokka for a few minutes. I mean, you tell me. And then they hear Callum. He takes over the character and brings it to life. I think people love Jack and they love Avatar, but I don’t know, I haven’t had anyone say like yeah, ‘Look, is May available?’

LRM Online: It felt like a really quick turnaround between Season 1 and Season 2. It seems similar to me with how Netflix handled the last couple of seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender. Are you worried that they’re asking for too much, too quickly? Does it give you not enough time to work on the story as well as you feel like it would be if you had more time to work on these things?

Ehasz: There’s enough time. I think there are advantages and disadvantages from being decoupled from the old style of how season pickups worked. One of the advantages is, we’ve worked on quite a bit of story in advance in anticipation of the fact that we do intend to tell more, and we do intend to produce more. The story is not being rushed at all.

LRM Online: That’s good.

Ehasz: There have been moments where the production … Our teams at Bardel have worked so hard, but they’ve never lowered their standards. They’re only raising their standards to do better work and more beautiful work. I think Netflix would never overly rush us. I think that Netflix has in mind the greatest creative outcome. If more time is necessary and as more time is necessary, it’ll be given to, to get it right. And that’s what they care about the most. So the pace is just right.

Richmond: It’s fine. Exactly.

LRM Online: It’s awesome. The Netflix animation block has been just phenomenal for the past couple of years and I’m so glad that you guys have found a home like that with so many other great shows out there. There’s such a big huge community of fans. Like I walked through the artist alley at WonderCon. I almost said DragonCon because of Dragon Prince. Walked through the artist alley of WonderCon, just seeing a lot of art prints out there. Just commissions, some costumes and stuff too. It’s been so cool seeing it and seeing it grow like that.

Ehasz: Can I comment on that?

LRM Online: Sure.

Ehasz: I totally agree. I think that Netflix has made a number of great bets on great storytellers and amazing animators and artists and writers and we feel grateful that we are a part of that team. I hope that the audience and the fans and the community that are being served by Netflix with all this great animation block are able to speak up and say, not only do we want more shows, but we want deeper in the shows we love. I mean honestly, very selfishly, we want the community to say to Netflix, hey, we want more great shows, but please give us the whole Song-

Richmond: Of Dragon Prince.

Ehasz: Give us all the seasons. Because that’s important too. So I do think they’re doing a great job and cultivating a bunch of new original stories. But let us give you the whole thing.

Richmond: Yeah, let us keep going.

Ehasz: Make Netflix give you the whole story. Give us the saga.

Richmond: Or the story, I guess.

LRM Online: There are two seasons, two Magics, so far. There are seven Magics total. So…

Ehasz: That’s the plan.

Richmond: Yep.

LRM Online: Give me all seven, Netflix. I want it. I know you’ve probably been asked or have talked about this so much, but Amaya being such a huge fan favorite character, the representation that both she and the actual show provide between mixed-race couples, the LGBT community as well. Even Ava being a dog with a disability, I haven’t seen this much in it from most of the stuff that I’ve grown up with. And how important do you feel it’s that it’s this visible for kids and even adults to see that their kids can grow up and be more welcoming and be more open to the diversity of the actual world being as it is?

Richmond: It was a goal from the beginning to make a show that was as diverse as the world that we live in. You can’t ignore it. You have to, you have to deliberately make those choices. We tried to be very deliberate and makes sure that we’re always asking ourselves, what can we do to make sure the show it feels cool and original and awesome, but also is more inclusive and more diverse than it could have been before? I think we’ve had a huge advantage in that Netflix is a really good partner in the sense of we just said, this is what we’re doing. Here’s the characters. And they’re like, awesome, great. Nobody was ever going to tell us don’t do that, don’t put this character in there or whatever.

It’s really important that kids and adults can see a show that that actually reflects hopefully a reality that they can see themselves in. That’s been the goal from the very beginning. I think we’ve done a pretty good job, but we’re always going to try and do better and do as much of this as we possibly can. And Amaya, she was awesome. We always knew she was awesome, but the reaction that we got to her is way bigger than I expected, as awesome as she is.

LRM Online: I love that there are some scenes where Gren isn’t there, one of her, one of her other subordinates aren’t there and the ASL isn’t translated, but you can totally tell just from how the animators work, the body language and face animations and stuff too. You can kind of get a sense of what’s going on. And then I cheat and go to Reddit and find out what the ASL is.

Richmond: Reddit’s pretty good at listing it out. Here’s all the images. Here’s the ASL translations. It’s a pretty good catchall.

LRM Online: I was like, I think I know what she is saying at her sister’s graveside.

Ehasz: Yeah.

LRM Online: And then reading like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Richmond: I have friends who have said, I don’t want to know. I get the intention and it’s just such a private moment that they don’t want to look it up. It’s interesting.

LRM Online: But it works for both ways. You can tell and if you want to know more, it is all out there.

Richmond: Yep, you can get it.

LRM Online: I’m not really sure how much other fantasy media in terms of anime you guys have consumed, but there’s something that I enjoy so much about Rayla being a strong female protagonist for this fantasy series compared to something a little more classic like Record of Lodoss Wars where there is an elf character female who starts out very strong and by the end, she kind of becomes the damsel in distress at the very end. She’s stronger than the main character. You know, like the hero of the story is supposed to be, if we go D&D route, she starts out at like Level 5 or something and the main character is not that way yet. So that Rayla has still been the constant fighter. I have to applaud that.

Richmond: Rayla wouldn’t have had it any other way. Aaron said this before, but we’re led by the characters, right? And so that’s the character Rayla is. I think I would feel gross trying to write her into a role where she wasn’t that.

Ehasz: I’m going to share one random nugget from my personal life that is always a little bit of inspiration for Rayla for me, which is my daughter actually. A couple of years ago, on the playground, my daughter was four years old and she got trapped on the monkey bars. She had climbed up on the monkey bars, was kind of hanging there and trying to figure out how to get down and a sweet older boy who was maybe eight came along and was like, Hey, you want me to help you down? And she looked down at him and she said, “No, I’m the kind of girl who saves myself.” It was just like a moment of, I dunno. It was like-

Richmond: Yeah, that sounds like her. It was awesome.

LRM Online: It’s like, time to put her in my story.

Ehasz: Anya was a little bit inspiring.

Richmond: I was gonna say-

LRM Online: There are two questions that my friends did have and want to know about.

Ehasz: Bring it.

LRM Online: Will we see more consequences of using dark magic?

Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah.

LRM Online: Little bits. Fleeting. Okay, good. And then second…earworm thing. Is it a familiar or a creature of Xadia? Like a magic, familiar or is it option C where you don’t know yet?

Ehasz: We know what it is.

Richmond: Yeah. We know what it is.

Ehasz: I think it’s going to be more interesting to learn about it over time.

Richmond: Yeah.

Ehasz: It is connected to both Aaravos and Viren in a very special way.

Richmond: That’s all you get.

LRM Online: I cannot wait to find out in Seasons 3 and beyond.

The Dragon Prince is on Netflix now!

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