Dragons Rising Season 3 (both parts) spoilers below. also long (emotionally charged) rant and swearing alert
sigh so Zane.
Hopefully from the tags I leave on my Ninjago reblogs (and I'm not gonna lie, probably my entire online profile, down to my name lmao), I've made it apparent that Zane is my favorite ninja and overall favorite Ninjago character.
I have spent so much of my time thinking about him ever since I was introduced to the show. As a kid I looked up to him as a character and what he represented and valued, and I resonated deeply with him (although at the time, I didn't realize that was what was happening and for what reasons).
That said, to say that I am extremely disappointed by the way he was treated in DR Season 3 is a massive understatement.
Other people have definitely talked about this before, so apologies for sounding redundant. I'd like to give my two cents as well, feel free to scroll away if this doesn't interest you.
I scrolled back through some of my Discord messages a while back and found one from before S3 PT1's release that. actually really stuck with me after I rediscovered it:
Every time I think about dragons S3 my mind inevitably wanders back to this message, because I still can't believe that my subconscious fucking called it a month before part 1's release and I still held on to hope that this wouldn't be the case only for it to, well, turn out to pretty much be the case.
^ I know this line in particular is really minor, but it kinda irritated me how casually he said this when all the way back in MoS S1 it was very clearly established he is a culinary expert. Hell, they refer to it again in S2 when he takes a job as a cook!!
You could argue his titanium body doesn't require him to eat let alone taste, but he sure has the capability to smell (see: MoS S12) and if his sensors are built similar to how humans sense, then his smell and taste are closely connected. But even if not, just his culinary knowledge alone would be enough to not even warrant this comment from him.
While small, to me, this is poke number one in the face.
^ Oh boy howdy I wonder what happens to him the next time we see him after he says this line. Also, if it's not the current Nindroid naming convention, you could just... change it? If you want to give yourself a middle name, then go for it?? No one's gonna stop you.
Like I know he's trying to make a joke, but I find it so fucking funny how ironic this line is considering what happens to him next.
Doesn't really count as a poke in the face, just something that stood out to me that I had to pause and bury my head in my hands for when I saw it the first (few) times.
Also speaking of wonderfully ironic scenes regarding Zane:
^ Personally, I found seasons 1 and 2 of DR almost insufferable to watch because of the sheer amount of tell-don't-show that happens. I don't even think MoS was this bad. What the hell was DRS2P1's "We got so turned around in that storm, we have no idea where we are!!" like 3 times almost in the same episode?? Am I the only one who noticed that???
If tell-don't-show had a subcategory called tell-don't-show-squared, I think we should put this scene in there. I mean, sure, you could argue that his pining over PIXAL ("I miss my wife, Mr. Frohicky. I miss her a lot" -Zane, probably) is proof of his emotions, which is fair, but... is there anything else? Like actually, please tell me. Did I miss something because I'm so blinded by this episode? Because I feel like I am. If I am, I'm gonna feel stupid, but if I'm not, I'm probably gonna feel worse.
Anyway. Even I did miss something, the way his dialogue is written in DR (oh my fucking god, his dialogue is a whole other issue I have with this show) as well as all the jokes that have been made that reference Zane being a robot (biggest one off the top of my head is one of Cole's lines from S1P2, "Still the most advanced machine I've ever seen. Don't tell Zane I said that." Zane wasn't even present in the scene and the show still makes jokes like this) pretty much crumples this scene up and throws it in the trash. I can appreciate the effort, but their preceding instances completely undermine what they were aiming for.
Ouuuuggghhhh and now for the scene that shattered my hope into a million jagged pieces.
^ This line not only completely misses the entire point of MoS S1 E2 Home and heavily mischaracterizes Zane, it feels like a massive punch in the face to me - and if I'm not the only one who felt it, other people like me as well.
If you haven't read my intro post, I'm autistic. I didn't always know this, but that doesn't mean I am a stranger to being labeled by people around me as "weird" or "strange" due to how I act. God only knows where I would've ended up if I didn't decide early on to take those words in stride and learn to embrace being weird and strange.
So based on what I just said, guess how I feel about this scene. I'll give you three guesses, and the last two don't count.
Not only did you pull the completely wrong message from S1 E2 Home, an episode centered around how Kai, Cole, and Jay learned to embrace and accept Zane for who he is instead of judging him by how he was different from the rest of his team; you also sent a massive "fuck you" to the people who saw themselves in Zane and resonated with his experience of being the weird one in the group, maybe even found hope in seeing that his teammates learned to accept him for who he is. At least, that is how I interpreted it. Great work, writers.
The only explanation I could give this scene the benefit of the doubt is that perhaps Zane regressed in this aspect of himself because some outside factor - maybe it's the stress of living in the post-Merge world, maybe it's because of his popularity as one of The Ninja that only grew as time went on and he continued working as a ninja - caused his mind to start to dig this up again, and that's why he acts more rigid and closed-off and his voice sounds more flat and monotone. And the more I thought of this possibility, the more sad I began to feel as I considered what that meant about his character in DR.
I don't want to believe that this is just bad writing and blatant mischaracterization, but the fact that the show continues to have Zane exist to crack robot-related jokes with him and make his dialogue so unnatural, even after he finally finds PIXAL - PIXAL. His fucking girlfriend, whose absence DR emphasizes is a big obstacle for Zane, which could be a very understandable explanation for his unusually robotic behavior (as his emotions tend to shut down when he's in mental distress) - is making it extremely difficult to believe otherwise.
I know things like this take time to unravel and unlearn in the real world, and you can probably argue that I'm just too impatient to let the robot-ness die slowly. But can I also bring up Lloyd's visions? You know, the ones that have been bothering him so much last season that are a direct consequence of him being a Source Dragon conduit? Maybe he hid them from the others but I highly doubt that his visions would be that plot irrelevant. And this may also be a personal thing, but Arin's arc in S3 PT2 especially felt a little rushed.
Oh wait, I'm still at part 1? At the- oh god, no.
^ I hope I don't have to talk about this anymore because I feel like I've talked about it in my own circles to death already but there was??? No point to this "death"??? It feels like it's just there because Zane is Known for being The Guy Who Keeps Dying so here's a callback to a scene that the OG fans will know, you know the scene I'm not putting a screenshot of it in this post.
As a MoS Season 3 enjoyer (it's my favorite season actually, you cannot make me change my mind. yes I'm aware the love triangle exists this isn't about the love triangle) I can confidently say that at least Zane's death in MoS S3, the scene where the music track that plays in DR S3's scene originally comes from, actually had plot relevance. In MoS S4, Zane had his whole subplot of him struggling with his identity and perception of himself - and if you consider Decoded to be canon, he even repressed the memory of his death deep into his subconscious because he didn't want to confront it.
On the other hand, DR S3's death scene does nothing for the plot. Zane gets incapacitated, but there's really no sense of urgency or like "oh no this is bad we're in actual trouble". He just gets rebuilt (into a design I personally don't like but I will say that the fanart makes it look ten times better than it does in canon) and re-enters the fight with PIXAL completely fine a few episodes later.
Not to mention, Zane's transformer mech design gets REVERTED with no explanation in literally the first episode of the second half of the season. So I guess he's back to normal now??? What did that scene even do???? Are there any actual lasting consequences?????
Oh, and speaking of DR S3 E11:
^ Okay, before you start yelling at me that it's totally fine if the writers boot a character from the plot because they didn't know what to do with them and that I shouldn't be complaining about this for that reason, I've seen people talk about this side as well! And from that perspective, I totally agree. I write stories too, I totally get this.
But it's not that Zane and PIXAL were pushed out of the plot because the writers didn't know what to do with them that made me upset. It's that they said they were going to give Zane a major part in DRS3, gave us The Great Zane Robbery, and then wrote him out. Likely not what they intended, but to me it felt like "here you go, this is the best we could do for him, okay bye he's not gonna be relevant to the rest of the season now (even though he's still in the intro)." I'm aware this sounds extremely emotionally charged but is it just me???? Did anyone else get this too????
I think the other thing that baffles me about how they had Pixane leave the group for a bit is that the entire Thunderfang + Spectral Dragonians + Spectral Five Failures thing is happening across the Merged Lands and Pixane are somehow none the wiser about it. There is no way they went off to explore the Merged Lands, promised their friends they'd call if they saw anything suspicious, and then went radio silent for the rest of the season. You're telling me they didn't see anything wrong at all from their hot air balloon???
Now, benefit of the doubt, they could have seen something, tried to call their friends, but their transmission got interrupted/something happened to them that prevented them from communicating.
Or they fucked in that hot air balloon or something. I don't know?? Or what if I'm right and next season is when we find out they got their souls sapped out of them too and they're dead for real no takebacksies. I don't know which I'd take at this point
---
Okay, before you yell at me again for bashing on DRS3 so hard I love the show a lot. It's definitely not perfect, why else would I spend so long ranting about it just now? I love the new cast and what the writers are doing with them, and they handled Jay really well imo. If we were still doing mascot = focus characters he should've been one of them for part 2, I am blown away by him this season. Also I would die for Arin and Sora and Riyu and Frak and Wyldfyre I love them so much.
I'm just upset at how they handled Zane. He doesn't feel the same. And I'm not going to glaze MoS because of DR (cough S11 SotFS cough) but right now being a Zane fan feels more like I'm clinging onto a memory of who Zane used to be and an idea of what he could've been instead of Zane, himself.
Ironically, considering the statement I just made, I feel like Zane Day is the most we've ever gotten for him character-wise. That was a really interesting addition but man, what happened to my favorite ninja.
Anyway, I can't believe I called it a month before DR S3 came out and I don't really know how to feel about it, but I do know I don't feel happy. At least searching his and PIXAL's names up in Discord's GIFs function was a little bit of a saving grace from the S3 PT2 leaks, I guess?
Thank you for bearing with me if you read all the way down, I know this sounds probably closer to Dragons Rising bashing than me trying to talk about Zane. I also tried my best to write it so it flows well, let me know if I missed something.
No because you are absolutely right, my love for the show took a massive shift when I realized that this is the current state of Zane's character
All the little things about Zane that no one else ever really noticed that made him who he was is not present at all in dragons rising (like you said, him cooking) Also when you brought up Lloyd's visions, it reminded me that maybe THAT should have been the PERFECT way to call back Zane having visions and have Zane talk with Lloyd like literally every time Lloyd was struggling i kept yelling TALK TO ZANE FUCK
I am glad people keep talking about Zane's character in dragons rising cause it highkey still sucks and it makes me lowkey not want to watch the show anymore if its gonna keep being this bad
Is is just me or am I also confused as to why Dragon Spinjitzu was straight up never mentioned or brought up again or explained, it was just Lloyd going "My spinjitzu feels different" and that was it
Zane didn't even realize he was doing it
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