So while rewatching from the very beginning for the first time in... years... I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what it's like to enter the series with a completely clean slate, and the writing and design choices that were made to draw the audience into the story. There's some incredibly elegant and efficient writing going on in the first few episodes to introduce the characters and their dynamics with each other, but even before that, the first impression those characters make is on our eyeballs with their visual designs.
Fortunately, all design is communication. So what are the designs of Callum, Rayla, and Ezran—the Arc 1 story's principal hero characters—saying? What does their appearance tell us about them and the story?
Notes on Broader Design Language
Since these characters represent a clash (and joining) of opposing cultures—humanity (as represented by Katolis) and Xadia (as represented by Moonshadow elves)—I feel we need to quickly talk about the contrasting design language of those two groups.
I mentioned in my Pip design meta that Katolis leans primarily into warm colors, while the Moonshadow assassins share a cool color palette. Katolis (at least when it comes to the royal family, which is like 80% of what we care about) particularly emphasizes red and gold, as those feature in their heraldry, and you could say that Rayla and Runaan, as the most prominent Moonshadow elf characters, emphasize green and dark blue.
However, equally important in the Katolis/Moonshadow design contrast are their opposing motifs. I recall it being said that the geometric design language of Katolis was one of the first things they established for the overall look of the show, and it features heavily in the characters. Katolis designs use mostly straight lines, especially verticals (as appropriate for a culture whose identity symbol is towers) and diagonals—all the Katolis character designs have at least one very prominent, strong vertical at their center line, emphasized with a color shift like the gold trim on both Callum and Ezran. Moonshadow elves, meanwhile, don't have a single straight line anywhere that could be a curve, instead. Not just the trim on their clothing and weapons, but also their shape and cut—nearly all of the lines in all of their designs are curves. Rayla's blades alone are like 50 miles of curves compacted into a 3-foot space.
This is slightly less important and interesting with the trio than when we branch out into characters like Viren, because curve-heavy designs also become prominent in proximity to magic... but it's something to look at and notice in how the designs relate to each other.
But let's look at Callum, Rayla, and Ezran individually in detail.
Rayla
Rayla represents a difficult design challenge in that she has to bridge a lot of gaps. She has to represent the exoticism of Xadia, but remain relatable and mesh with Callum and Ezran. She has to convey the kind of confidence and competence that would see her added to an elite team on a deadly mission, but also youthful inexperience and insecurity. She has to be the trio's warrior (the "hand" of "head, hand, and heart"), but can't lean so far into martial aggressiveness that she comes across as harsh or jaded next to the (relatively sheltered) princes.
The prologue conveyed that there are several diverse elven cultures with their own characteristic features, but the Moonshadow assassin team is the first close look we get at elves, and there are a few things worth noting in what their collective design tells us.
Basically, Moonshadow elves are depicted as an interesting balance of individuality and conformity. We are shown several different skin tones, but all six have white hair. (White hair on youthful characters gives an ethereal, ageless impression and hints at the supernatural, linking well with the exotic and magical impression of Xadia. Rayla doubles up on this effect with her purple eyes.) Compared to elves we see later, Moonshadow elves also have a very consistent style of horns. Those two prominent consistencies across all six assassins are balanced out by the individuality of their clothing and weapons, which share enough features to harmonize and convey shared utility, but distinguish them from the Katolian guards, whose armor and weapons are interchangeably uniform. In that way, we perceive them as elite individuals in a cohesive team, and a believable threat even against a much larger number of those "disposable NPC" soldiers.
There are a few places where Rayla herself is an outlier among her companions, mostly in ways that convey her youth and inexperience. She appears to be unarmored, while the other assassins each have either some piece of metal armor or something that reads much more as protective leather than Rayla's clothing. There are actually a few designs for a more armored Rayla, and you can see how it changes the vibe:
In combination with the way her blades fold up completely out of sight (contrast with Runaan's always-prominent bow), this keeps her overall appearance from being too combat-oriented in a way that lets her fit better with Callum and Ezran. The lack of armor also suggests that she is junior and inexperienced compared to the rest of her team.
Also contributing to Rayla's less-experienced look is the lack of styling to her hair. Compared to Runaan, Andromeda, Skor, and Callisto, she's borderline shaggy, with just her tiny little braid—it makes her look less "put together." Ram shares this less-styled approach, where it contributes to making him look very young, as well. Furthermore (and distinct from Ram), Rayla has only the two relatively bold face markings, while the other assassins have more intricate designs that extend beyond their faces to their limbs. We don't know what the markings mean (like... we still don't), but for Rayla to have fewer and simpler ones suggests, again, that she is younger and less experienced.
From a design standpoint, Rayla's face markings (aside from just being a distinctive feature) have the neat effect of acting almost like strong cheekbones, sharpening and narrowing her face. However, they also draw attention to her eyes, which are huge. This is the kind of clash of mature and childish features that makes a very convincing teenager design.
Rayla's eyes are also unusual in that she is one of only a handful or two of characters with distinct eyelashes, rather than the single, heavy line used for 90% of the cast and only varying in the degree of winged-eyeliner length and sharpness. Long, curling eyelashes contribute to a feminine appearance, but on Rayla I think they are equally suggestive of youth and innocence. A lot of the other characters with prominent eyelashes have more feminine designs (such as Kim'dael, a classic femme fatale), but the only character that I would say uses the same design as Rayla's is... Leola. Which. Hm.
Ezran
Ezran, meanwhile, is actually very straightforward: just about every feature of his design is set up to emphasize his youth and innocence. His poofy hair makes his head appear larger, which exaggerates his child proportions. His freckles express both youth and some of his mischievousness. His big, blue eyes are a dramatic pop of color that draws attention to his face, but blue eyes are also emblematic of angelic innocence and kindness.
(Blue eyes being associated with a lot of positive traits like beauty and innocence is an inherently racist cultural convention, and giving blue eyes to a Black character also falls into longstanding racist patterns of character design, in that a lighter hair or eye color has frequently been an attempt—whether conscious or unconscious—to make them more palatable/relatable to white audiences. I don't think that negates the many positive things they did with a pretty significant diversity of Black characters in TDP, but I also think it's worth saying.)
Ezran's overall color scheme of red and dark neutrals links him very closely to Harrow, but he doesn't have the complexity of patterns and diagonals that Harrow does:
He does have the strong center vertical that characterizes Harrow, Callum, and the other Katolis characters, but to keep it from visually elongating his torso too much, it's broken up by a sequence of rectangles that also evoke oversized buttons or fasteners. Even his little spats serve to gather his pants at the knee and give his legs a silhouette reminiscent of knickerbockers, historically worn by young boys. They also help to anchor the overall impression of the trio in the medieval/old-timey aesthetic of the rest of the series, which Callum and Rayla stray pretty far from. Interestingly, this seems like it may have always been part of his design intent, given some alternate looks that are very "Disney prince":
Finally, there's Bait, who is functionally a part of Ezran's design, acting as his key character prop for all of Season 1 and most of Arc 1 overall. Bait's default yellow and blue colors, in combination with Ezran's red, create a bright primary color scheme that is (again) linked to youthfulness. Bait is also designed to look and act like a crotchety old man, which contrasts with and emphasizes Ezran as an optimistic and carefree child. Furthermore, the fact that he is a loyal friend to Ezran highlights Ezran's charisma and empathy for people unlike himself.
Callum
Then there's Callum. Most of Callum's design is oriented toward maximizing the impression of his insecurity in his role (or lack thereof). His hair is shaggy in that low-effort teenage way, but it particularly falls in a way that could get in his eyes or even cover them. This is animation, so they're careful to keep his eyes and eyebrows fully visible to not impede his expressiveness, but it has the overall effect of suggesting a curtain he's hiding behind. His jacket has a looser silhouette with very baggy arms, conveying a lack of both physicality and of confidence. It's not quite what I'd describe as "oversized," but it definitely has a concealing and minimizing effect. You can see the difference when his jacket silhouette is sleeker and his arms are more exposed:
The jacket isn't entirely shapeless, however. It doubles up the strong central vertical with his shirt, though that's frequently broken up by the diagonal line of his crossbody sketchbook strap. Depending on his posture (and the camera angle), the emphasized shoulders and inward-curving sides can enhance either a slumped, insecure attitude or a confident one:
(Also, like: the way his leap of faith at the end of Arc 1 has the Manus Pluma Volantus runes first shine through from beneath his jacket sleeves, and then he bursts out of it entirely as he gains his wings... sometimes they are not exactly subtle with this stuff.)
The jacket is also responsible for Callum's distinctive color palette. I doubt that blue on the Katolis-aligned characters (most notably Callum and Amaya) "means" anything explicit in lore terms, considering that there are examples in the artbook of designs for both Ezran and Soren in blue, but it's distinct from red (obviously). It acts to distance characters using it from the red-dominant characters of the royal family. In Callum's case, it also harmonizes with the blue (and the curves) in Rayla's design, helping make the trio more cohesive as a whole by bridging the otherwise-significant design gap between her and Ezran.
More important for Callum's design than the blueness of the jacket in isolation is the way that blue and red are layered. His innermost layer (the shirt/vest) is red and has a geometric design similar to Harrow's, closely aligning him with Harrow and Ezran as part of the royal family. However, he is insecure in that relationship and his role as prince, so he covers the red inner layer with the jacket and distances himself from them. On top of that is layered the red scarf, which is probably the signature non-prop (i.e. not his sketchbook) feature of his design.
On an active character with an otherwise sleek silhouette, a long scarf can add a lot of visual motion and make them more dynamic. In TDP that's not very common because of the animation style used, so scarves are generally shorter and indicate a more reserved character—such as with Corvus, Ethari, and Arc 2 Viren. Callum's scarf adds to his loose, shapeless silhouette as a cowl he could conceivably retreat inside like a turtle. At the same time, it's a very bright pop of red near his face (which will always receive the majority of visual focus), preventing the blue of his jacket from becoming his primary color association.
Back to the color layering, though. The red scarf aligns him back with Ezran, in particular, due to its less ornate design (compared to the red shirt that resembles Harrow's) that explicitly references both the simplified heraldry of Katolis and the diamond design of Sarai's armor (seen more frequently in Amaya). It's both laid on his shoulders and wrapped protectively around him, a banner he flies signifying his love and "allegiance."
Finally, while I personally hate fingerless gloves as a design element, I have to grudgingly admit that on Callum they do serve a legitimate purpose. They are associated with higher dexterity and fine motor control, due to their real-world application of being a trade-off between preserving those things and keeping the hands warm. (Though they can have other connotations. In this particular context, though, I'm pretty confident that's what the design is going for.) Callum is an artist, which uses a lot of that fine motor control. Additionally, the gloves highlight the ends of his fingers—there's very low contrast between the jacket sleeves and the gloves, and much higher contrast between the gloves and his fingers—which are integral to the visuals of his spellcasting.
Conclusion
Look, this isn't a series anyone watches for stunning visuals. (That's definitely not to disparage anyone involved in producing it—I'm frequently impressed by what they manage to do despite very obvious imposed limitations.) But it does still have coherent and intentional design going on, particularly at the forefront of the story and characters, and it has definitely been worth analyzing with fresh eyes.
If I can work up the motivation, I may do more posts like this for Viren, Claudia, and Soren, or possibly for Aaravos (since he's actually pretty unique in that they've shared a lot more unused designs for him, and that's always super fun to look at).
So the rewatch is off to a great start for me in that I immediately encountered something that I either had never noticed or had forgotten, but more importantly had never processed in context of the wider series storytelling: Rayla's encounter with Marcos in s1e1 is an early (possibly the earliest?) example of recontextualizing a story/scene in a different or wider perspective, because the way she recounts/remembers it in s1e8 is very different in ways that are very interesting.
In s1e1 the scene is implicitly from Marcos's perspective. There are a couple shots specifically from behind his crossbow, so the camera is seeing what he's seeing. He's on patrol, and encounters a group of elves:
He panic-fires his crossbow and misses, then runs away. (Not going to fault him for that, because it's six-to-one odds against him.) One of the elves detaches from the squad and pursues.
This is where I was like "now wait just a fucking minute" because I clearly remembered a shot of Runaan ordering Rayla to pursue. Turns out it only appears in her later memory, fitting neatly into the gap of time when the s1e1 camera is focused on Marcos running away:
Where things get interesting, however, is Rayla apparently doesn't remember Marcos shooting at them, or at least doesn't consider it noteworthy. Which, I mean... she's clearly not very impressed in the original sequence, but still.
Similarly, after a chase sequence that is significantly abbreviated (but not altered) in s1e8, s1e1 Marcos defends himself when confronted by Rayla at close range, first with his crossbow and then with his sword. Rayla easily diverts/disarms him of both, and has him at her mercy:
In s1e8, however, the sequence cuts straight from her leaping down into the gully after him to her blades at his neck:
This is an elegant contrast given the different purposes these two scenes serve in context. In s1e1, the intended takeaway is (in part) for us to understand the Moonshadow elves as a force unstoppable by normal martial means. Marcos is a soldier, and he makes a reasonably competent attempt at fending off Rayla—an attempt that is nonetheless completely futile.
In s1e8, what's important is only Marcos's fear as Rayla perceives it, and having him fight back detracts from that:
Interestingly, there's no direct equivalent to that terrified shot of Marcos during the s1e1 sequence. There's a similar one, but it's placed at a different point... because something else happens in s1e1 that is not reflected in s1e8. Following that same "Please!" shot, s1e1 has this:
Which is just... insane, as a question, given the identity stuff Rayla later has going on.
There's also something happening here (overall, though also not unrelated to the "who are you?" question) which I find really interesting, which is that up until that final exchange, Rayla is largely faceless and depersonalized in s1e1. This is to be expected, given the context—s1e1 is Marco's "perspective," and Rayla is an unknown enemy... both to him and to the viewers.
In that moment of s1e1, Rayla recognizes Marco's personhood, but her personhood is also revealed to the audience. In s1e8, we also see the reverse: Rayla puts up her hood when Runaan sends her after Marcos, effectively depersonalizing herself into the role of assassin.
But there's something else I think is pretty cool as a purely visual thing, which is the very specific shift of Rayla's eyes from having no specular highlights to having large and prominent ones:
Eye highlights are a usually ubiquitous convention of photography/cinematography that are not actually related to the ambient light of a scene (in real life, you generally need specifically styled and positioned lights to create them). Without them, particularly in animation, you get a "thousand-yard stare" or "dead-eyed" effect, to the point that it's not uncommon to convey the moment of death via the disappearance of that eye highlight. So not only is Rayla returning to personhood in this moment, she's figuratively returning to life.
... anyway.
The last interesting discrepancy between the two sceens is in Marcos's actual escape. In s1e8, Rayla consciously steps back to let him go:
In s1e1, she stands completely frozen (in indecision?) with her blades crossed as Marcos tentatively scoots away, then gets up.
(Note the eye highlights even when her eyes/face are deep in shadow.)
She also has her blades still pretty much at the ready for much longer than in s1e8, only shifting out of her combat stance after Marcos has literally run off into the woods without looking back. Also interesting is the way that same final pose is shown from a low angle in s1e8 and a high one in s1e1—because a high camera angle generally makes the subject look small and vulnerable, while a low angle makes them look large and powerful.
The high angle is technically how Marcos would be viewing Rayla from his escape path, except he literally does not look back at all. There is an entire shot I haven't included here that is just him booking it full-speed into the woods. So this is a moment where the "perspective" has actually shifted to Rayla, and the camera angle is emphasizing how she feels—uncertain and defeated, when she should be... maybe not victorious, but at least accomplished in her duty.
It makes the low camera angle in s1e8 an especially interesting choice because she's recounting the scene as an expression of powerlessness—an example of how she's prone to "hesitate, think too much, get confused about the right thing to do" at critical moments, leading to failure. In that scene, she has all the power necessary to fulfill her duty... and doesn't use it. The emphasis here is on her making a choice, even though it's not a choice she can explain within her own cultural framework, whereas s1e1 is meant to be kind of inscrutable to both the audience and her.
The s1e8 scene does still ultimately loop back into the powerlessness Rayla feels in recounting the story, via this clever transition using a rotating Dutch angle that gives an impression of disorienting weightlessness or falling, going directly into the same rotation of contemporary Rayla and her emotional disorientation:
Speaking of disorientation, I forgot what my point was. Oh, right: this is a scene that, within s1 alone, is being recontextualized with a different perspective—to the point that it is heavily editorialized to suit a particular story intent. This is something we don't see happen as often until places like s3, which has some much slower-burn recontextualizations of s1 and s2 moments. You could even say it's happening in reverse, given that the s1e8 version is not just condensed, but deliberately erases factors like Marcos's reactive hostility and the "Who are you?" question, that would be considered as adding potentially critical nuance if it happened the other way around.
Anyway, I pretty much just think this show's Gordian Knot of narrative is neat. That's all.
In s1e6 "Through the Ice," Bait—consistently classed as an animal or pet, a "lesser being" to Rayla, Callum, and Ezran—steals and consumes Rayla's moonberry juice, to secretly sate his own hunger despite it being a resource she is later prepared to offer freely to Callum and Ezran when (due to a combination of their inexperience and her unnecessary rushing for deceptive reasons) their own food is gone. Though Ezran defends him, his crime is revealed by his unusual magical glow. This conflict puts everyone on edge ("hangry") and friction between Callum and Rayla escalates, with their argument affecting the natural environment to the point of nearly triggering an avalanche. The humans and elves become aware of ("foresee") this impending calamity and resolve to avoid certain actions to prevent it, but Bait—as a direct and inevitable result of his earlier overconsumption—burps loudly and brings about the precarious collapse ("unraveling"), putting all four of them in peril.
This allegory for human magic in relation to the Cosmic Order casts Rayla and Callum as the Cosmic Council and Archdragons, Ezran as Aaravos in Leola's trial, and Bait as humanity with its naive and reckless use of (dark) magic. In this essay, I will—
Timeline Revisions, Archdragons, and the Cosmic Order
This was supposed to be a post about Shiruakh and Laurelion, but I got derailed momentarily by discovering that there's actually no evidence that Sol Regem was the first Dragon King, meaning the Dragon Monarchy did not start only 1200 years ago, which is something I based like 80% of my history speculation and analysis on. As stupid as I feel about this and as interesting as it was in terms of elf/dragon/human political climate... well, it has made less and less sense as we learn about the other Great Ones and the Cosmic Order. So probably for the best.
Revised/Updated Timeline
Let's do a reset on what we actually know:
Pictured: The official timeline slide as presented at SDCC 2019.
5,000 years ago: Primal elves emerged, elves and dragons were not allied (i.e. presumably the dragon monarchy did not yet exist), and it sucked to be human.
3,000 years ago: the archdragon Shiruakh and the Startouch elf Laurelion battle to the death.
2,000 years ago: Humans acquire (primal) magic, and Elarion is founded. Humanity ascends toward a golden age.
1,200 years ago: The Dragon Prince Anak Araw ascends to the dragon monarchy throne as Dragon King Sol Regem.
1,000 years ago: Sol Regem confronts Ziard, the first dark mage, and threatens Elarion before being blinded with corruption. Luna Tenebris ascends the dragon monarchy throne and expels humanity from the eastern half of Xadia. The archdragons form the Border to keep the two halves of the continent separate.
300 years ago: Luna Tenebris dies without a suitable heir. The Sunfire elf Queen Aditi vanishes before she can resolve the ensuing succession crisis. Aaravos, the "Fallen Star," is defeated and imprisoned by the Archdragons and the Orphan Queen. Avizandum ascends to the dragon monarchy throne.
2 years ago: Avizandum is killed by the human King Harrow. His mate Zubeia ascends the dragon monarchy throne, with their son Azymondias as Dragon Prince.
"Now": Aaravos escapes captivity, but is returned to his heavenly form until his stars realign in 7 years. The archdragons Zubeia, Rex Igneous, and Domina Profundus perish in the battle. Azymondias is the last known living archdragon, and the status of the dragon monarchy is unknown.
and here's things we know happened, but not exactly when:
Between 5,000 and 2,000 years ago: the Startouch elf child Leola teaches humans the secrets of primal magic. Her violation of the Cosmic Order is reported by Dragon Prince Anak Araw, and she is executed for it. Her death forms the Sea of the Castout in Eastern Xadia.
Between 3,000 years ago and 300 years ago: the fang of Shiruakh is forged by humans into the Novablade. At some point, it winds up in the hands of the Celestial elves at the Starscraper.
Between 1,000 years ago and Now: the city of Elarion is either destroyed or naturally falls into ruin. (Anyone who can actually cite a reliable source for Elarion being destroyed is more than welcome to do so, otherwise I will die on the "we have no evidence that Elarion was ever destroyed, actually" hill.)
Sometime before 300 years ago, and probably before 1,000 years ago: the (arch?)dragon Aithne Solaire, mate of Anak Araw/Sol Regem, is killed, by him unwittingly burying her alive in an episode of rage. (I say "probably before 1,000 years ago" because she presumably would have succeeded him as Dragon Queen, if she was alive.)
Between 1,000 years ago and 300 years ago: the modern human kingdoms are founded. The mage wars end as the western half of Xadia is depleted of magical resources. (Unclear whether those two events are directly related.)
Some Speculation: The Archdragons, the Cosmic Order, and Shiruakh/Laurelion
This was originally supposed to be a post about Shiruakh and Laurelion, but let's rewind a bit. We know the Great Ones (a.k.a. the "First Elves") built or instituted something to either create an ideal Cosmic Order or preserve one they had foreseen, because that's what Aaravos wants to destroy as his revenge.
This Cosmic Order seems to be tied to an idealized state of stability—humans acquiring magic is known to be the first step in a descent to "chaos"—but also hierarchy. Archdragons are at the top. Elves venerate them. Humans are lesser beings than both. I think there's a very strong chance that the dragon monarchy was instituted either by the Great Ones, or by some agreement between them and the archdragons. The dragon monarchy oversees and preserves the Cosmic Order while the Great Ones... do whatever it is they do, because they don't actually seem very interested.
Destroying the archdragons (instead of just Sol Regem in particular) could be on Aaravos's agenda simply because they betrayed him 300 years ago, but I suspect they are considered a foundational pillar of the Cosmic Order in some way, and taking out three of the last remaining four was a pretty big win for him. We don't know where archdragons come from—like if a primal has no archdragon, whether one will just... coalesce. If that's the case, it clearly either takes more than 300 years or there's some kind of problem with Luna Tenebris's death and the Moon primal (possible).
Now, as for Shiruakh and Laurelion:
I'm assuming we'll get a translation for Shiruakh's name at some point, the best I could get was Hebrew shir ("song") and ruach/ruakh ("spirit", "breath"). Personally, given Shiruakh's coloration and the fact that her scale empowers Claudia with fire, I would lay money on her being an archdragon of the Sun. Since sometime after her death, Anak Araw is Dragon Prince, a Sun archdragon dynasty on the throne also makes sense. I would also have zero surprise if she was Anak Araw's mother, the mate of the at-the-time Dragon King, just because that would set off some animosity, there. Especially if she was hunted down because of some Cosmic Order bullshit, which would also be delicious—him and Aaravos angry for the same reason.
So why did she and Laurelion fight? Well, we just don't know.
Hmmmm. But no, we don't know.
Now, I would bet that either the Death of the Immortal poem was written long after the actual events, or else large chunks of it are missing, since Kazi skimming over "Laurelion fought an archdragon and its bite killed him" and/or "and then he exploded" would be... kind of weird. The archdragons seem to be aware of what will happen when Aaravos's mortal form dies, so presumably they wouldn't be too keen on delivering a suicidal bite if there are other options available... but the other option is the Novablade, which has the same problem. The Orphan Queen, having the same problem as the main cast, may have "spared" Aaravos less out of some mysterious compassion and more out of also sparing herself and everything in what looks like probably a multi-kilometer radius.
I (and I think a lot of others) had just kind of assumed that Laurelion was targeted for death because of some transgression, but now it seems at least equally likely that he was enforcing the Cosmic Order against Shiruakh going rogue. Given the close relationship that's implied between the archdragons and the Great Ones, with no clear point for it to have soured (except with Aaravos, specifically), it seems unlikely that the archdragons or the elves would feel the need for such a weapon. Which is consistent with the fact that, as we now see in the illustration of Aaravos's tale, the Novablade was actually forged by humans.
Given the trajectory of human civilization over the timeline, I wouldn't expect them to have the technology or knowledge to work draconic ivory that way a thousand years before they acquire primal magic. On the other hand, if Shiruakh's tooth was kicked around for a couple thousand years, why did they suddenly feel the need for a Startouch elf-killing weapon? Is this just a case of dick-swinging, like driving a car that can do 250 MPH when you're never going to go above maybe 90, and that's if you're a huge asshole (which you probably are)? "My sword is made from an archdragon's tooth and can kill a god"?
Was Aaravos behind this, somehow? I would not be at all surprised if Aaravos was behind this, somehow. It's unclear whether one Great One could kill another in single combat, or otherwise force them back to the heavenly plane—if not, the advantages of such a weapon might outweigh the risks for the person with the most motivation to dispatch other Startouch elves. A contingency.
(But I personally also think that Aaravos's manipulation was behind things like... the formation of the Border, so.)
Anyway, since either arc 3 or the leadup to it will presumably involve a lot of frantic researching, maybe we'll finally get some of the Orphan Queen story and learn some of what she figured out.
A Primal Primary Source on Pre-Elarion Humanity, Contextualized
So in a moment of... idek, cosmic irony or something, I had two of my longstanding questions about pre-Elarion human history answered by a single source that we have had since *checks watch* 2020. Literally before I entered the fandom. In my defense, most of what's significant about this source isn't really clear until it's placed in context with other sources that we didn't have until 2025-ish. I'm talking about this:
Yes, one of the two pages from s2e8, in which Viren finds references to Aaravos by name. The other being the "Midnight Star" poem. These two pages, shown only partially in the series, were later released in full (accompanied by another, previously-unseen page) in the artbook.
Note that sassy little authorial comment: "We chose real-world languages for these old tomes to create some shareable secrets for fans." This is information that was revealed very deliberately, in specific context. The Arabic version of "Midnight Star" was even shown in full as part of Aaravos's character reveal on the official site, to make sure it was fully legible (and in the correct order, compared to as shown in the series). They even came back three years later to provide an official translation in the run-up to s4, because it's that important of a source.
But for once, we're not here to talk about "Midnight Star." Mostly.
This other page, featuring a portrait of Aaravos (IMO a quite unflattering one), is a first-person account by a pre-Elarion human in contact with Aaravos. That means it's at least a couple thousand years old, but we're not going to worry about how it survived to be printed in a book in the Katolis library—the setting writers want the audience to have it, so we have it.
The half of the text visible in the show is highly relevant to the context where it's seen:
Finally he told me his name. I had never heard a name like his, but I had never imagined an elf like him either. He is stronger, older, and wiser than any other magical being in Xadia. Yet he is a friend to all humans. Where others look down on us, call us inferior, he sees great potential in us. When we accept the gifts Aaravos has promised us, they will pay for their conceit; they will be forced to see us as equals. And when we are equal, we can take our fate into our own hands and build our future.
Like the ancient author, Viren has just learned Aaravos's name, and both the name and Aaravos's kind are unfamiliar to him. Aaravos has also already offered him aid:
This is an important parallel in that, when we see exactly how this situation works out for Viren, we understand that Aaravos was not entirely altruistic in his motives with the ancient author, either. (Maybe a bit ironically, since I would guess this text was an early contributor to the perception of Aaravos as a genuine benefactor to humans, unjustly imprisoned for his role in uplifting them.)
The second half of the text, visible in the artbook, references the city of Elarion as already seen in the opening of s3:
I see it in my dreams - a magnificent, glorious city, the pride of all humanity. A place where we will no longer have to hide, frozen and afraid, from the prejudices of elves and dragons. A place that can stand against any assault, and stand in the history of humanity for generations. It will not be easy, but with the help of our benefactor...
In the wake of s3, it was easy (I assume, because I wasn't there) to read this and conclude that the author of this text was Ziard, another ancient human who received gifts from Aaravos—most notably, dark magic.
Done and dusted, right? (Just like Ziard, lmao.) Well... maybe, until:
June 2020: Book One: Moon novel, with the first version of the Unicorn's Gift story
March 2022: Tales of Xadia, with the second version of the Unicorn's Gift story and crucial information about Elarion itself
May 2022: Official "Midnight Star" translation
November 2022: Season 4
April 2023: "Ripples"
July 2024: Season 6
In short, we learn (roughly) in order that humans were given some form of primal magic before they had dark magic, that access to primal magic built Elarion into a large, thriving city, Aaravos is believed to have given the humans of Elarion dark magic (confirmation of previous implications), Aaravos is not on humanity's side and has manipulated human mages many times (confirmation of previous implications), that original gift of magic to humans was a punishable crime, and the criminally gifted magic was not primal magic.
The ancient author of this text has a vision for a future glorious city of humanity, to be achieved in part by gifts Aaravos has offered. Aaravos gave humans primal magic, whether in the form of primal stones (as described in the version of the Unicorn's Gift tale attributed to him) or direct knowledge of primal arcana.
(Could the referenced gifts have been something else, like practical aid or physical resources? Sure, technically, but that third page in the artbook source trifecta helpfully offers a much later reflection on Aaravos as a historical figure in humanity's past, which characterizes him as "willing to share his immense magical power with those who needed it most." So I think it's a pretty safe bet that they at least included magic.)
I could stop there, because "Aaravos gave humans primal magic" is a pretty big personal "I was fucking right" moment as a standalone thesis. However, I have yet to talk about "Midnight Star." Yes, I lied.
Something I have long gone back and forth on is the recurring-but-nonspecific allusions to a time of great human suffering and persecution in ancient Xadia. A time when the gap between humans and elves was vast, with humans starving to death in the dirt while elves apparently looked on in disdain. Or something.
I'm putting those two sequences side-by-side very specifically, because in practically the very next breath, s4 deliberately invites us to question that narrative. Literally, "How do you know this?" and then leaving us with the stalemate that Claudia deeply believes this is true, and Soren doesn't feel the same.
Elarion, if this timeline slide from 2019 (part of the run-up to s3 release) is still to be believed, "rose" (or, generously, began its rise) a thousand years before we have been told dark magic entered the picture:
If, as Tales of Xadia says, humanity's access to primal magic enabled the rise of Elarion as the pinnacle of human achievement, Ziard didn't see that pre-magic time of human struggle any more than Claudia did. (Unless he's a lot older than would normally be assumed, which is admittedly possible.) Add in that when we actually glimpse that pre-magic period in s6, what we see is not exactly a grim hellscape of suffering:
Now, let's finally look at "Midnight Star." Most of the time, I'm interested in the later stanzas, and have glossed over the first couple as a general description of early Elarion being established and persisting despite some kind of adversity.
Elarion, trembling seed,
lay down to earth in icy night,
and in the cold
her roots took hold
defying winter’s deathly bite.
A fragile seed struggling to sprout in the depths of winter is an evocative image for that concept, while being even vaguer than the other references we've had to human suffering in Xadia. Both Claudia and Ziard reference starvation, and Tales of Xadia backs up both that and Claudia's reference to disease when it says the humans of early Elarion "struggled together against famine, plague, and the indifference of Xadia's magical denizens." "Midnight Star" references none of those, instead focusing on imagery of cold, darkness, and fear.
Enter our s2/artbook first-person source, which uses some very interesting and specific phrasing to describe their dream city: "A place where we will no longer have to hide, frozen and afraid, from the prejudices of elves and dragons." I touched a bit on this in the translation post, but to recap: based on translation by an actual speaker of Danish and some cursory poking around, "frozen" here is specific to cold, not an idiomatic equivalent to "paralyzed" as is common in English when the word is placed in context with fear. This may be an effect of the text probably being originally in English and translated into Danish, but in the context of "Midnight Star"—and recall that the first appearance of this text is adjacent to the first appearance of "Midnight Star"—I think it's worthy of consideration.
We also have another text related to this era that references darkness and fear, in "Ripples":
They nurtured their precious primal flames secretly—in the dark of night, beneath shadows and shrouds—as cultivating its glow drew the eyes and ire of monsters.
and
The falling star plummeted, down and down and down, until it struck the breathless world below. With its impact came a long and terrible night: The earth bled! The seas churned! The sun and moon hid for weeks behind the sky’s screaming storm!
And in that endless dark the humans despaired.
That first section has been noted many times as similar to the mysterious "she searched the dark / for but a spark / and caught the dragons’ hungry eye" of "Midnight Star," and is one of the things that make the two very confusing. Which of these sources is more accurate in its description and timeline? One is a very figurative poetic retelling of events we have yet to fully understand, and the other is, well... by Aaravos, noted obscurer of the truth.
Here's a theory:
"Ripples" alludes to Leola's execution as being in part a "calamity" visited upon the humans of Xadia to correct their improper acquisition of magic:
Where once [the stars had] watched errant flames burn with pride and undeserved power, there was now only stillness.
The story describes geological tumult that lasts for weeks, but that kind of impact would almost definitely alter the climate for years... in a way that would cause (relative) darkness, cold, and starvation. The other thing we know about this time is that, by his own account, Aaravos secluded himself from the world for a hundred mortal years to mourn his daughter. Whether or not you accept that his tears literally filled the Sea of the Castout—and I'm not going to go off on a research tangent to figure out how long it would take an impact crater several miles across to naturally become an inland sea—he was absent for several human lifetimes. That's more than enough time for him to be entirely forgotten, as we see in the s2 mystery author's account.
This calamity would also not have been restricted to humans, it affects all of Xadia. Which is to say: it could have gone a long way toward widening the gap between humans and elves and deepening that resentment. Maybe the dragons and elves did nothing to help the struggling humans because they figured it was the humans' own fault. Maybe they were also struggling in the long, cold dark, and chose to prioritize their own people's survival. That's certainly not something we've got story precedent for or anyth... oh wait.
Like if you want to get real tinfoil-hat about this, we know that the Sunfire elves of Lux Aurea—a city that Tales of Xadia refers to as having stood through "even through the darkest of times" "since the time of Elarion"—at some point received a magnificent source of light, heat, and life... the Great Orb, "the gift of a millennium." What if that gift was to help them survive that period of struggle, in their great city that humans may later have emulated as an ideal of security? That would make a beautiful open bracket to be closed by humanity's aid to the Sunfire elves after the loss of Lux Aurea, just saying.
But I think it would explain a lot for Aaravos to emerge from mourning Leola into a world that was (almost) as fundamentally altered by her death as he was himself—a world where the cracks in the Cosmic Order are beginning to show.
That being said, I still think whatever is going on in "Midnight Star" will keep us busy for easily another five years, if it comes to that.
It's Cute, So What?: Literally 3,500 Words About Claudia's Hair
So @raayllum did a poll a while back for predictions on whether Claudia's hair will be long or short in Arc 3, and I had an immediate visceral opinion on the answer. (Spoiler: short, with caveats.)
Claudia's hair is the signature feature of her character design—a design that, other than her hair, essentially doesn't change for six entire seasons. That's not inherently unusual, but those six seasons include a two-year timeskip where every single other main-cast character gets a full head-to-toe redesign.
Well, every single main-cast character except Aaravos. Hmmmm.
The point is, of all the design considerations in this show, Claudia's hair is one of the ones I can most confidently say is never arbitrary. Claudia's hair length in Arc 3 is not a simple "seven years of hair growth" consideration—her hair is the entire past and future of her character arc.
A Horrible Lightness
Let's get the obvious out of the way, first: Claudia's hair is the semi-literal ticking clock for her character. It's the countdown to an implied point of no return for her—a point at which she can no longer be saved. The show is very explicit about this.
In Arc 1, we see it go from a single, inoffensive streak to encompassing fully half her hair, corresponding with her use of increasingly powerful and disturbing magic.
At the time of s3's release, we didn't know that two years had passed, so we all kind of assumed whatever spell resurrected Viren turned all that hair white at once. That may be the case, or it may have happened incrementally. Either way, it's literally making its way around her head like a clock (though it's technically going counter-clockwise), with the implication that whatever happens when it gets all the way around will be... bad.
Viren even sees the implied end-state of that progression during his dream in s5e3:
This comes after he has seen Claudia start out "following in his footsteps," then go beyond the point where he has stopped, wading out into a vast sea where (after she ignores his pleas for her to return) she is swallowed by a massive wave, sinking down into darkness as he dives after her. At the end of s5, part of this vision becomes a reality. The rest remains a threat, the implied worst possible outcome.
(Though the point of Viren's dream is that it is never too late to change your direction, so there's a bit of tension between that message and the implication that Claudia is has limited time until she cannot be saved. But there's also a bit of tension between that aspect of Viren's dream and all of s6, so.)
I'm going to talk about s6 separately, since there's probably more going on hair-wise in that season than all the others, combined. In short, for s6 and s7 she goes from the look I affectionately call "quarter 'til doomsday" to her Arc 2 end state, with only a few remaining thin sections of black:
Way back in s3e7, when Claudia and Soren diverge, he tells her, "Claudia, you're changing too. But it's not too late." As he says this line, she reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, unconsciously touching that first white streak. In s7e9, after hearing that Soren thinks she's beyond saving (and going to the edge of proving it by killing him) she tells him, "I'm still nice. I'm still me." She again reaches up to brush the hair out of her face, unconsciously touching one of the few remaining slivers of black.
Despite everything, there are a few seconds left on the clock.
Okay, I have fulfilled my obligation to talk about that. Now let's talk about the rest of it. What else are we told about Claudia by her hair, besides that she's doomed by the narrative?
Looking a Bit Wilted
Like any goth girl, Claudia's look is cultivated. She had her ears pierced. She paints her nails regularly. She dyed part of her hair purple. None of those are things that just happen, she had to go out of her way to do them. Her appearance is important to her, at minimum as a means of self-expression.
The appearance she has cultivated for Arc 1, which she is still clinging to as it degrades in Arc 2, is also heavily influenced by and connected to her mother. I mean, look: what does she do when she wants to feel attractive and mature?
Claudia's mental image of Lissa is probably a good bit less overtly sexy than Viren's, but still: her idea of beauty remains, as Soren puts it, "some kind of a... braid-bag flower-dealy."
I could sit down and go through all the ways Lissa's appearance influences even Claudia's day-to-day look, but for this post I'll keep it to one other example: we don't know enough about Claudia's dyed hair to do more than speculate, but it's a feature she has as early as Puzzle House, i.e. shortly after Lissa left. Meaning that if she dyed it earlier than that, it was probably with Lissa's help or oversight, and is one of the only remaining pieces of their relationship. Alternately, if she dyed it after, it's consistent with the pattern of behavior she exhibits in Puzzle House as a reaction to her family breaking apart—specifically acting out in ways that both seek attention and make her feel like she has control over something in her life. Either way, she still has the style ten years later, meaning she has specifically dyed it that way repeatedly, or else she hasn't cut her hair since her mother left. It's something from that time of her life that she has deliberately held on to... and that gets slowly erased by the creeping corruption.
What I actually want to cover here is a little bit more abstract: the way Claudia's perception of her own appearance is influenced by Viren's perception of Lissa's perception of his appearance. Convoluted, but what I'm saying is basically that Claudia, at a specific point, links dark magic, her mother, and her own appearance in a very similar way to how Viren does.
In the short story Lost Child, Claudia is confronted by the effects dark magic is beginning to have on her appearance (aside from her hair). Obviously they're not anywhere near as severe as on Viren (yet), but she still performs either the same or a similar spell to the one Viren uses to refresh/hide his corruption:
A moment later, she blinked into the pond; her reflection beamed up at her. Her eyes brighter, her face fuller, more color in her cheeks. Small changes, but still—
There I am, she thought.
In the Book One novelization, when Viren performs the spell (equivalent scene to the opening of s1e5):
Every time he enacted this ritual, Viren was reminded of the first time he had performed it. He remembered his relief when it worked, restoring his appearance. [...] And even more clearly, he remembered the bitter hole left in his soul when Lissa told him his restored appearance changed nothing.
Earlier in Lost Child, Claudia also thinks about Lissa:
Lissa had left her years ago, but the space she had owned in Claudia’s heart remained. It was a dark place now, hard and hateful, its edges raw as a wound that had forgotten to heal.
[...]
But her shadow still painted the walls of that space; her presence still lingered, just like her violet perfume.
When Claudia performs the spell, she smells violets.
Both she and Viren link the deterioration and restoration of their features through dark magic with bitter memories of Lissa. Both, to different degrees, link that deterioration with judgement and shame. For Viren, it's a foundational part of the breakup of his marriage and family. For Claudia, it's a bit more complicated—in Lost Child, she connects the effects on her appearance with weakness, or with being (as she puts it) "a mess." After performing the spell and seeing her refreshed appearance, she thinks: I’m not a mess. I’m a dark mage.
Put a pin in that for a minute, we'll come back to it.
A Thread Caught and Clung To
Lost Child is set immediately after the end of s4—Viren has fainted only "minutes" before, and Claudia's weeks-long vigil over him is about to begin. Claudia's appearance has a major change at the start of s4—the expansion of the white in her hair—and s6 will eventually kick in with a whole bunch of changes, but for most of s4 and s5, she maintains a very specific and static look.
The centerpiece feature of this look? The braid.
The braid is in and of itself a visually striking piece of design, further emphasizing Claudia's limbo state, but also expanding on it: what might look like a neat separation of dark and light is not. Nothing in this series, least of all Claudia herself, exists in perfect dichotomy: good and evil, right and wrong, doomed and saved. There is, instead, duality: all of those things are twisted up and intertwined. In many ways, they cannot be separated at all.
I want to talk about something else regarding the braid, though:
Terry puts it in her hair.
Now, Claudia definitely knows how to braid her own hair. There's no reason to think this is the first time her hair has ever been braided, or even the first time Terry has braided it for her. But it's the first time for the audience. For the first couple episodes of s4, we've been getting used to the new status quo, and Terry is a bit of an enigma. Who is this guy? How is he involved with Claudia? Why should we care about him at all? Then, in s4e3, Terry kills Ibis to save her, which raises the stakes of his character and their relationship quite a bit. Before that, he braids her hair.
And that braid stays—there are only two further points in s4-s5 when Claudia's hair is loose. (Her actual hair, at least. The version of her in Viren's dream has her hair loose, which is making its own point.) One is in s4e4, where she loses the braid from s4e3 overnight and her hair is loose for hatching Sir Sparklepuff. (Maybe she doesn't sleep in it, and Terry rebraids it every morning.) The other is in s5e9, where she loses it somewhere during her descent into the Sea of the Castout. It's literally there when she submerges, and then not there when we next see her. Or when Terry next sees her.
I'm not going to sit here and spin out a full interpretation of why it's these two exact points where the braid is gone (hint: it's when Claudia is most linked with Aaravos and least with Terry). The point is, for the rest of s4 and s5, as we see Claudia leaning more and more on Terry, The Braid(tm) is there.
You’ll Copy Me, but You Won’t Listen to Me
Before I go into the s6 haircut scene, we need to circle back to check in with something else important-ish: Claudia's other dark magic corruption, i.e. the deterioration of her (and Viren's) appearance that was focused on in Lost Child.
Along with the progressing white in Claudia's hair, up until s6 there was a looming question of whether (and when) she would begin to exhibit the other physical effects of dark magic corruption that we were introduced to with Viren in Arc 1, because that has always represented its own point of no return. We even see the first depiction of it in Viren's dream of Claudia being too late to be saved—along with her fully-white hair.
In s6e1, she finally crosses that threshold, turning to face Viren and revealing that his nightmares have become reality:
Remember those associations of judgement and shame Claudia and Viren share regarding the dark magic deterioration of their appearances? When Viren approaches, Claudia doesn't look at him. She doesn't turn when she hears his voice, even when he addresses her directly. Even though she believes everything she has done to be necessary sacrifices demanded by love, she still looks down at her bloodied hands and steels herself before turning to face her father. Viren has taught her, by his example, that however righteous the choice was, the effects are shameful and something to be hidden.
What makes this moment so gut-wrenchingly horrible is that Claudia is very much looking to her father for validation. She has, after all, done exactly what he did—in a desperate moment, she saved the life of someone she loves, at great cost to herself. In her understanding, this is the highest form of familial love. When he looks at her, she expects him to see how much she loves him. She wants him to be proud of her, even in a bittersweet way. They now share something deeper than they did before—the "aching pain mixed with love" that goes with "however dangerous, however vile."
Instead, Viren is appalled. He doesn't show pride, or gratitude, or acknowledge it as an experience they now share. He doesn't even understand. He asks her why. He tells her it hurts him to see her like this. In Claudia's mind, she has failed in a way worse than she could ever imagine—her father is alive, but she has somehow driven him away.
For both scenes, Claudia's hair is not tucked behind her ears the way it usually is when she's wearing it loose. It hangs in her face to partially or fully obscure it. She has shown her now-devastated appearance to the person she thought would most understand and accept it, and she has been vehemently and traumatically rejected.
In the terms of Lost Child, she is now well and truly a mess, and she's a mess because she's a dark mage.
Anyway, back to this topic later.
Like a Helpless Thing
After what is either the single most crucial missing scene in the entire series, or else just hours/days of wandering around until she got tired and hungry on top of all of the other trauma, we get to s6e3 and the haircut scene.
Throughout the scenes of Terry caring for Claudia, she remains almost non-responsive. He helps her into the water, presumably undresses her, re-positions her limbs and body to bathe them. Even going into the hair scene, she sits curled up and staring off into space, just like she was when he bathed her. The first time we see her react at all to what he's doing is when she winces in pain. She silently directs Terry to cut off her hair, rather than continue trying to fix it.
As I emphasized earlier, aside from the tick-tock of white in her hair, Claudia's appearance has barely changed from Arc 1. There's a reason she doesn't change during the timeskip: her entire goal for those two years and beyond has been to return to an Arc 1 ideal status quo. She wants to go back to before things changed, or restore them enough that the change is negligible. The core of what's happening here is that beyond a certain point, attempting to restore what she had before—her long hair—causes her pain. Things cannot go back to how she wanted. She has been irrevocably changed. Viren has been irrevocably changed. To finally admit that—to stop hurting herself by pulling at the tangles, to instead cut them out and start fresh—still feels like failure.
Not to mention: Claudia has had long hair for the majority of her life. Lissa also had long hair. Even absent wider culture bullshit about long hair and femininity, she's deviating from both her own established self-image and from her internal model for beauty. It's not a penance haircut in the way that cutting off long hair can represent total humiliation for women, but it's also not necessarily a change she would make under any other circumstances. She doesn't know if she'll ever be happy, or even feel like herself, again. That feels like death.
But after all of that—cleaned up, dressed, probably fed and maybe even rested—Claudia assesses the haircut and finds... it's pretty cute, actually?
She has been changed, and she likes the result. Maybe she can't go back... but she can be okay with where she is, now.
This (well, the next scene, in s6e4... but this is what puts her there) is the closest we see her come to quitting dark magic, something it would have been inconceivable for her to even consider only days earlier.
Powerful and Potent
So what goes wrong? Well... Aaravos, obviously.
Aaravos validates Claudia in ways and to an extent she has never experienced before, not even from Viren. Everyone who has left her—her mother, her brother, her father, Terry, and even Callum and Ezran—have done so on some level because of dark magic. (Terry because of her behavior, but I don't think she's really able to separate the two at that point.) Meanwhile, the being who gave dark magic to humans calls her the most powerful dark mage in the world. She's literally god's favorite child, now. She doesn't need anyone else.
In the second half of s7, when Claudia's corruption reappears at the Moon Nexus, she doesn't feel like she needs to hide it from Aaravos, or from anyone. Viren was ashamed of it—Viren, in her mind, rejected her for it—but Aaravos fully embraces her as a dark mage. Even more than that, they embrace (and enable) each other's ugliest parts:
Figuratively and literally. Well, figurative and literal ugliness. The embracing is, as of yet, figurative only. (Maybe they'll hug it out in Arc 3.) After that, Claudia no longer cares about anyone else's judgement. Not even Callum's—the person she has previously been most outwardly sensitive to judging her.
Claudia's short haircut appears to be closely linked with the possibility of her giving up dark magic, particularly by being part of the same sequence where Terry presents the prosthetic he made for her and (as noted by @raayllum) she drops the crutch of her dark magic staff to stand on it and embrace him. Seeing her instead go deeper than ever before in s7 feels like she's backsliding and I can see how some people may have found that unsatisfying. However, I think some of the haircut's nuance is getting lost, in that: it's not representative of a choice or change Claudia has actually made for her future. She doesn't backslide or relapse, because there's nothing to slide or lapse from.
What Claudia's short hair represents, going into s7 and beyond, is that it's possible to return to someone you left, and not be rejected. It's possible to welcome back someone who left you, not by restoring the past, but by entering a new future. Terry can cut her hair with the same love and care he once braided it with. That haircut can also be pretty cute, actually. Accepting change, or even choosing to change, is not inherently weakness, or failure, or death of the self.
This is going to be absolutely crucial for Claudia to understand as her arc swings toward completion. Basically, when it comes to giving up dark magic, Viren had to learn that change is possible—that the choices he made before don't prevent him from making different ones, now. Claudia has to understand that change is survivable—that dark magic is not (as it appears at the end of s7) all she has left.
Claudia at the end of s7 is a collection of competing signals. "I'm still me," she says, when (in comparison with Arc 1) she's completely unrecognizable—even inverted. The first streak of white came from healing Soren, and the last few remain when she flies away from him.
Know Your Roots and Know Yourself
So what does all this mean for Arc 3 Claudia?
Here's what I think it means: Claudia will still have short hair in Arc 3. The short hair is too important. Like the last slivers of black in her hair are linked thematically with Soren's efforts to reach her, the short hair is a mark of both Terry's love for her—a mark he left on her—and the openness to change she once felt. If anything, I would not be at all surprised if she actually loses that last bit of black sometime during Arc 3. The whole point is that the ticking clock has always been a lie—it's never too late to change.
Anyway, even if she has long hair, it will very specifically be in dialogue with her short hair. Long hair would mean that she has either stopped taking care of her appearance at all (entirely possible, given her late-season attitude regarding her corruption), or she is deliberately rejecting/erasing what the short hair represents. It's a lot harder to have a dramatic breakup grow-your-hair-out than a dramatic breakup haircut, but not impossible. Growing out her hair to deliberately erase Terry would raise some questions about her prosthetic, but Claudia is nothing if not contradictory in her compartmentalization. (Personally, if she was going to shed one or the other, I would expect her to get rid of the prosthetic.) Either way, if she starts Arc 3 with long hair, I would lay money on her cutting it by the end.
Whatever happens, it will not be arbitrary. It will be a meaningful continuation of the way Claudia's hair has followed her character arc so far, and it may very well tell us something about where she's going. And who knows? Maybe it will be cute, too.
My personal side-eye aside, that denouement is actually an incredibly elegant application of the story's themes, within the scope of restrictions imposed by this particular medium (i.e. a cartoon targeted for pre-teens and younger). Like, I personally assumed for a long time that we would simply never find out the details, because it would be either too grim and/or violent for the story's intended rating or... kind of a let-down. On the surface, what we got seems like the second.
Most of us have looked at Claudia killing the baby deer to heal Soren's paralysis and went "well, it was obviously that, but y'know... worse, somehow," which is a completely reasonable assumption to make. It was definitely what was narratively implied, which makes the supposedly-damning ingredient being "your mother's tears" instead of like... idk, "your mother was pregnant again and I used the life of that unborn child to save you" or something kind of "... oh. Okay, then."
To be fair, that might also be why they went so hard in the IMO inadvisable male-dominated writer room direction of "so I held her down and took what I wanted" to convey the requisite "he's doing A Bad," which is what all my side-eye is toward. But here's the thing:
On some level, dark magic is about violation—of nature, of others, and of the self. Even violation by Aaravos, ultimately.
But it's also not just that.
Dark magic also sits at the center of one of the primary themes of the whole story, which is the evil of denying others' personhood. We see it again and again from the angle of the heroic cast: "You keep calling it a monster," "You knew he was a person, just like you," "She's not 'the elf.' She's Rayla." The evil they do not allow to take root is seeing people as things, the place where all other evils begin. (GNU Terry Pratchett, IYKYK.)
So Viren's damning crime, the crime that is dark magic, is this:
In that moment, he looks at his wife, and sees only a source of what he needs. One that he can take from as he wills. That's why Lissa leaves—Viren has pulled the circle he draws around "people" versus "abstractions, things to be used" in so tightly that she has found herself suddenly on the outside of it. That's not something you come back from, in a relationship.
As for it all being over something as innocent as Lissa's tears, as opposed to something like her blood, her unborn child, her heart, her last breath—that's also, I think, part of the point. It's a renewable resource, harvested without doing permanent physical harm, but it's still a violation of her. This is the ultimate refutation of the "but what if ethically-sourced phoenix feathers" argument as being, for the final time, bullshit.
When Viren bursts in looking like he walked straight out of hell and demands use of her tears, could Lissa have given them freely? Sure... but she didn't. Could he have talked her around, if he invested the time and respect for her that would require? Probably, but again, he didn't! He took what he'd decided was necessary, did what he decided he had to do, because he could.
And like, he knew, even then. Because while dark magic twists your perceptions and reasoning, dragging you deeper each time—it can't twist you so much that you no longer have a choice. It will do everything it can to make you rationalize making that choice, over and over, but it can't erase that it is a choice.
Like, I'm honestly kind of emotional about it because while the surface level watching experience is kind of hmmmmm, it delivers so well on a thematic and meta level that I'm just like idk. Fuck. It's good.
So as I rewatch the early episodes, I've been thinking a lot about the visual designs for the characters and settings that we see immediately. I'll hopefully knuckle down and do some posts talking about the principal character designs, because there's a lot of really great stuff in there regarding what they say and how they work, but I was considering Harrow and... well, there's something kind of weird about Harrow's design.
It's Pip. Pip is weird.
Now, Pip is presumably meant to be at least a little weird... or rather, exotic. He's a Xadian bird, so they're deliberately not following any real-world bird species too closely. (Though admittedly I don't know birds super well.) What's interesting is that, while they probably exist, I have never seen any color exploration concepts for Pip beyond green. I checked my concept art collection, and I've got nothing beyond what's in the artbook, which is extremely minimal:
Like, compare with Berto, who is actually based on real-world macaws or parrots:
Now, I'll grant that Berto gets more screentime than Pip does, but it's still strange to see three color variations for him and only the final version for Pip. Green is also kind of a strange (or at least deliberate) color for Pip to be, for some reasons I'm about to explain in great detail.
So why is he green?
Well, the most important thing to know about visual design (in this context) is that the eye is drawn to contrast, particularly color contrast. Color contrast can take three primary forms: light/dark, saturation (intensity), and hue (placement on the spectrum/color wheel). Congratulations, you now know 90% of color theory.
Pip has a very high-contrast color design: a light, intense yellow-green and black. Obviously a relatively light color is going to contrast strongly with black, but another color theory thing is that the closer a color gets to white or black, the less saturated it becomes. (In general. There's some nuance to this.) For science-y reasons I don't know in depth, this kind of yellow-green is also more high contrast with black than an equally light/saturated red or blue would be. Basically, Pip inherently has both high light/dark contrast and high saturation contrast.
Furthermore, the Katolis scenes in general are done in very warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows), both to establish a color association and to contrast with the cool colors (greens, blues, and purples) of the Moonshadow elf forest scenes:
There are exceptions, of course: the high mage's office and secret dungeon are overall cool-colored, which is fun. Harrow's scenes, however, trend toward warm. Harrow himself is also warm-colored, with his primary color being red. So it's a little strange that Pip acts as such a strong pop of a cool color in those scenes. A red color scheme* would associate him more with Harrow and Katolis, but... well, look at how these just hit different:
Not only is green a cool color (though color temperature is very relative, and Pip's yellow-green is on the warmer end of green), red and green specifically are complementary colors: they are at opposite points on the color wheel, meaning they have very high hue contrast. Combined with Pip's inherent high-contrast design, we have a situation where he attracts a lot of visual attention in any scene where he appears, particularly with Harrow. We notice Pip, and we are meant to notice Pip, for reasons that become clear 59 episodes later.
But there are other important reasons for Pip to be green, related to both overall and contextual color associations. Fortunately, one of my favorite YouTubers just did a video about green:
(She's fantastic, by the way. I love her. I have played exactly 1.25 Persona games and have zero (0) investment in the series, but I watch all her content with utter delight.)
The gist of it is that green is a color with profoundly dualistic associations: it can strongly reference both the natural and the unnatural. Green is growth, green is nourishment, green is paradise, green is life. At the same time, green is poison, green is sickness, green is (digital) technology, green is the slow but persistent death of the natural.
Pip's black-and-green leans much more to the "unnatural" side of that dichotomy. Compare with Rayla, the main "green" character:
Rayla is entirely cool greens, and her green and black (actually a very dark blue, compared to Pip's very dark brown) is relatively low-contrast. I'll definitely do a Rayla design analysis at some point, because she's really cool. (As in awesome, not color temperature. But also color temperature.)
Pip's vibrant yellow-green is a color we see very rarely in the series, particularly in Arc 1, but we do see it. And when we see it... boy, do we see it:
Lore-wise, we think of dark magic as purple... but in Arc 1, it gets a lot of that "unnatural" green. Pip is essentially done up in the secondary color scheme of dark magic. I wonder why.
Along those same lines, Pip's design has a couple other interesting features:
First, the slit pupil eyes. There is a bird species with vertical slit pupils like that, but it's an extreme outlier—slit pupils are just not a useful adaptation for the ways birds use vision. This means that they are a very deliberate design choice for Pip. Slit pupils generally evoke cats... or snakes. (I actually think of snakes, first. I actually forgot cats have them until I was looking up whether any birds do.)
Needless to say, there are some strong associations between dark magic and snakes, as seen above. Also this, obviously:
I assume they didn't make the soulfang green because it would be a little too on-the-nose. They do have a green version in the artbook, and it's honestly pretty meh:
Ultimately I think they made a great choice in going with the design that adds the stripe of pink on the head, evoking the snake's mouth/tongue even when you can't directly see it. (That's not really related, but I think it's very cool and wanted to point it out. Back to Pip.)
Secondly, there's the double-oval shape on Pip's crest. Given we just looked at slit pupils, you could call this an eye, or just straight-up point out that it's rather... yonic. Not going to go too deep on that, except to point out its similarity to another rather yonic design:
However, what it really resembles is the same crest/forehead marking on another black-and-brightly-colored "creature":
So to recap: Pip's design is associated with dark magic in like... at least three distinct ways. Pip is ultimately representative of Harrow's relationship with dark magic, which has begun to haunt him throughout s1e2/s1e3. A relationship that was once positive or indulgent, but he now (as death closes in) feels trapped by.
Hmmmmm. Good question.
So yeah, put this in the "Hindsight is 20/20" column opposite my previous "no, they've been committed to the Bird!Harrow thing the entire time" essay.
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*There's also a possible reason for Pip to not be red, specifically, which is the shadowhawk arrow. In the artbook, they describe the shadowhawk arrow's visual effect as having to be "appropriately sinister, but visually distinct from dark magic," which... I don't know that they were super successful with that in the context of Arc 1, but given everything we later know about the Blood Moon and such, it's not completely out of line with Moon magic.
That being said, the visual similarity between the shadowhawk and Pip is definitely intentional, because they're maniacs. Also I guess technically it means they probably didn't need to craft an entire separate "bird" model and animation rig from scratch.
If they wanted Pip to be red and not explicitly associated with Harrow's "death," they could easily have designed around that and done something different for the message arrow.
