Pacing has always been a problem for Dragons Rising.
Whether just within episodes, or across the larger season, it has a habbit of stupidly underthought cuts and just smashing whatever storyline wherever. And this season is perhaps the worst about it thus far. Everything feels very disconnected. I rarely ever felt like we cut for a real reason.
But on a larger scale season 4 part 1 just has nothing to do with the main plot. Our main villain for this section is the reheated leftovers of season 1, a character who helped start our main plot, but is now entirely disconnected with anything Ras has going on.
This comes immediately after last season whose main antagonist was thunderfang, who i have only grown to love more over time because of how cartoonishly villainous he is while simultaneously being so inept. It's marvelous. He was also a side plot entirely disconnected from anything Ras was doing who just sort of popped up for the ninja to deal with and then hasn't mattered since. He gets rehashed immediately after his usage in part one to become the villain again in part two because... I don't really know why. This after season 2 part 2 which, while beloved, I would argue also had very little going on to progress the main plot. Ras just straight up gets pretty much nothing done. The point is we have been stuck for at least 3 full parts in various reused roundabouts with barely any movement on the main plot.
And this got me thinking- maybe Dragons Rising's whole "one big interconnected plot" is holding it back a bit. Imagine if each of these parts were framed like the original series, as largely complete seasonal plots on their own which slowly build on the characters over time, and mainly tangential actions linking events together until you get to a finale season like 9 or 15. If thunderfang were a self contained villain like morro or nadakhan, he certainly wouldn't feel like such a waste of space. It wouldn't feel like such a cul de sac because there would be so little expectation for him to do anything more. Same with s4p1. Everyone getting stranded in strange realms as a standalone concept is a fun one off season, instead of just everyone getting side tracked on their way home after a very troubling event which they should realize means something bigger is going down.
Now, maybe all these pieces that are currently not related are interconnected in a larger plan, later in the show that we haven't gotten to yet, but if they are going to converge, it's going to be in the finale, which is something you could easily do in an epic final season like crystalized if you really wanted. I think if the show hadn't sold itself on its "one story" quality, we'd have the chance for each season to have it's own expectations set, for each threat to effectively have a sense of closure. Ras as a reappearing threat like Garmadon in the early days of the show would be fun. Everytime his plan shifts it would feel less like him getting set back and not knowing what he's doing, and more just "what he's up to this time".
You can organically introduce a source icon in each season somehow, maybe some we don't know are icons. Then when the finale season hits, it feels like a surprise culmination of a bunch of pieces coming together rather than where we are now with the main plot feeling like it just keeps getting pushed onto the back burner. You get the merge season, the imperium season, the cult season, the tournament season, the thunderfang season. Each of them have character arcs which roll over, and small plot things to keep things connected, but each feel like a seperate distinct adventure with an identifiable theme.
There would be no expectation to set the stakes for the next season at the end of the previous one, meaning seasons would feel more like they actually start and end. Why do we need the Sora’s parents cliffhanger? Why not let this section just end with our characters getting a win with some good wholesome vibes? Make that an inciting incident in part two like it should be. Our team would feel united and accomplished because they have identifiable victories and adventures under their belt. You can wave characters off for a season more easily like they did in the original show. Nya is helping with monastery repairs this season. Wyldfyre is on a romantic vacation with Roby in this one. No further explanation needed, and all they missed is just a one off adventure. If every season both starts and ends at a sort of satus quo, you also get a greater sense of the team dynamic (something we're struggling with). There's an illusion of downtime, that the characters have lives off screen, and that the plot isn't the whole of their life.
And then, more and more plot threads begin continuing through seasons as the show goes on, and by the time we end it feels subtly built up to rather than us spinning our wheels for like 100 episodes all the while going nowhere. End on a 2 season Ras plot like we had with Harumi, and it will hit ridiculously hard, because the switch to that continuous story is used specifically where it needs to be.
I just think the framing of these side stories as the end goal itself would benefit the show greatly, and you can only really do that with the structure of the original run.
