Editor’s note: The original April 2022 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below, and added what happened afterward.
Fans of Netflix’s animated fantasy series “The Dragon Prince” know a fourth season is coming. What they do not have yet is a premiere date. The latest word from the crew, shared in April 2022, describes a season that is well into animation but not finished.
Netflix ordered the rest of the saga in 2020
Netflix renewed the show in July 2020, during the series’ Comic-Con@Home panel, and ordered four more seasons at once. That carries the story through Season 7, and each of Seasons 4 through 7 is planned at nine episodes, Animation World Network reported.
Co-creator Aaron Ehasz told the panel that Netflix had committed to the “entire saga,” Inverse reported. The creators had laid out a seven-season plan at Comic-Con a year earlier, and the show names each season as a book. Season 4 is Book Four, titled Earth.
Ehasz, a former head writer on “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” created the series with Justin Richmond, who directed the video game “Uncharted 3.” Their studio, Wonderstorm, makes the show, and Bardel Entertainment handles the animation.
Where production stands this spring
The wait has been long. In February 2021 the creators acknowledged that fans were frustrated by the lack of news and pointed to delays caused by the pandemic. By December 2021 they said all nine scripts were written, the voice cast had recorded the season, and animation was underway. They added that the season would most likely wrap in late 2022 at the earliest, according to a timeline kept by What’s on Netflix.
The April 2022 update, from the show’s crew, went into more detail:
- All scripts are written and all dialogue is recorded.
- Every storyboard and animatic is done.
- Six of the nine episodes are animation-complete.
- Four are in lighting, rendering and compositing, and two are in post-production for music and sound.
The story threads waiting to be picked up
Season 3 closed with Callum and Rayla finally admitting how they feel about each other. Claudia brought her father, Viren, back to life after his fall from a mountaintop, and the season ended with a huge cocoon on a cave wall, tied to the mystery of the elf Aaravos. Rayla still has to recover Viren’s coins, which hold the trapped souls of Moonshadow Elves, What’s on Netflix noted in its recap.
For fans who cannot wait, Wonderstorm has added to the story in other formats. “Through the Moon,” a graphic novel from Scholastic, is set between Seasons 3 and 4 and counts as canon. Wonderstorm also licensed a tabletop role-playing game, “Tales of Xadia,” to Fandom, AWN reported when the renewal was announced.
What happened next
Netflix revealed the date at New York Comic Con in October 2022. Ehasz and Richmond confirmed that all nine episodes of Season 4 would stream on Nov. 3, 2022, as the first season of a new arc called “Mystery of Aaravos,” AWN reported.
Season 5 had been scheduled for July 27, 2023, but it went live five days early during Wonderstorm’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, the studio said on the show’s official site. Season 6 followed in full on July 26, 2024, What’s on Netflix reported.
Season 7, titled “Dark,” was set for Dec. 19, 2024, as the end of the saga. Before it premiered, Ehasz said Netflix had not confirmed a third arc, and Netflix declined to comment on an eighth season, What’s on Netflix reported.
