The Dragon King: Kickstarter is Now Live!

The Dragon King, a proposed sequel to the Netflix series The Dragon Prince, just launched its Kickstarter campaign. As of the morning of the launch, September 26th, the launch page had accumulated over 16 thousand followers. At the time of writing, the goal of $250,000 is already over twenty percent funded and rising rapidly as I type, and this is only within an hour of launch.

There are several support tiers within the Kickstarter which include merch bonuses and virtual tickets to the future online premiere viewing with cast and creators.

One might be wondering why a critically acclaimed Netflix series with a 100% Tomatometer ranking for all seven seasons of the show overall and an 88% average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes would need to kickstart for a continuation. It would seem that Netflix was hesitant to greenlight more seasons of what CBR once called "the Most Diverse Fantasy Series on TV." Despite not being greenlit right away by Netflix, The Dragon Prince's creators have the ability to move forward with other avenues of production since Wonderstorm, the studio, owns the IP and not Netflix.

Fast forward to the Kickstarter campaign, announced at San Diego Comic Con back in July. The panel for The Dragon Prince had teased that there would be news and a surprise new cast member. Fans were hopeful for a renewal from Netflix, but were met with a Kickstarter campaign for the continuation of the show into a new series, The Dragon King.

As the ending of the seventh season of The Dragon Prince implied, there will be a seven year timeskip from the ending of the original show to the start of The Dragon King. This means new character designs, a cast of mostly adults, and the benefit of creative freedom to go beyond the original Y7 rating. Also, the finale of the seventh season left a lot open within the world of Xadia. Many character arcs have progressed, but haven't been resolved. The main antagonist, Aaravos, seems to have scored a win and is slated to be back after seven years in the cosmos, leaving our heroes in a world without Archdragons to combat him- with the exception of the new dragon king, Zym. There's plenty of room and a demand for a continuation of the storyline.

Not to gloss over who the surprise guest star was- Liam O'Brien (Critical Role) joined Jack de Sena (The Dragon Prince, Avatar: The Last Airbender) and Dante Basco (The Dragon Prince, Avatar: The Last Airbender) onstage with The Dragon Prince's co-creators Aaron Ehasz (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and Justin Richmond (Uncharted). O'Brien is set to voice a new character in The Dragon King, whose identity is at this moment a surprise, except that they will be some form of an antagonist in the new landscape of the story.

The choice to bring O'Brien along makes a lot of both fandom and business sense given how successful Critical Role's Kickstarter was. The initial goal for a Critical Role animated series of the group's first campaign was $750,000, but they surpassed it by over ten times the original goal, raising over $11.3 million and breaking Kickstarter records. With a Kickstarter veteran on their team who's fund raised before for a fantasy animated show, The Dragon King may have success taking off on its own.

The original demographic for The Dragon Prince skewed younger than for Critical Role, but perhaps the fandoms can merge together with the older, more mature tone The Dragon King seems it will take, along with the assurance from the Kickstarter page itself that "The Dragon King is an ALL NEW story that welcomes an all new audience."

As time goes on, we look forward to more information about The Dragon King and its progress.