Well this is an unexpected series? Set more than a thousand years after the various movies and TV-shows that make up the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, comes Dragons: The Nine Realms. Set in present day, our main character is precocious teen Tom Kullersen (Jeremy Shada) who relocates with his scientist mother (Julia Stiles) to the ICARIS research station investigating the Kullersen Fissure which holds a secret no one has guessed: a pathway to a world of dragons. Obviously a modern interpretation of a very familiar character to the franchise, Tom will be the one to discover a dragon and unearth a whole new world. Or, to be more precise, a much older one.
The two-part opener sets up Tom’s ability to stumble into trouble and introduces a handful of other kids who will eventually make up the core group of new dragon riders (at least that’s what the opening credits seems to suggest). We also see Tom’s anti-corporate sentiment, realizing he needs to keep the dragon he discovers secret from the corporation funding the outpost (despite the fact the discovery could be exactly the kind of breakthrough his mother needs). The other character that gets introduced, but won’t be named until later in the series, is the show’s primary dragon which looks familiar enough to be from the lineage of Toothless and the Light Fury introduced in the final How to Train Your Dragon film. The concept is certainly far removed from the original movie, but I am curious to see the other characters introduced to the dragons, and how it may take advantage of a modern world in their tale.
