DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms
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"So bad, it made me go blind."
— Audrie Greywind
"DreamWorks have made nothing but duds in 2020 and 2021 and now they go against Dean Deblois wishes?"
— Harry Thomas Pictures
DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms is an American computer animated television series produced by DreamWorks Animation, it serves as a follow-up in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. It was released on the streaming services Hulu and Peacock on December 23, 2021.
Plot
The series takes place 1,300 years after the events of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It follows a group of misfit children who are brought by their parents to a massive fissure caused by a comet and discover the truth about dragons and where they've been hiding.
Why It's A Realm of Atrocity
- For starters, it's a soulless rehash of the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, and possibly the worst How to Train Your Dragon series by far. Along with many fans of the original How to Train Your Dragon consider this show to be a disappointment and tragedy. Besides, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World was the perfect conclusion to the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, why would anyone want to ruin the story like this? This series feels extremely detached to the original trilogy, just like Dragon Ball GT.
- It rips off scenes from the original How to Train Your Dragon, including how Tom Kullerson, the protagonist, and Thunder, his dragon, met.
- They also ripped off the scene where Hiccup gave Toothless a fish and he threw it back up so Hiccup could eat it, showing how they ran out of ideas for scenes.
- Even the dragons in this show are knockoffs of the ones in the original How to Train Your Dragon, albeit with minor alterations. Even though some of them may appear cool, some dragons just seem as unoriginal as the plot and the characters. And this includes their names as well.
- Wu and Wei are merely a Hideous Zippleback and a Monstrous Nightmare. Also, good job giving an Asian character the Asian dragon in The Nine Realms.
- Plowhorn is a Gronckle with beetle wings and a rhino horn, which is a dumb name. Who thought Plowhorn was a good name for a dragon?
- They copied the Astrid and Hiccup flight scene, but instead, it's Jun and Tom.
- When the kids were wearing suits in Season 3, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World did the same thing, but with Toothless. And despite them not needing the suits and it happening for no reason, they did it anyway.
- The characters from The Nine Realms are super uninteresting and one-dimensional.
- Tom, the show's main protagonist, is the biggest offender for being uninteresting and stupid. Also, he's too much of a pacifist for his own good, despite the villains trying to harm his friends and even his own mother at one point. This happens on multiple occasions, by the way.
- Speaking of Tom, he also defies physics. Tom can move over big rocks, while D'Angelo, the largest of the group, can't lift a medium-sized rock, mind you.
- Jun is just a rip-off of Astrid, seeing as how both of them became suspicious of the main protagonists and discovered the dragons.
- Also, she becomes more unlikable in Season 4. She gets mad when people don't believe in her made-up stories, and to rub salt into the wound, she cares more about her made-up stories than her dragons, who were sick and DYING.
- D'Angelo is a rip-off of Fishlegs, both of them were scared of the dragons at first, but over time they got used to them. It could be argued that he might be the most forgettable of the kids.
- Jun's mother is even more unlikable than Jun herself. She always bosses Jun around and is always strict towards her. Speaking of which, this also counts as a racist stereotype given that she's an Asian mother. It gets even worse when Jun doesn't even stand up for herself when, in reality, she should because it was the whole plot for one episode.
- Eugene is always trying to get the kids into trouble, and that's super annoying. Also, he wanted to be apart of the dragon club, which contradicts everything he's done in the past. Also, he can be considered a butt monkey, given how none of the adults take him seriously.
- Olivia shows up only once in a while, and sometimes we even see her investigate a rock once in a while. And despite this, she doesn't have any plot relevance; besides that, you could delete some scenes with her and it wouldn't change a thing. She also hasn't had any story-driven episodes since Season 2, so what's the point of her character again? However, she does get focus in Season 5, but that's out of nowhere.
- Buzzsaw, an antagonist from this show, can be considered a rip-off of Dagur the Deranged, who is the former villain from DreamWorks Dragons: The Series, not to mention that he becomes insane in Season 5, just like Dagur. And for a character that is a recurring antagonist, Buzzsaw fails at being one. As of Seasons 4 and 5, he still has no connections between the main characters, and it overall feels incomplete.
- Tom, the show's main protagonist, is the biggest offender for being uninteresting and stupid. Also, he's too much of a pacifist for his own good, despite the villains trying to harm his friends and even his own mother at one point. This happens on multiple occasions, by the way.
- Each season has either 6 episodes (in the case with Seasons 1, 4, 5 and 8) or 7 episodes (in the case with Seasons 2, 3, 6 and 7), which fans of the original How to Train Your Dragon make fun of, joking about how there's just no budget. Many people may think there are too many seasons for a show that premiered in late 2021. However, given that Season 4 of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants only had 6 episodes, while the other seasons had 13, this is not unheard of for DreamWorks animated shows.
- False Advertising: The title says "Dreamworks Dragons: The Nine Realms", yet they didn't hint at any of the nine realms in the show in Season 1 AT ALL. Also, they should've based it more on Norse mythology, but they didn't, sadly.
- There are a lot of filler episodes in the show, which some people dislike. While filler episodes may be acceptable sometimes (not every episode has to be story-driven), these seasons only have about 6-7 episodes.
- There are also many pointless episodes. For example, they gave D'Angelo an episode where they gave him a subplot on chocolate and how he likes to eat it. This also proves how D'Angelo is such a boring character with no personality, and the showrunners don't know what to do with him. And to rub salt in the wound, there's a subplot about sharing his food. Despite this being a kid's show, this feels like something preschoolers would learn about.
- The majority of the time, the humor isn't funny because it's too childish and dumb. Only occasionally can it be a hit-or-miss. For example, Tom thinks Hiccup's name has something to do with his "Viking indigestion." Many How to Train Your Dragon fans consider this joke to be unfunny and disrespectful to the franchise.
- Laughably awful names for several characters for example, in Season 2, one of the characters we meet who loves to cut down trees is named Buzzsaw. We aren't making this up. There is also a dragon species called Magma Breathers, proving how unoriginal this show is. And yes, Flame Thrower is an unoriginal name for a dragon as well.
- In Season 4, there was a dragon, and even if it has a cool design, Yetiwing is still a stupid name.
- Alex called her Featherhide dragon "Feathers", How original.
- This show has a problem with retconning. For example, in Season 2, D'Angelo's dad completely accepts Tom with no prompting at all.
- There was also a scene where D'Angelo brought up Tom's dad and how he left him and his mom, despite never having been brought up before.
- We never got to see Alexandra's presentation, which was also a dumb decision.
- In Season 3, Tom and his friends made new suits entirely off-screen.
- Another moment is when Jun's mom wants to make her go to a business class since she doesn't like her being in a fantasy. Well, guess what? We never saw her go to business class.
- The kids got a sensor that they stole from Project Icarus, but we never knew how they stole it, and it makes no sense at all.
- We never knew how Buzzsaw caught a Timberjack in Season 4.
- It's never explained how D'Angelo knows what dragon nips, a parallel for cat nips, is.
- In Season 2, the dragons now have saddles somehow. They never had them in the first season, so why did they just appear out of nowhere and never be explained? We almost forgot to mention that they never gave Plowhorn a saddle either. Additionally, the dragons don't fly all the time, unlike the dragons from the original How to Train Your Dragon franchise, so what's the point of having them?
- Not to mention that these saddles defy physics as well. When Feathers start to camouflage, the saddle disappears as well, regardless of whether it's strapped above her scales.
- Some characters are pointless to this show, and for a few of them, they have no plot relevance whatsoever.
- The parents aren't focused on at all in this show, given how it's only the kids who are focused on it.
- Jun's brother, Eugene, is a very pointless character and is just a waste of screen time.
- The animation is very awful (Despite that the fact that the CGI animation for this show is done by Wang Film Production's Taiwanese-based computer-animation studio CGCG, Inc. who did better and cinematic CGI for Dreamwork's other and better shows and films such as Abominable and the Invisible City, Trollhunters: Tales of Acardia, 3Below: Tales of Acardia, Wizards: Tales of Acardia, Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans, Dragons: Race to the Edge, Doug Unplugs and Gabby's Dollhouse as well as Lucasfilm Animation and Disney Plus's own CGI-animated shows such as Star Wars:The Bad Batch and Star Wars:The Clone Wars, Disney Channel's Star Wars Resistance and Star Wars:Rebels, Including Netflix's computer-animated 2021 reboot of Mattel's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Universal Picture's Jurassic World:Camp Cretaceous and even Warner Bros. Animation's Lego DC Super Hero Girls:Brain Drain and Lego DC Comics Superheroes:Justice League - Gohtam City Breakout and Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012 - 2017) and all of those shows by CGCG Inc. are both top-notched and awesome and the character designs from their work are absolutely gorgeous compared to this one). There are also many animation errors that have their own dedicated pointer, as well.
- Many models are even recycled from previous How To Train Your Dragon media. They have a dragon named Bubblehorn who is a stolen model, whose name is Relentless Rainbowhorn from Dragons: Rescue Riders, but with minor differences added.
- Speaking of stolen models, they took another model from How to Train Your Dragon 2. But instead, they gave this dragon ears. It gets even funnier when you realize that in this same season, which is Season 5, they reused a model from Race to the Edge, another How to Train Your Dragon animated series.
- There are some stupid decisions that this show makes. An example of this would be how Tom met Thunder, yet there are adults in the multi-billion dollar research facility who couldn't even find one dragon and spent all their time dedicated to stupid rocks.
- Also, two of the scientists couldn't make out what a dragon was, saying that it was a "lizard with wings".
- In one scene, there are hundreds of people because Alex triggers the alarm, yet none of them seem to notice Featherhide, who became visible for a few seconds.
- When a Magma Breather was sick in Season 3, they tried to take its thermometer, WHO IS A LAVA BREATHING DRAGON.To add insult to injury, it's Alex doing this, and she is supposed to be the smart one.
- Tom feels bad for killing a fault ripper in the last episode of Season 3, even though it almost tried to kill his own mother.
- Speaking of Tom killing the Fault Ripper, he actually does not and is somehow alive, even if he fell from a high place.
- Buzzsaw uses a hatchet, despite his name contradicting the whole point. If his name is going to be Buzzsaw, then he should USE an actual Buzzsaw.
- Tom wanted a sword, but he never, and we mean never, uses it to hurt or kill things.
- When they were in a winter biome, they never used the armor they made back in Season 3.
- Speaking of which, they never wore their armor at the end of Season 3 either, when they were fighting a dragon.
- In Season 4, they found Thunder's siblings out of the blue and out of mere coincidence.
- Speaking of which, the elder dragon blamed everything on Tom, despite it not being his fault. For those who don't know, Tom was holding a sword, and the baby shot the sword, but it ended up landing on the elder dragon. It was the baby's fault, not Tom's.
- In Season 4, it took Tom half an episode to know Buzzsaw was the one who kept placing traps so he could get dragons.
- D'angelo's father didn't notice the Gembreaker that was right in front of him. Is he blind or something!?
- While the kids had the Bubblehorn in a cage and tried to take it back home, many Bubblehorns came out of the fissure to start attacking them. While this is happening, they throw the Bubblehorn in a cage like it's a football, run around for 5 minutes straight, and fall on their asses. Is it that hard to free the Bubblehorn from its cage so it can go back to its home?
- None of the people in the base saw the kids trying to stop the bubble that the Bubblehorns formed. And for those wondering spoilers: they freeze the bubble and put an end to the conflict.
- In Season 5, they never cut to the aftermath of the battle like in some seasons, but instead cut to it a week later, even if it should've been resolved.
- After the kids got trapped in the ice realm by Buzzsaw, none of their dragons showed up. Plus, they never defended themselves from Buzzsaw. This can be considered proof that they're pacifists like Tom who can't defend themselves, even though it's called self-defense. Not to mention the dragons are scared of Timberjack when they clearly fought bigger dragons such as the Fault Ripper, the Skrill, the Sky Torture, and much more where that came from. This could also count toward the inconsistencies point we made in point #26.
- Buzzsaw ties the dragons to ropes, and now they're stuck when the fire dragons could've easily burnt through the ropes.
- When Buzzsaw's workers captured the dragon, they never questioned why it existed and were just fine with it. Not to mention the third brother doesn't show up for some reason; what happened to him?
- The scientific research center that takes place in Scandinavia has no equipment or supplies to prepare for the winter.
- Olivia and D'Angelo decided to take a helicopter in blizzard conditions. This scene gets even stupider when they start to crash 20 seconds later and almost die. Can someone tell us how these adults don't know about safety?
- When Thunder got trapped by Buzzsaw, he could've easily broken through it without getting hurt. But later, he does. Why didn't Thunder just destroy the trap when he and Tom were trapped inside?
- It tackles PTSD poorly. In Season 3, the fault ripper has PTSD from the fight, but that's ok! Tom presses his hand against his snout, and suddenly the fault ripper is OK. Seriously? That's not how PTSD works, for crying out loud.
- Whitewashing: In one of the scenes in Season 2, they made a black character white in one scene. What the hell happened to DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms?
- There have been many plotlines that don't get enough focus since the show is too focused on Jun and Tom. Not to mention, some of the adults aren't seen anywhere in Season 3.
- Heck, the adults don't even appear that much in Season 4 besides some cameos, and that's it. Either that, or they're around for "emotional" moments that have no payoff and are never referenced again.
- There were no moments of Thunder and Tom in Season 3, even if they're the main characters of their own respective shows.
- The last episode of Season 5 is the biggest offender because it has way too many plot devices. The episode starts with a blizzard, where none of the adults are prepared; not even they have coats when they're in a billion-dollar research center. Hell, one of the adults has to drive to get coats for everyone.
- Even if he's the main protagonist, Tom has so many character arcs to the point where the other characters rarely get any.
- As mentioned earlier, there are animation errors everywhere, which is unexceptionable for 2021-standereds.
- In one scene, viewers can see Thunder's left eye disappears a bit.
- The monstrous nightmare's horns being gone is an animation error in itself.
- While fireworms are bright, they don't glow through solid objects, ever.
- Tom's mom, Olivia, has an animation where her tongue is floating through her mouth.
- Alexandra's hair ties clip through her shoulder once.
- They were able to catch Magma Breather with two dragons, despite it being a very huge dragon, proving how this show defies physics.
- There is a glitch in Olivia's hair when she is about to hug Tom.
- This may not count as an animation error, but when Tom was taking a selfie with his mother, it turned into landscape mode regardless of him holding it in portrait mode.
- They forgot a Monstrous Nightmare's horns in episode 1 of season 3, despite all of the Monstrous Nightmares having horns. This is the most infamous example of animation errors, proving how lazy they are.
- The rope floating through the dragons' bodies when they are tied up.
- Throughout the series, we keep seeing the show try to put Jun and Tom together, this practice is called ship baiting. What makes this situation even funnier is that fans don't want to see Jun and Tom together. Instead, many fans root for Alexandra and Tom, given how they have far better chemistry and help each other's characters out in tough situations.
- Nonetheless, the show tries to ship bait Alexandra with D'Angelo, despite having no chemistry at all.
- When the kids got mad at Tom for wanting to test his suit out with a monstrous nightmare, they said that the Monstrous Nightmare was an animal and that they shouldn't use animals, which makes them huge hypocrites because they have used animals for their own benefits in the past. Also, Tom is a supposed dragon whisperer who has helped dragons more than his friends, so why are they doing this?
- They used a Magma Breather to destroy a tunnel.
- They were using the Flood Fangs to put out a forest fire.
- They used a Fault Ripper to fight off a Sky Torture.
- After 4 seasons, the main characters meet Buzzsaw, which is just really dumb, and they should've met him way sooner. While yes, there are only 6 and 7 episodes per season, it shouldn't take 26 episodes to meet one of the major recurring antagonists from your show.
- The backgrounds and scenery are forgettable and flat, with nothing to go for, especially in the Hidden World, and yes, the "realms" are run-of-the-mill as well, but those are biomes, not realms. What's worse, we don't even have the opportunity to look more into them. In Season 5, there was a new realm discovered that was a boring and cliché jungle, and it doesn't do anything to set it apart from the rest.
- While it may be unintentional, the night lights are inbred, which is disturbing given how it's a show aimed at kids.
- The season finales are very repetitive, given how they have a boss fight every damn season. In Season 4, they made it have two dragons, but that doesn't change this bull crap that is the season finale.
- Season 4 is the worst of all the seasons as of now; this season was a boring and predictable mess that had nothing to go for, but that's not saying much about this show.
- This entire show was unnecessary. Who asked for another How to Train Your Dragon show? The others are fine, and we'd even say Rescue Riders are alright, but there was no need for another spin-off. The only reason it exists is to be a cash grab, and that's it.
- Furthermore, Rescue Riders isn't even canon, so others shouldn't get so worked up about it for having inconsistencies and the dragons talking.
- In the How to Train Your Dragon wiki, there is a list of inconsistencies in this show.
- Speaking of inconsistencies, the original How to Train Your Dragon was set in 1010 AD, implying that this series takes place in 2310. In spite of that, they have modern technology. However, the original How to Train Your Dragon movies weren't that consistent over the years either.
- Jun is riding a two-headed dragon, but there only needs to be two people to ride a two-headed dragon, not one. Also, it looks super awkward.
- Jun started to yell, even though a Fault Ripper specifically uses its hearing to locate its prey. This can also go into the stupid decision point, as well.
- At the beginning of Season 1, we can see a meteor that was coming to Earth, and it was only mentioned once, but never again as the seasons went on.
- Sometimes, this show doesn't want its own characters to fight back, but this contradicts a lot of things given how we've seen them fight back before. The show doesn't know whether it wants its own characters to defend themselves from villains or not.
- The character models look atrocious and out of place. And to rub salt in the wound, even the concept art looks better than the one they went with. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that the concept art is much, much better than what we got. It's not uncommon to see concept art for a medium that's more interesting than the finished product, but this is a significant downgrade from what we could've gotten.
- Many of the characters do not look like they belong in the How to Train Your Dragon style. The one who looks at least close to the original is Tom, but that's not saying much.
- Jun's mother, May Wong, is the worst offender of having a bad design and not fitting in.
- While most of the titles typically lack creativity (Dragon Club, which is a reference to the movie Fight Club), Race to the Edge stands out with its more interesting episode titles.
- The pacing of the dialogue is strangely off. For instance, there is an awkward pause when one character stops speaking and another begins.
- There are many scenes from DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms that can be considered cliché, especially for a run-of-the-mill kids' show. An example of this could be when, at the beginning of Season 2, Tom has a nightmare about his battle with a Fault Ripper from the Season 1 finale.
- Olivia was lied to again, but Tom and the others worked together to fix the situation, and now she's ok with them having dragons. However, she brought up the fact that they should tell their parents about it, which the kids ignored, and it's never brought up again.
- The entire series is a waste of potential. Putting the How to Train Your Dragon franchise in a different time period could open up new, fresh possibilities, such as new dragons, characters, enemies, and lands to visit. It had the potential to be something special in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, but all of that was ruined by terrible pacing, bland or thoroughly unlikable characters, abysmal animation with errors everywhere, and poor handling of serious situations.
- The dragons have become a pest to the adults and have trampled through their garden. You'd expect Tom to take responsibility, instead he decides to go to another realm. The fact that the dragons and humans have to live together hasn't been touched upon as much as it did in the other DreamWorks Dragons show feels like a wasted opportunity.
- Season 5 felt like an alright send-off to the series and the fact that most plot lines have been resolved besides Buzzsaw, yet they recently made a season 6 for the show, as if the series hasn't been going on long enough.
- There is a MASSIVE plot-hole that is never explain near the end of Season 7, in which that there's a large cage that contains Yman Gunder, a super powerful dragon that could save the world. Its that this moment where after noticing the Stri Class Symbol, Tom says a very odd, confusing and utterly insulting line "Look! The Dragon Symbol's above the Gate! Hiccup must have lock this dragon away, all those years ago", this line implies that Hiccup captured and lock Yman Gunder in a cage and just left it there to rot. When, where, and why the hell would HICCUP, a person that's known to never, ever, EVER harm and/or kill a dragon of any-kind, lock up a dragon in a cage for A THOUSAND YEARS were it would rot and starve for food???
- Believe it or not, this series has a game on Steam. It's called DreamWorks Dragons: Legends of The Nine Realms and it costs $50 (or $70 in Australia). Hell, you can get better games that don't even cost that much and look way better. Speaking of which, here is a list of games that look better than Legends of The Nine Realms and are cheaper:
- In conclusion, all of the later seasons are more predictable and stupid, have inconsistencies and dumb decisions, and much more problems than explained.
Redeeming Qualities
- Spider Wings, despite the unoriginal and laughable name (like all the other names from this terrible show), is actually a pretty cool dragon.
- The characters slightly improve from Season 2, but even then, that's not saying much. And also, all of the seasons are still just mediocre dumpster fires when on Season 5 and counting.
- Also, June is still the same character as she was in Season 1.
- Alexandra is actually an okay character, including her character arc from being shy and scared to be willing to face a dragon.
- In Season 4, Tom actually got mad at Jun for her made-up story, which is a breath of fresh air. But even they somehow manage to mess this up.
- Eugene slightly improves in Season 4 because of his and Alexandra's bond. However, he can still be annoying and unfunny, which is granted for this show.
- The voice acting and direction are fine, with the best one being Tom's voice actor, Jeremy Shada.
- There were some scenes that had impressive lighting that intensified the tension for what the audience was intended to feel, especially when you take the standards for CGI animated shows in hand.
- Season 5 had an end goal and had actual consequences for the first time, which is saying a lot.
- The design of the dragons looks pretty cool and colorful as well.
Reception
DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms was universally panned by both critics and fans of the original How to Train Your Dragon, and it is considered to be one of the worst DreamWorks media and also one of the worst (animated) TV shows of all time. As of March 2023, it has garnered a 5.4/10 on IMDb and a 64% on Google, with many people calling the characters bland, the animation sloppy, and the story very cliché and predictable. While all of this was happening, the creator didn't take kindly to the criticism surrounding DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms, calling the critics and How to Train Your Dragon fans "trolls," as he puts it.
Besides fans trashing DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms, many decided to make fun of it in the form of memes. Many of them mocked it and how awful it was for the reasons above.
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