We figured we had seen the last of Dreamworks’ How To Train Your Dragon series, given that cow had been milked until it was a skeleton. After three movies, multiple TV shows and a few holiday specials, the story had gone far enough to show Hiccup and Astrid’s kids, and his reunion with Toothless as a bearded thirtysomething. That’s as far as you can take it, right?
Think again. Dreamworks kicked the time machine into overdrive to produce Dragons: The Nine Realms, a new series that takes place in the present day.
“How does that work?” you might think. “There are no dragons here, the last time I checked.” Yeah, as far as you know. Turns out they’ve been hiding all this time in a cavern deep beneath the Earth, which is weird behavior for creatures that like to fly, but Dreamworks really really wanted this to happen, so…just accept it.
The hidden Dragon’s Cove remained undiscovered until recently, when an earthquake produced a fissure that provided a pathway in a remote location. Eager to explore the new discovery, a team of scientists set up a research facility near the miles-deep crack, and brought their families with them. It’s their children that discover the existence of dragons and become the first to fly them since Viking times.
Don’t bother counting how much time must have passed between the last Hiccup-centered HTTYD tale and now, because Dreamworks did it for you: they say 1,300 years of time has passed. One would think nearly a millennium and a half would be enough time to wipe Toothless’ gene pool off the map, but our hero, introduced in the short teaser below, gets to ride a black and white mix. It’s clearly a Night Fury/White Fury hybrid, marking it as Toothless’ descendant. Also, they’ve never established how long dragons live. This mythic lizard could be his son.
Dragons: The Hidden Realm premieres on both Hulu and Peacock December 23. We’d say this is the last series, but…probably not.
