By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
The good news is that the next part of the How to Train Your Dragon saga is all coming in almost one fell swoop. Thirteen episodes of the 26 episode season, Dragons: Race of the Edge, is coming to Netflix on June 26th. In the weeks prior, fans can expect a new swarm of toys from Spin Master based on what the DreamWorks panel at WonderCon has revealed. Two ominous dragon names include the Death Song and the Snow Wraith. There’s even a video game being made to feature more!
In what’s spilled to the Internet grapevine, the third season will help bridge further details leading up to the second film, like in how Stoick trained the Skull Crusher. No word was said about the first dragon he trained, namely the Thunderdrum. Also, just how Hiccup made his flight suit will get looked at. And for many fans wondering if this Netflix world is self-contained, thankfully not! Hiccup’s rival, Dagur, is set to return! This panel also revealed that Tuffnut forms some kind of relationship with a chicken and a mysterious dragon rider will be spotted. If that’s Hiccup’s mother spying in at the scene, most likely not. With plenty of tension being developed between episodes, the huge volume release is going to be welcomed.
At the same time, the demise of weekly serials, even for animated products, will no longer have people tuning in for more much like how the 60’s Batman kept viewers glued to the sets. Have viewers become that impatient? Some folks do binge watch, or do marathon viewing sessions with DVD releases of television programs. With Netflix, their idea is to do away with that by getting folks to watch their programs anytime, however little as they want it or a lot. When a few countries are setting “Internet bandwidth” usage caps and penalizing them, the idea seems counterproductive unless those viewers have subscribed to the right data plan or are pumping streaming content through special set-top boxes.
But as some television critics may well wonder, can this new model of pushing out content in one huge lump be good in the long run? Will putting out entire shows in its entirety, like what Netflix has done with Marvel’s Daredevil, forecast the demise of the traditional television watching in a serial format? For some folks, they can moderate what they watch. At least CW’s Supernatural keeps that formula alive, but for some folks who just want to eat up every episode released in one day, they just might call in to work to register a sick day just to watch one of their favourite shows in one go.
For some series, it’s worth it.
Source: Nokki Doki, Berk’s Grapevine
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