By Amanda Steele
The Dragon Prince panel was a treat for fans of the new series which is already gaining a popular following and large fandom presence online. The line to get into the panel was long and seats filled all the way up. Kids and teens could be seen in some pretty amazing cosplay from the show, too. Which is pretty impressive since it’s only been out f or a few weeks.
The panel included creators and voice actors from the series. The full line-up was Aaron Ehasz (Co-Creator) Justin Richmond (Co-Creator) Giancarlo Volpe (Executive Producer), Paula Burrows (voice actress for Rayla), and Jack de Sena (voice actor for Callum). The panel was hosted by Danika Harrod, Head of Community Development.
The panel portion was fairly short, giving fans time to ask a lot of questions.
To start the panel off, Aaron Ehasz talked about the production process of the show and its development, noting that “The Dragon Prince has been a labor of love.” He talked about how many people involved in the project believe strongly in the story and started working on it long before they had a production company.
What the panellists really focused on in this panel was the community and fandom that has already started to grow and thrive. According to Aaron, the fandom of the show is always on the minds of the creators and the cast.
“Community is super important to us. We think of this show as a shared thing… we are approaching it as a conversation, as something we are hopefully building together.”
All of the panellists also noted how positive the community of the show has been. Ehasz continued, “The outpouring of support is just absolutely incredible.”
Paula Burrows talked about how the cast and creators love the fan art.
“The fan art has been the most exciting thing for me. There’s so many new ideas. In the background we are all sending them to each other.”
The audience was definitely enjoying how supportive the cast and creators are of the fans. The audience cheered and clapped and was just all around excited to find that the show makers were so interested in fan works.
The biggest moment of the panel was when they announced that season 2 of the series will be coming to Netflix in 2019:
https://twitter.com/NXOnNetflix/status/1048271718597283840
After the announcement fans began asking their questions. One of the best answers of the Q & A session came from Ehasz once again. One fan talked about how much they appreciated the effort the show went to in portraying a hard of hearing character.
To which he responded,
“Our goal is to reach a wide and diverse audience….you look for characters who are something different and original. We think about our audience respectfully. We want more of our audience to see themselves reflected in the storyline. A character like Amaya is partially about a deaf child who can say that’s someone like me…It’s also about all the other kids seeing that… developing empathy for people who are different from themselves.”
We also learned that fans can expect to see new intelligent, humanoid creatures in the second season.
Fans of the show can rest easy knowing the cast and creators have a deep respect for the story as well as the fans, and it sounds like the show has many great things in store!
