First off, to clarify--Season 5 was a letdown to me, but halfway through Season 6, it seemed to figure itself out again, and now I'm back on board and feeling it. But I'm still kinda...cautious about whether it can stick the landing in Season 7

But the thing I came in here to rant about is specifically, Aaravos's backstory which he relays to Claudia as the reason he turned evil. And I hope, I HOPE, he is lying through his teeth, because that evil origin story does not make sense to me

Like...could that be a villain's backstory? That their beloved only child was given, effectively, a death sentence because she ignorantly broke a taboo and the bureaucracy of his people was adamant that this was unforgivable? Absolutely.

But it does not feel like the backstory for THIS villain. Aaravos's behavior, the choices he's made, the attitude with which he's moved his pieces over the chessboard, do not feel to me like those of a villain motivated by grief and love. Aaravos does not strike me as someone who has ever loved anyone in his long life.

This backstory feels like it was dreamed up by a fanfic writer who wanted to give him a sympathetic backstory so they could paint him as tragic and justified and not truly evil.

And, in that context...I HOPE he is lying, because his backstory felt perfectly tailored to manipulate Claudia personally

Also, this backstory has a big ol' plot hole. His daughter supposedly was executed for teaching magic to humans. Presumably dark magic, because that was understood to be the only type of magic humans could use.

But we ALSO know that Aaravos was supposedly the one who taught dark magic to humans in earnest, and is the reason they learned enough to do something with it.

So like...it doesn't make sense that "daughter gets caught within moments of teaching her friend dark magic while they're playing" so then he gets vengeance by spending, presumably, years passing along this knowledge to humans without getting caught once??

Anyway, that's my rant

I was never really happy about the magic/dark magic thing either. It felt like "the humans wouldn't stay in their lane, so now we get to punish them forever"

"How dare the humans get mad at us for exploiting a power balance in our favor. Those dicks."

Yeah, I admit it is a weird setup. But the show doesn’t avoid pointing out that the situation is shitty and unfair. also, the villain gave humans dark magic to further his own ends, and Calum, who is shown to be not particularly special or unique, has been able to learn primal magic, a feat that everyone assumed humans couldn’t do

Which means it’s quite likely that the villainand other powerful elveshas/had a vested interest in feeding the most terrible type of magic to humans, specifically to keep the animosity going

(That wasn’t meant to be a strikethrough, but an aside)

And concealed humans’ ability to use primal magic

He’s only just starting to show his hand, but it seems he’s been manipulating both sides

Oh, yeah, no, I didn't know about Calum, that happened after the whole backstory thing and I tapped out, only to have a fan of the show go "um actually no they're right to oppress the humans for learning dark magic BECAUSE IT'S DARK" and thank you for providing a take that actually made sense, I might wanna watch the rest of it now

It was that and the "If I look at characters based on designs can I tell who's gay" thing which is a trope I'm exhausted by in animation

That is....a hell of a take :\ yeah no, the show definitely manages to hold both truths that "dark magic is dark because it is uniquely harmful and dangerous" and "the elves/dragons were dicks for treating humans the way they did."

I can't say the show is always the best or most elegant in saying what it's trying to say. Its biggest flaw, imho, is a world that feels overbuilt and sometimes gets in the way of its own story. But at its best, I enjoy its characters and it doesn't shy away from them grappling with the heavy moral quandaries that the world is built on.

And of course, there's still one season left and a lot of questions remain unanswered. So depending on how everything falls out, I reserve the right to be annoyed at the answers. But it's still possible they'll stick the landing.

It's still a fun ride, though, and it's something my dad and I can both agree on