Race to the Edge Talk: 5x05 "A Matter of Perspective"

Once again, I forgot that Adelaide Kane was in this show until her character began speaking. I don't know how I keep forgetting that considering she's one of my favorite actresses.

At the start of the episode, Astrid asks Hiccup why he's hiding something, but she's also confident that he'll tell her what's up when the time is right. I love how much trust they have in each other. It's rare to see something like that play out, with one character not very worried about another keeping a secret. It was a small moment, but it was one I really appreciated between them. That one moment alone does a lot for reminding me why I love their dynamics as a couple.

The main events of the story center around the Eruptodon getting old and preparing to die. That means they have to send him off to his final resting place.

The moment in this episode where Hiccup says they have to stay away from dragon culture like that was an amusing one when you consider that this is a show about vikings. Sure, the vikings in this franchise never leave their archipelago, but it's still a little ironic.

It was an interesting choice for Hiccup to use the word 'culture' too, since we never think of real world animals as having cultures. That's an acknowledgement that the dragons are sentient, at least to a certain extent. That's pretty obvious after the movies and TV shows of course, but that word use still caught my attention.

Later in the episode, Fishlegs gets excited on Vanaheim because he discovers evidence that dragons can understand abstract thought. That seems like something that it would have been easy to assume earlier, especially with Hiccup acknowledging that they have a culture just a day earlier. I suppose there's a philosophical debate to be had about whether beings can have a culture without understanding abstract thought, but my own thought process would be that such a thing would be near impossible.

This episode also introduces the sentinel dragons who guard Vanaheim. It's quite interesting to think that an entire species of dragon evolved in order to protect the final resting place of other species of dragons. What happens to the sentinels when they die is never answered here either, and they don't seem to have a final resting place on the island when the characters are talking about what dragon tombs they've found (unless I missed something). That's an interesting detail to me.

I like how this episode explored the idea of dragon culture and just how complex dragons are. It isn't like the idea was thoroughly explored, but it still raised some interesting things to think about, which isn't too shabby for a less than 25 minute episode of a show that's typically quite episodic. I enjoyed it.