Dragon Striker Season 2 Is A Part of Disney Show's Grand Plan - But It's Not a Guarantee, Says Creator Charles Lefebvre: 'We Don't Have Any Control of How It's Going To Be Taken By Audiences'

Dragon Striker, the new sports fantasy series from Disney, premiered this month with a story its creators have planned to run across multiple seasons. The animated show follows a farm boy named Key, who enrolls at a magic academy to master Gorotama, a soccer-like game powered by supernatural abilities. Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre, the two animators who created it, already know how Key’s story is meant to end. Whether they get the chance to tell all of it is a separate question.

Dos Santos and Lefebvre recently discussed the show’s future, and they revealed a five-season plan for its central story. The creators stopped short of promising the plan will play out in full. A second season, and everything after it, depends on how viewers respond to the first. Disney remains silent on a renewal, so the road to five seasons starts with the audience.

Dos Santos, who also serves as the show’s executive producer, told NexusPointNews that the team plotted Key’s journey with a clear ending in mind, one they expect to reach in "around 5 seasons":

"We have an end of this story. We think about around 5 seasons. Obviously, the audience will decide, but if we could do whatever we want, we thought the story would unfold in 5 seasons.

Santos went on to hint at the possibility of the show getting spinoffs based on interesting side characters, noting that in Dragon Striker, "the universe is very wide."

After that, you know, the universe is very wide, and I think if people like the show and like the universe, we can do a lot of other stories because we worked a lot on the mythology, the universe, and a lot of side characters who have whole backstories too. The story of Key and the knights can end in 5 seasons, but you know, there is more.

The creators also took the series on the road before its debut, with stops at fan events that included a presentation in Chicago. Dos Santos told Popped that those early screenings help the team see which characters click with viewers, and he wants to learn "what characters are the favorites and why." 

"We just started to present the project to a couple of events. We were in Chicago this weekend to to present the project, and that's always amazing to have the first feedbacks, and it helps a lot to work on the following seasons and the following stories. What will be super interesting, I think, is to start to understand what characters are the favorites and why, because when you create something, you can guess but  most of the time I'm wrong about... 'This character is going to be famous and he's not and this one, we don't know why but has all the attention.' So yeah, I'm looking forward to that."

Lefebvre, who directed the series, also highlighted how important the audience is in the grand scheme of things, noting that how fans receive the show is something they "don’t have any control of":

"Yeah, it’s like the part we don’t have any control of, how it’s going to be taken by the audience, so it’s true. When we went to Chicago this weekend, it’s really interesting to feel the audience in a theater and you feel you understand when the audience flips, switches... Now, we hope the world will enjoy it and give us the biggest opportunity to have a following season and keep going with this project, because we have a lot of stories still to tell. So, we hope."

Since Dos Santos shared those thoughts, the series has earned a strong audience reception, making their dream of a multi-season run highly likely. Dragon Striker reached Disney XD on Tuesday, June 9, then arrived on Disney+ and Hulu the next day and on Disney Channel on June 12. The French studio La Chouette Compagnie animated the series with Disney Television Animation. Disney positioned the show as its first original anime-style series, a different direction from its usual cartoons.

Will Dragon Striker Earn a Second Season?

A second season is not a sure thing, and the creators say so plainly. Disney rarely commits to renewals this early, and the series is barely a week old. The decision will likely turn on how many people stream Dragon Striker on Disney+ and watch on Disney Channel over the next few weeks. Anime fandoms can start small and then swell fast, so the first wave of numbers may not tell the full story. The timing works in the show’s favor, since it arrived during a World Cup summer, when soccer dominates global attention and a magic-soccer anime offers an easy pitch to new viewers.

The magic system runs deeper than the first season showed. Dos Santos broke down the basics of a player’s Tama to Blake & Spencer, then flagged one piece the team held back for now, promising "that will come":

"We created this idea that around 20% of the population around the age of six came up with a power or Tama, which is really linked to their emotions, their dreams. So it can be anything. I think my biggest inspiration on that was probably the show, ‘Misfits.’ It’s crazy good and that was the idea. And around that, we have also the crystals that brings a lot of depth and power to the Tama system. So, we won’t dive that much into the crystals in the first season, but that will come."

To truly see the Tama system reach its full potential, a second season is a must. The chances of this happening aren’t slim at all as Dragon Striker recently hit No. 1 on the Disney+ daily chart of the most-watched series in the United States. Fans clearly love it, which is a prerequisite for a renewal per the creators' own words. 

Season 2 would allow Disney to explore the Tama system further and bring Dos Santos' broader vision to the screen. We have only glimpsed Key's true potential, most notably in the Season 1 finale, where he wowed fans by showcasing the dragon form of his Tama during the Gorotama tournament. The season could also explore the backstory of Key's mother further. Season 1 revealed that her Dragon Tama caused destruction at Kal Asterock, but it's a story thread that could be expanded on in Season 2. The romance between Odward and Casper is another captivating element of Dragon Striker that fans adore, which could be explored further in a follow-up season.