Those tidbits are (in no particular order):

–Alfred Molina’s character (one of the villains in Race to the Edge) is named Vigo (if that’s how it’s spelled).

–A particularly BIG one here: Heather will return in Race to the Edge (with Mae Whitman set to reprise that role).

–Heather will have her own dragon in Race to the Edge. The species of the dragon is unknown at this time, but it does have a name: Windshear.

–Expect Heather to be more heavily involved in Race to the Edge. Asides from her dragon, she will also have a major storyline that will see her confronting another fan-favorite character: Dagur the Deranged!

–As Race to the Edge is further down the timeline than previous seasons, expect plenty of easter eggs and plotlines that build towards How to Train Your Dragon 2. In particular, they mentioned the love triangle between Snotlout, Fishlegs, and Ruffnut and how that will come to be.

–This isn’t about Race to the Edge per say, but they did talk about how far they have come since Riders of Berk. When they started Riders of Berk, Sloan admitted that it was tough ride up since he and Brown were not only new to the How to Train Your Dragon universe, but the CG animation “wasn’t there yet”. They then began to praise the level of animation in Race to the Edge. They particularly mention the more life-like physics of elements like water interaction.

–Brown and Sloan elaborated that while they may not be a laugh-a-minute sitcom, they are always careful to balance out the drama with the humor. Furthermore, it was even more important that the humor is character-based. It’s not random hijinks, as it’s always coming from the personalities of the characters and their interactions.

–When they get high-profile stars to come on to the show, it’s usually because these actors wanted to do this show. Both Alfred Molina and Adelaide Kane have both expressed interest in wanting to be a part of this show.

–This one was interesting: even though it was a TV series (which normally meant turning over the characters to a set of TV actors), Jay Baruchel wasn’t willing to let that happen. As far as he was concerned, the role of Hiccup was his and he very much owns it.

–Touching back on Heather, Brown says that she becomes a major part of the Dragon Riders in Race to the Edge. This essentially confirms that Heather will join the Riders on their journeys throughout the season.

–They also confirm that David Tennent will return as Spitelout (Snotlout’s dad). Also returning is Zack Pearlman as the TV voice for Snoutlout. No word on whether or not Andree Vermeulen will return as the TV voice for Ruffnut.

–According to Kelly Kulchak, the aim for all of their Netflix shows is to do ‘cable-level’ animation. She mentions the high-end production values of shows like Game of Thrones and wanting to give all of their shows the same kind of quality that you would expect from shows of that caliber.

–Near the end, both Brown and Sloan do reiterate that the focal point of the show (and the entire franchise as a whole) is Hiccup and Toothless. It’s their relationship that is always the centerpiece of the franchise.

–There’s apparently a “ton of cool stuff” that can’t be talked about yet. Kelly even mentions that there may be something at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con (which sounds very exciting).

By this point, it’s fairly obvious that for all the information that we have on Race to the Edge, there is still more to come. As such, we will keep you updated when more details come our way.

Dragons: Race to the Edge will premiere exclusively for Netflix on June 26. Be sure to check out The DRAGONS TV Recap series here (Parts 1 and 2 of Defenders of Berk will be out next week!).

EDIT: According to the ‘Cast & Crew’ info on the official website, Andree Vermeulen will reprise her role as the TV voice of Ruffnut.

When Hiccup and Toothless discover a mysterious ancient artifact that unlocks the locations of all new dragon, they and the rest of the Dragons Riders leave Berk and build their own amazing camp on a remote island so they can go on dragon-finding journeys. Taking place a year before the events of "How to Train You Dragon 2" this series has all-new action-packed adventures.

Spoiler:

Do you think that now there’s a new series and people have known the show for the last two or three years and now you’re moving to Netflix, do you think there are now new direction you can take the show for the slightly different audience?

Doug: The show that is going on Netflix will be taking the show in a completely new direction in that Hiccup and the gang are going to be away from Berk and on their own for the first time. It’s sort of like they’re going away to college. They’re going to explore away from the archipelago and find new dragons, and have to solve problems without Stoick, Gobber, Gothi, and the people they’ve relied on in the past. As 19- and 20-year-olds, they will face and solve problems a little differently than they have in the past. They aren’t kids anymore, so it definitely will be different.

Art: And they develop deeper relationships because of that not only with each other but with their dragons, just due to the fact that they are on their own. They have what they call the “Dragon’s Edge” that they’ve built in a sort of an outpost. They’re exploring and they’re out there, and they’re meeting all sorts of new dragons, solving problems on their own, and forging new relationships.

Speaking of relationships, will we get to see more of the other characters, like Astrid, Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, and their relationships with their dragons?

Art: Definitely. Just because there isn’t enough time, in the movies, it’s mostly Hiccup, Astrid, Toothless, and Stoick: that’s your core. What’s great about the TV show is we get to explore everybody. We have episodes dedicated to Fishlegs and Meatlug, or dedicated twins episodes. We do interesting pairings like Astrid and Tuffnut. We get to play around in that sandbox which is really exciting and fun for the fans.

You have a lot of great characters from the first film and the first two seasons, and it seems like you’re going to introduce a ton of new characters, both villains and dragons. What’s the balance between keeping the older characters as part of the series, and how will they connect to the new characters?

Doug: In the beginning, you’ll see mostly the characters that you’re familiar with—aged up a little bit. And as the show goes on, you’ll start to see new villains emerge, you’ll see new tribes of people emerge. But it always comes back to our core characters and the stories will always going to revolve around them. It’s just they may just have relationships with new characters you haven’t seen in the past more often.

Art: There are a couple characters—like Heather, who was in the first season—she comes back and plays a big role in the upcoming seasons. She becomes part of the team. Her whole storyline is interesting in how it evolves and what you find about her history. And then we have Gustov who’s a littler kid, about 12 in the first two seasons, who comes back from time to time. He’s now the age that the kids were in the first movie. He rides his own dragon, Fanghook, and he’s pretty funny. So we get to do that. As Doug was saying, the other characters are mainly introduced as bad guys and new tribes of people.

Right, like Dagur and Alvin? Will we see more of them? Will they be part of the new set of villains?

Doug: You’ll see Dagur. Alvin not so much, but Dagur is a huge, huge part of this new season.

That’s great, everyone loves him!

Art: Yeah, he’s so funny, man. David Faustino is hilarious. When you see him in the first episode, he’s been lifting weights, getting buffed up, getting tattoos. He’s been in prison for the last three years, so he’s much more wound up and crazy than ever.

So there’s a bit of a time gap between Defenders and now?

Doug: Yeah, our series begins a year and a half before the second movie begins, so it’s about three and half years after the dragon series.

Art: We call it the prequel to the sequel. Because the second movie jumped ahead all these years, we’re really showing how things got that way. We’re setting up the flight suit, showing how that was invented. The dragonblade. How Stoick got his dragon, and how Gobber got his dragon. We get to have Stoick, which is great. It makes that relationship really powerful, because you know when you’re watching these scenes with Hiccup and his father based on the second movie that you know what happens?

Will we get to see new crazy Hiccup inventions, and how he builds up the village with the new dragon buildings?

Doug: You will see a lot of cool stuff at Dragon’s Edge, where they end up living for the series. At this point, we’re not really sure if we’re going to deal with the inventions from the movie or how they came to be. But there’s always a possibility, we’re not really sure.

Art: But you do go back to Berk from time to time, like the beginning of the series. You will see Berk stuff changing from time to time.

What’s really special about this series is it’s one of the very few CGI animated TV series out there, which means you have to deal with constantly changing technology. How much has the technology influenced the series? Is there anything you can do now that you couldn’t have done in the previous series?

Doug: Absolutely. We are now able to do water interaction, which we couldn’t have done in the first two years. We can now do crowds and herds of dragons, which we couldn’t do in the first couple of seasons. Technology moves so quickly. If you look at the show now and put it up against the show from two or three years ago, there’s just no comparison. It looks so much closer to the movie than it once did, it’s amazing.

Art: And a huge amount of credit goes to David Jones, who is our visual effects supervisor. He loves to be challenged, he loves to create new things. He always jokingly says to us “keep writing scripts that we can’t make” so that we can push the technology. He’s amazing. The look of the first two seasons was really good, but now it blows it away.

Doug: It’s not even a comparison. We were tasked with giving the show a new look, a more cinematic look. And they’ve really done that, and gone way beyond their call of duty.

Art: And the animators have gotten so much better too. They know the characters so well. For the first couple of seasons, we were scrambling a lot because it was such a huge undertaking.

Are we going to see more continuing episodes, or two-part episodes?

Art: We have a number of two-parters—those are always fun. Some stories just lend themselves to that. We’ll be breaking a story and we’ll go, “you know what, this really feels like there’s a lot to tell here, we should do it in two.” I would say, of the 26, we have maybe 4 two-parters: the opening two-part episodes and the closing two-part episodes and then one or two others in the middle somewhere.

Doug: One thing that’s great about Netflix is that because of the way Netflix is viewed, we’re able to lean into more the continuous serialization. Although we do try to have what we call “standalone episodes”—for every five episodes, we try to have three of them that are standalone, meaning you could come in not knowing anything, and it’s a new dragon or that sort of thing.

The Dragon Eye is a mysterious artifact with special powers that Hiccup and the dragon riders use to explore new lands. Each week the Dragon Eye will reveal a new dragon for the riders to discover.

Despite being on Netlflix, the seasons have a pretty typical (as far as broadcast and cable) number of episodes (26 episodes). They will both be split into 13-episode increments that will be released every 6 months.