Move over, Star Wars. A How to Train Your Dragon holiday special is coming to town. DreamWorks Animation has announced that a new animated half-hour holiday special called How to Train Your Dragon Homecoming will premiere on NBC on December 3rd at 8:30pm ET/PT. After that, How to Train Your Dragon Homecoming will be available to watch on Hulu beginning December 5th.

The story takes place 10 years after the events of the trilogy-concluding How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, but before the emotional epilogue of that movie. Jay Baruchel’s Hiccup, America Ferrera’s Astrid, Gerard Butler’s Stoick, Craig Ferguson’s Gobber, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s Fishlegs all return, and the story is officially described as follows:

Taking place just before the emotional epilogue from the last installment of the film trilogy – and 10 years after the end of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” – “How to Train Your Dragon Homecoming” opens with Hiccup and Toothless sharing stories of their special relationship with their respective families as they prepare for the Snoggletog Festival.

 

When it becomes clear that the new generation of Vikings doesn’t remember the bond between dragon and human, Hiccup makes a plan to celebrate dragons with a grand holiday pageant. This heartwarming idea leads to a series of hilarious and exciting events, but no matter the circumstance, everyone in New Berk – young and old alike – is reminded that dragons and humans are forever bonded.

There is one caveat to all of this: Dean DeBlois, who wrote and directed all three How to Train Your Dragon movies, is not involved with the holiday special. Instead, Homecoming was written by Jonathan Groff (black-ish) and Jon Pollack (Modern Family) and directed by Tim Johnson (Home).

This isn’t the first TV spinoff of the Dragon franchise, as DreamWorks’ Dragons was split up into three series that aired on Cartoon Network and Netflix between 2012 and 2018. Clearly this is a valuable franchise, and while Hidden World marked an end of DeBlois’ involvement and Hiccup’s big screen story, it sure looks like we could be seeing more from the Dragons characters in the future.

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Image via DreamWorks Animation