Growing the Beard: Season Two shows a HUGE spike in quality, longer episodes and a more complicated story.
ABC Reality Show
Captain Obvious Reveal: To the shock of no one who has ever read a single fantasy story in their life, the Vizier is evil.
Elimination Houdini: After Christian is one of the losers in the first two challenges but isn't voted out, everyone agrees that if he loses again, it'll be time for him to go. Then he loses again and...is almost unanimously kept for no adequately explained reason. Luckily, he doesn't last much longer.
The Scrappy: Christian. Even before his irritating Elimination Houdini run, not much love was lost between Christian and the fanbase due to his behaving like he was on a cutthroat, backstabbing reality show like Survivor against the more co-operative tone of The Quest.By the third time he came in the bottom three and lost the second challenge, pretty much everyone wanted him to go.
Special Effect Failure: The special effects are a little shady because of the constraints the crew was under. Interviews with the cast and crew reveals that they tried to use as many Practical Effects as possible, such as using a projector for Verlox punching a giant crack into the castle wall, so that the Paladins have legitimate and spontaneous reactions to what they see. The later shot of a dragon flying and burninating a village in the distance is harder to explain; it's possible that the Paladins just saw fiery pyrotechnics and heard roaring in the far distance, and psychology did the rest.
Disney+ Reality Show
Narm: The actors did their best, but the contestants are just kids, and most of them were either too shy or too self-conscious to throw themselves into the setting. As a result, a lot of the show becomes this, especially when something dramatic happens that relies on the Paladins to react appropriately, and they... don't.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The basic plot of The Quest remains perfectly serviceable, albeit built entirely of fantasy tropes, and could easily have been adapted to a scripted show, allowing it to be properly dramatic or action-packed without interrupting the flow with minigame-esque challenges or kid contestants bringing tense moments grinding to a halt. Alternately, keeping the competitive aspect from the original would have made it more entertaining as reality TV. Instead, The Quest tried to straddle both worlds and succeeded with neither.
The question of which of the three heirs would take the throne could have been interesting, with each candidate already making good arguments for themselves, and it would have potentially give them actual storylines and given the Paladins the ability to make an actual impact on Everrealm. Instead, in keeping with the show's emphasis on teamwork, the heirs decide to rule jointly, negating any suspense that managed to be built.
