Western Animation / Skylanders Academy

"We're all together, in harmony..."

"SKYLANDERS, UNITE!"

Skylanders Academy is a French computer-animated spin-off television series based on the Skylanders franchise. It serves as Activision Blizzard Studios' first animated production with Futurama writer Eric Rogers overseeing the creation of the series. The series premiered on October 28, 2016 worldwide on Netflix. It can now also be viewed on YouTube.

The television series is completely separate from the storyline of the games with no direct tie-ins to sequels, being its own separate continuity. It is however canon to the Skylanders franchise. Word of God mentioned the series being a mixture of Gravity Falls and Futurama.

The series follows Spyro the Dragon, who starts out having a massive due to the upbringing he got from Master Eon, the headmaster of Skylanders Academy and his adoptive father. But Spyro experiences the fownsides of believing he can clear any standards and starts to let go of his arrogance to become one of the newest graduated Skylanders alongside his two friends Stealth Elf and Eruptor. Together with Skylander veterans Jet-Vac and Pop Fizz, it is their sworn duty to protect the world of Skylands from evil-doers and disharmony, most of all from the likes of the Evil Sorcerer Kaos, the arch-nemesis to all Skylanders. A least that's what he thinks.

The show ran for three seasons from 2016 to 2018 before getting cancelled.

Now has a recap page that needs love.

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Skylanders Academy contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Ranger: At the end of season 2, due to Spyro being abscent due to his suspicion of Eon regarding his family, Sprocket is inserted into the team to fill out the missing spot.
• Aborted Arc: Dark Spyro gradually becoming friends with the Skylanders again, and manages to turn completely good (as evident by him being able to open the Wumpan Puzzle Box), is suddenly dropped when he refuses to finish Strykore's mission, and getting hexed into once again becoming 'pure evil', before being separated from Spyro and seemingly destroyed.
• Adaptational Heroism: Kaos' Mom was a straight-up villain in the original games but here in the show's continuity, she's a powerful dark sorceress who used her powers to keep Strykore in check. Granted, Season 3 confirmed that keeping him contained with dark magic did turn her evil.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Downplayed with Crash Bandicoot, who has relatively normal intelligence... which is more than can be said for his appearance in the games.
• Adaptational Wimp: Pretty much every character is this in some way compared to the games. Villains doesn't share the same level of threat, heroes faces failure more often, and many of them lack some of the abilities they have in gameplay.
• Adapted Out: The Light and Dark elements in the games disappeared when the Core of Light was destroyed and resurfaced when Cloudcracker Prison was destroyed. In the show, they don't seem to exist since the symbols of those elements aren't part of the logo, even though the Sun Runner is one of the vehicles present in it.
• Aerith and Bob: It is revealed in "Space Invaders" that Spyro's middle name is Agnew.
• The Ahnold: Ka-Boom, to go with his aesthetic of being an intimidatingly colossal mountain of muscles.
• And the Adventure Continues: Due to the lack of a greenlit Season 4, the Season 3 finale is this for the whole series. The Core of Light is safe, Strykore is sealed once more while Kaos is back in Cloudcracker Prison. However, Eon is considered dead while Kaossandra takes over as Headmaster of Skylanders Academy. Spyro is informed by an astral projection of Eon from beyond the Skylands that his new capabilities allows him to find Spyro's kind and offers Spyro to come with him to meet his dragonkind. Spyro accepts and leaves without even saying goodbye to his friends outside of a cloud message in the sky saying "Skylanders Forever!". He takes only one last look at Skylanders Academy while knowing that they can handle it on their own before leaving to parts unknown with Eon to meet his dragon family.
• Animal Motifs: There sure are a lot of sheep running around Skylands. They seem most prevalent in regards to Hugo, who is terrified of them.
• Artifact of Doom: Kaossandra's dark spellbook, which Eon states is one of the darkest and most evil artifacts in Skylands. Just using it for a few days begins to corrupt him. It turns out this includes Kaossandra, who was corrupted from using it to keep Strykore sealed away. In a bad future where Glamshanks got it, it turns him into an Evil Overlord.
• Bad Future: On "Days and Future Crash", Dark Spyro and Eruptor accidentally brought Crash Bandicoot with them to their time. Thus creating a timeline where the Skylands is ruled by Glumshanks of all people.
• I Believe I Can Fly: The SuperChargers are explicitly divided between land, sea and air vehicles in the games, but here several land SuperChargers are showing being perfectly capable of flight.
• Big Bad: Kaos, then later the Golden Queen, then Strykore, with Kaos taking back control as the Final Boss.
• Big Bad Wannabe: It would be easier to point out the villains who aren't this.
  • Kaos has this as one of his most prominent traits. He sees himself as the Skylanders' biggest enemy, but that's more because he's the one who has made the most attempts to beat them, with varying results in how effective they actually are. This has turned him into the laughing stock to all Skylands, but he grows in power at the end of season 1.
  • Malefor is the Evil Dragon King of the Cadaverous Crypts and was the arch-enemy to Spyro's dragon family. This should make him someone fearsome, but he can't accomplish much because he sits around in his lair all day and mostly waits for someone to come to him. In fact, he wasn't even involved when Spyro's family was banished. Strykore was responsible for it all, who himself is a much more active villain because he at least works towards his goals.
  • Golden Queen starts out as a more menacing villain than Kaos in the first and second season, but her more declining skills in leading the Doom Raiders turns her into this at the end of the second season when Strykore is released back into Skylands. In the third season, she only has one appearance and all she does is terrorize a town to blow off some steam from being trapped in a magic ball for months.
• Bittersweet Ending: Some good things have happened by the show's conclusion. Strykore has been sealed inside the void again and Kaos' attempt to destroy the Core of Light is foiled. But in the process of foiling said plan, Eon had to sacrifice himself. Luckily, it later turns out that he was merely transported to another state of existence and can visit the Skylanders in their world whenever he can. And in this form, he was able to find where Spyro's dragon family ended up and offers to guide Spyro there, on the condition that he will not be able to see his friends again for a very long time. Spyro still accepts Eon's offer and why he agreed to itis anyone's guess.
• Brain Bleach: When Stealth Elf gets trapped inside Kaos' mind in "Space Invaders", she witnesses some of his memories and fantasies, and since it's Kaos, she finds them to be disgusting.
• Break the Haughty: Happens to Spyro in the first episode when he was not chosen to be a true, honorary Skylander.
• Broken Aesop: Despite characters like Eon saying that the main team work best when they work together, the team actually tend to lose a majority of the times they fight together, or need help from an outside source. Add in some episodes where team members are on their own and win and the show comes more across as saying they accomplish more when they are on their own.
• Broken Pedestal: Towards the end of season 2, Stealth Elf realizes that Eon lied to her about knowing who Strykore is when the Elf brought the subject up, making her think that Eon has probably lied to them all, especially Spyro in regards to his ancestors. Once she tells Spyro about this, Spyro also becomes distrusting of Eon, leading to him chewing Eon out for lying to everyone and planning to quit being a Skylander.
• Brought Down to Normal: In "Touch of Evil", after finding out that Kaossandra was the one who locked away Strykore in her book of spells, Kaos takes back all the magic she has, both what she had originally and all that he himself gave to her earlier in the show.
• The Cameo: Skylanders who are from the games, but aren't part of the main story, occasionally show up in minor roles or as background characters.
• Character Development: Spyro spends much of the first episode as an egotistical Jerkass who has no problem skipping out on his own graduation. The conflict with Kaos forces him to become more reliable and dependent on his friends, and although he remains a Jerk with a Heart of Gold after, he progressively gets better as the season progresses.
  • The second episode focuses on Jet-Vac being uptight and unable to think outside the box. His character arc shows how he goes from being unwilling to deviate from The Plan (assuming he has one, that is) to simply acting on instinct to properly respond to emergencies.
  • After Eruptor's focus episode, subsequent episodes show him much more even tempered in general.
  • "Thankstaking For The Memories" has Stealth Elf learning to connect more with others after hearing Spyro's reasons for wanting to be with her during the Thankstaking break.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: To punish Glumshanks for taking him to a health spa, Kaos makes him wait in line at the Skylands DMV.
• Cool Old Guy: Jet-Vac and Pop Fizz, whose ages are more pronounced here than in the games, are professors at the Academy. The former is a distinguished veteran and tactician, the latter is a Mad Scientist who used to be a member of a world famous rock duo.
• The Corruption: After Eon uses a dark spell to send Crash back home, he becomes infected with darkness, and even begins to turn evil.
• Create Your Own Hero: A heroic example. In "Missing Links", to help the team get better at teamwork, Eon calls King Pen to show them the Creation Crystal, allowing them to create a team member that shall serve as the missing link for the team.
• Crossover: Thanks to the Evil-scope malfunctioning, Crash Bandicoot gets sucked into the Skylands.
  • Promotional material for the third season shows Coco coming along with her brother for another episode.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Just because Kaossandra is Kaos' mother and uses dark magic, doesn't mean she's not holding back a much darker evil.
• Dead Hat Shot: Eon's helmet fall from the sky after he stops the Arkeyan Conquertron from destroying the Core of Light. But he didn't actually die.
• Defector from Decadence: Kaos does this in the season 1 finale. Golden Queen points out how Kaossandra has kept his true potential away from him, leading Kaos to ask his mother why she has done that, and Kaossandra doesn't explain why and tells him that he has to take her word for it. Kaos in turn chooses to side with the Doom Raiders.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Pop Fizz proudly announces his team is cheating in the Chili Chomp, only to be innocently perplexed by Stealth Elf's annoyed reaction.
  Spyro: Pffft, good luck with [beating us!]
  Pop Fizz: Yeah, because we're cheating! ...what?
• A Dog Named "Dog": Hex's familiar is a floating skull named... Skull.
• Easy Amnesia: Pop Rocks has Pop Fizz drink a potion that should have made him immune to Wolfgang's hypnosis, but it instead erases his memory and makes him think he's a rock star again.
• Evil Overlooker: One poster has Kaos all the way on the top of it staring intimidatingly at the audience.
• Fallen Princess: Cynder is the daughter of the evil king of the underworld, Malefor, but she gives that status up to become a Skylander instead.
• Fanboy: Spyro doesn't hesitate to geek out around Crash Bandicoot. Presumably, neither did the audience.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • Cloudcracker Prison has a rule in that if an inmate is acting more out of line than usual, they are to be sent to a place called The Hole, a completely empty room with nothing to do. And yet, stuff that earns people sent there include interacting with the local rodents and trying to get the guards to eat broccoli. This ends up being used against the prison by the Doom Raiders, as they all do minor annoyances and get sent to The Hole for it, where they can use their powers to create an escape route because The Hole is the only unguarded place at the prison.
  • In "The Skylands are Falling", Chef Pepper Jack is stopped from commiting the unspeakable crime of putting hot sauce on a waffle.
• Foreshadowing: Kaossandra is a much more powerful magican than her son and gets a lot more respect from other villains, yet despite that, she rarely partakes in spreading evil around Skylands especially in comparison to Kaos and the Doom Raiders. This is because she is busy using her powers to keep Strykore locked up in it
• Funny Background Event: In episode 2, when Master Eon, Hugo and Jet-Vac are busy eating at a restaurant that sells gizzards, Kaos (who had to get a job there as a mascot) briefly passes by outside the window, then slams his face into the window as he sees the trio.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Strykore.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: The Great War was a battle between good and bad, and people in the present know that it happened. However, the end of the war where the good side stood triumphantly by banishing Strykore to the void was never archived, as Eon and Kaossandra wanted to make sure that Kaos never discovered who Strykore was and that Spyro never discovered what happened to his dragon family. The only ones in Skylands who knows about this are Eon, King Pen, Malefor, and Kaossandra, until Eon is forced to reveal what happened at the end of season 2 and start of season 3.
• Harmless Freezing: In the pilot, Kaos steals the Book of Skylands. He then freezes the book, which causes the Skylanders themselves to be frozen as well.
• Hated by All: Broccoli Guy. Everyone who meets him think he's annoying and the only reason the Doom Raiders keep him is because of his healing powers. The one he grows the closest to is Kaos, but that's only because The Doom Raiders tricked Kaos into accepting Broccoli Guy as a lackey for their own benefits, and when Kaos figured out the ruse he left the gang. And when Kaos got himself a pirate ship and appointed the Doom Raiders as his crew, Broccoli Guy was the only member he didn't bother helping out.^note Golden Queen was in a sphere prison flying through the sky at that point, so she wasn't either appointed.
  • At the end of the show Strykore is in a bad spot. His brother and fellow sorceress have locked him up in the same prison as before, the Skylanders still view him as their greatest enemy yet and Kaos betrayed him after Strykore threw him away, not wanting anything to do with him anymore. And Kaos learning that Eon is actually his father is probably gonna result in him not thinking about Strykore anytime soon.
• High-Altitude Battle: Spyro and Dark Spyro face off against each other in the skies above Skylander Academy.
• I Have No Son!:
  • At the end of "Assault on Skylanders Academy", Kaos chooses to side with the Doom Raiders over his mother because she hasn't ever thought him how to grow stronger and refuses to explain why. As Kaossandra and Glumshanks flees from the academy and Kaos goes after them, she tells him to never show up at her castle again.
  • When Cynder leaves the underworld to become a Skylander at the end of "Return to Cynder", her father Malefor tells her that they are enemies from this moment onwards.
• Ice-Cream Koan: In "Dream Girls", Jet-Vac tries to give out some wisdom to the younger Skylanders in the form of quotes, but they end up sounding very unimpressive.
  Jet-Vac: The road not taken is a mystery, because you didn't take that road.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Kaos is not as threatening to Skylands as he thinks he is and his presence comes more across as an annoyance, allowing greater villains like the Doom Raiders to manipulate him.
  • The Doom Raiders ends up like this in season 3, where being the pirate crew of the incompotent Kaos leads them into being so ineffective that they can't even plunder villages properly. They end up letting go of all of their goals about terrorizing Skylands and prioritze getting food for their stomachs.
• Just in Time: In season 3, Captain Flynn has a habit of showing up just when the Skylanders need a ride somewhere.
• Kind Hearted Simpleton: Pop Fizz is one of the good guys, and has a good heart when you ignore his Cloudcuckoolander elements, but he also doesn't have a ton of depth to him, nor does he have much of a backstory besides having been in a musical duo with Wolfgang (and he isn't even the one to reveal it, instead it's Jet-Vac who does it). It's clear that he isn't made to carry a whole episode by himslef, which shows in the episodes that has some sort of focus on him^note "Pop Rocks" has explained above, doesn't have Pop Fizz provide much of the exposition to the story and he has amnesia throughout the middle chunk of the episode, "The People vs. Pop Fizz" removes him entirely in the third act, and the closest he gets to a focus episode in season 3 is having the subplot in "In Like Flynn". Not that this could stop him from being an engaging character.
• Lawful Stupid:
  • Jet-Vac, prior to learning his lesson in My Way or the Sky Way. He won't even start eating until he's thoroughly plotted out his course of action.
  • Ka-Boom, at least whenever he's working as a bouncer, is utterly uncompromising, even if it interferes with his friends efforts to protect innocents or get into their own house.
  Ka-Boom: No one gets in unless they're on the list. Names!
  Eruptor: What?! You know us, we live here! With! Spyro!
  Ka-Boom: I don't make the rules, I just enforce them, Eruptor. [Beat] NAMES!
• Leitmotif: Crash Bandicoot gets one in the episode focused on him. It's a recycled version of the theme song from his very first game. Eruptor even points it out.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Strykore claims he's Kaos's father. It's later strongly hinted that Master Eon is Kaos's real father.
• MacGuffin: The Book of Skylanders serves as this in the first episode, with Eon and every Skylander in existence having their powers tied to it, so if it were to fall into the wrong hands, like Kaos', it would be very dangerous. After that episode, however, the book is never seen again aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in "Spyromania".
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Team Spyro, despite being a new team of Skylanders in-universe, are the only ones who participate in most battles, teach classes, and are generally the only ones that Master Eon calls and spends most of his time with. All other Skylanders are either side characters or Skylander cadets in the Alternate Continuity of the franchise.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The first scene we get of the show is Spyro hatching and showcasing his combat abilities against a trio of Greebles.
• Myth Arc: Season 2 follows Spyro trying to learn of his dragon heritage and the mysteries of Strykore and Kaos' father.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Missing Links has all of the main characters say their catchphrases from the games as a running gag.
  Spyro: Yeah, like a Skylander needs a catchphrase to get all fired up.
  • In the first episode, when Master Eon shows Spyro the vault, Spyro name-checks artifacts belonging to the Giants, Swap Force and the Trap Team.
  • During Pop Fizz's fight with Wolfgang, he gets a sousaphone that makes him look very similar to his Supercharged form, Big Bubble Pop Fizz.
  • Whenever communicating with the Skylanders from afar, Master Eon looks like a giant floating head, much like his game counterpart (who was trapped in that form by Kaos).
  • The Core of Light, Hugo's fear of sheep, and the sheep in general, are all direct references to Spyro's Adventure; in turn the sheep came from Spyro's PS1 games, where they served as one of many different types of "fodder" (read: health pickups).
  • This isn't the first time that Crash and Spyro have crossed over.
  • Master Eon refers to the main characters as the "Core Skylanders", which also happens to be the term fans of the games use to refer to basic, non-gimmick Skylander figures.
  • When gearing up to fight a forest fire, every member of the team but Spyro mans a Supercharger vehicle. Of the five main characters, he was the only one who wasn't remade into a Supercharger for their titular entry in the game series.
  • In Power Struggle, Eon’s story of what happened during the Great War has him and Kaossandra fighting the forces of evil alongside the Giant Skylanders, before Skylanders Academy was even built. In the games, the Giants were the very Skylanders.
  • In Road Rage, Stealth Elf tells Kaossandra that she was raised by a tree.
  • The finale of season 3 has Master Eon make a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Kaos from destroying the Core of Light and becoming an astral being in the process, which is more or less his backstory in the games.
• Never Say "Die": When it seems like a character has died, the other characters always refers to them being "gone".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Spyro obsessively stopping evil before it happens in episode 10 results in a mass of evil nearly destroying Skylands, and ultimately leads to the Doom Raiders invading the Academy.
  • Crash Bandicoot's entire appearance is this. The way to get him back home requires using a dark artifact, the use of which corrupts Eon.
    • Speaking of Crash, his acts were so awe-inspiring that Spyro wanted to imitate him... which resulted in him being captured by Chompy Mage and nearly compromising the mission. Stealth Elf wastes no time admonishing Spyro for it.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Spyro foolishly went to Malefor for answers about the location of his ancestors. This got him overwhelmed, captured and used as a bargaining chip for the angry dragon king to get his daughter Cynder back to the side of evil. Spyro was later handed over to Kaos, who then brought the young dragon to Strykore to have his light energy consumed in order for Strykore to be fully released from his prison.
    • To add insult to injury, Malefor was able to successfully recapture Cynder after she came with Team Spyro to try and save Spyro from her father - after the dragon king secretly handed Spyro over to Kaos.
• Non-Indicative Name: Malefor's lair, the Cadaverous Crypts, looks nothing like actual crypts.
• Parental Bonus: In "Space Invaders", Spyro tells everyone that "Crackling's my middle name." Eruptor then responds that Spyro told him it was "Agnew". (For those wondering, Spiro Agnew was the Vice President for the majority of Richard Nixon's time as President; he resigned a year before Watergate, but over tax-dodging and bribery, not because of Watergate itself.)
  • Also, see the above "brown funnel cake" bit.
  • Lastly, Wolfgang is voiced by James Hetfield.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Kaos and Glumshanks do this nearly every episode, to the point it's a Running Gag by the end.
  Pop Fizz: Do I know you?
  Glumshanks: Not in this hat you don't.
• Point of Divergence: We see the point for the Bad Future in "Days and Future Crash": because Crash wasn't around, Glumshanks got Kaossandra's book, which gave him dark magic and corrupted him into an Evil Overlord who forced Kaos and Kaossandra under his heel and took over Skylands. This leads to both of them making a Heel–Face Turn and turning on him (possibly due to them being forced to be together).
• Police Are Useless: Cloudcracker Prison has Mabus working as the guards, and the warden is even a current Skylander. But if something bad were to happen there, then it shows that the workers relies on the Skylanders to deal with it. And even when they try do try to take care of it, they lose to the villains easily.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: Crash Bandicoot's sudden appearance is downright admitted as this:
  Eon: Crash was quite the inspirational hero whose wacky adventures would make for an addictive weekly viewing.
  • It should be noted Universal (original owners of Crash and Spyro) attempted one in the 1990s, with hand-drawn cutscenes for the first Crash game. Sony, however, ordered them removed to push focus on the 3D graphics, and they subsequently abandoned the idea.)
• Reaching Between the Lines: In "Return to Cynder", one of the Golden Queen's petty acts is calling someone over the phone and turning them into gold. The end of the episode reveals that she froze Hugo.
• Second Episode Introduction: Kaossandra's first appearance is in the second episode instead of the first episode, which is mostly about establishing her relationship with Kaos and Glumshanks.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: After the Great War ended, Strykore was sealed by Kaossandra inside her spell book and Spyro's dragon family were banished by Eon to another dimension after Strykore corrupted them. Wanting to keep the truth hidden from the two people who would have the most connection to these people, Spyro and Kaos, Eon hid all the evidence of what happened to the former's family while the latter was uninformed about Strykore and his heritage to his real father Eon so he wouldn't want to grow up to become the next Strykore. But when both of them wanted to start learning about their family to understand their hidden potential, the fact that there is so little information about the subjects just makes them more determined to find out the truth. And when the two discover what happened, they realize that the people they have trusted have been lying to them since they were born, and it ends up creating wedges between Spyro and Eon, and Kaos and Kaossandra.
• Shout-Out:
  • The premise of the first episode- the hero has to save the day because he was the only one not there when the villain attacked his school- may remind some viewers of the first episode of Power Rangers Ninja Storm.
  • "If it isn't the original Angry Bird."^note Kaos is referring to Jet-Vac.
  • In "Assault on Skylander Academy", while trying to solve a riddle, Spyro guessed "space ghost".
  • In "Weekend at Eon's", Sprocket revealed that she once built a transporter that turned someone inside out.
  • "Time to science the heck out of this".
• Sidekick Creature Nuisance: Broccoli Guy is a rare villainous example, even if he is relatively harmless. The only reason the Doom Raiders keep him around is because of his healing powers.
• Skewed Priorities: Jet-Vac believes so highly in that making preparations is the right approach to everything that when the team has a mission to save the Falling Forest from burning down, he makes the team wait for three hours while he prepares his SuperCharger vehicle in accordance to everything that is written in the manual.
• Spit Take: Done deliberately when Spyro, drink in hand, doesn't feel his initial reaction to Kaos freezing the Book of Skylanders sufficiently conveyed his shock to the Mabu he's speaking to. So he takes a swig and...
  Mabu: *now dripping wet* "Oh yeah, that really conveys the urgency."
• Stepford Smiler: In "A Traitor Among Us", Eruptor and Kaossandra gets captured by trolls and meet a Mabu who tells them that they are stuck in an arena the trolls organize where they capture people and force them to fight one another, all with a smile on his face to disguise his terror.
• Stock Scream: We hear the Wilhelm Scream in "It Techs Two".
• Suddenly Speaking: Crash Bandicoot can talk complete English in the show, despite not talking much in his game series (or in the Radical Entertainment games, speaking almost entirely in gibberish); he also possesses an Australian accent.
• Super Team: The entire cast of the show are a group of heroes training to be defenders of Skylands.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: To infiltrate the Skylanders Chili Chomp competition, the bad guys form a catering service. It's name? "We're Not The Bad Guys Chili Company". Eon initially reads it without the "Not" but is still completely clueless, merely remarking that it makes their food seem a bit more thrilling.
• Toilet Paper Prank: While the Skylanders are frozen by Kaos' spell, he and Glumshanks goes to cover the academy's library in toilet paper.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer for season 3 spoils that...
  • 1: Crash Bandicoot will be returning, though that was also confirmed by the showrunners before the trailer dropped.
  • 2: Kaos is gonna take control of the Arkeyan Conquertron.
  • 3: Coco Bandicoot will join the Skylanders in the fight against said Conquertron.
  • 4: Spyro and Dark Spyro will be split and engaging in a battle in the skies.
• Trust-Building Blunder: "Space Invaders" starts with the Skylanders and Eon camping in the falling forest to help build their teamwork, with everyone except Stealth Elf being more interested in cooking marshmellows. They do get to the trust fall, with varying results. Eruptor crushes Pop Fizz, Eon leaves Stealth Elf to fall on the ground while he goes looking for sticks to the campfire, and Spyro and Jet-Vac are the only ones who actually succeeded, only that Spyro used a sheep to catch Jet-Vac instead of his own hands.
  Jet-Vac: Wow, Spyro, what a soft touch you have.
• Two-Teacher School: In season 1, Jet-Vac and Pop Fizz were the only professors at Skylander Academy, with Eon also tuning in at some points. In season 2, however, the main trio are shown to have been graduated to professors as well, until season 3 suddenly has them still partaking in lessons, and it's not just Spyro, Stealth Elf and Eruptor, but Pop Fizz as well.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: To get Crash Bandicoot home, the Skylanders need to use a dark relic. Crash is pretty unambiguously good, but sending him home causes the dark relic, a Book of Dark Magic, to corrupt Eon, making a large portion of the Season 1 finale the Skylanders finding a light cure from the Core of Light to heal him.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Eon tells the team over and over that he senses a growing darkness in Skylands, as more and more villains commit crimes and are even willing to backstab each other if they are allies like the Doom Raiders. This growing darkness turns out to be Strykore, who has grown stronger while being trapped in Kaossandra's spell book and is spreading his evil from there.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • In season 3 where after Spyro gets his light eaten by Strykore, he turns into Dark Spyro who takes over as protagonist as The Dragon to Strykore.
  • This can also be said for Kaos, but just throughout the whole show instead. He has a lot of depth to him, and some of his storylines focus more on moving the overarching story along more than what the Skylanders plots do. Being a deconstruction of tropes like Big Bad Wannabe and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain helps.
• Villains Out Shopping: A recurring joke in the series is villains doing mundane activities without anyone batting an eye. It happens a lot, actually.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Pop Fizz and Wolfgang used to be in a musical duo together, until Wolfgang's ego got the better of him and he started pushing Pop Fizz away during their performances in favor of solos, resulting in Pop Fizz leaving the band of becoming a Skylander, while Wolfgang turned over to a life of crime.
  • Golden Queen and Kaossandra were allies in times of old, and remained civil even after they stopped seeing each other as often. But after their confrontation in the relics room in "Assault on Skylander Academy", they turned into bitter enemies.
• Wham Episode: The Season 2 finale has Malefor capturing Cynder, Kaos freeing Strykore, Spyro becoming Dark, Kaossandra joining forces with the Skylanders, and Eon is Kaos's true father.
• Wing Shield:
  • In Return to Cynder, Cynder uses her wings to protect herself and Spyro from the debris caused by the explosive Beam-O-War duel between her and her father, Malefor.
  • During Spyro's rematch with Malefor in the Season 2 finale, Malefor douses Spyro in a powerful blast of fire breath. At first, it seems like the smaller dragon is finished, only for the smoke to clear out and reveal Spyro hiding behind his wings completely unscathed, much to Malefor's surprise. Justified, since Spyro is a rare and special breed of dragon that are known to have impenetrable scales all over their bodies to withstand such attacks.
  • When Team Spyro came to rescue Cynder from Malefor in Raiders of the Lost Arkus, Part 1, Spyro is frightened by the attacking dragon king and hides himself behind his wings while his teammates engage Malefor. When Malefor is vulnerable and crashes behind Spyro, the young dragon unfolds his wings and gasps with fright at the sight of the dragon king, panicking long enough for Malefor to subdue Spyro and the rest of his team.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Kaos, especially when his powers get upgraded.
• Worf Had the Flu: At the end of season 1, Kaos gets a major power boost from Kaossandra's book of spells, showing how powerful he is capable of becoming, and he comes to the conclusion that his mother had something to do with holding him back, just without understanding why she would do that. He finds out when he meets Strykore for the first time and realizes that the reason he was never taught by his mother was because he reminded her of Strykore and wanted to prevent Kaos from becoming the next supervillain of Skylands.
• Zerg Rush: Whenever the team is up against Chompies that are commanded by Chompy Mage, all the little monsters will rush at them at once and surrond them.

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