I know there's been a lot of discourse about the latest clip and the reveal that there have been previous Protectors of the Whispering Woods (and presumably Masters of Life/Green Ninja, though I'm not fully convinced of the latter). But here's something I haven't seen anyone mention.
Often in fiction, long-lived characters will speak of human timescales as meaningless to them, if you have lived for thousands of years, what's one year versus ten? Yet the Arc Dragon of Life, who I presume is one of these long-lived characters, describes themselves and the denizens of the Whispering Woods having "long felt betrayed" that Lloyd never showed up. Given that Lloyd is the first Protector who "ignored [their] duties," that means at most, the Arc Dragon has been waiting since the death of the last Protector until now, and obviously, Lloyd couldn't have been protecting the Whispering Woods before he was born. That is to say, this ancient Arc Dragon has long felt betrayed because Lloyd hasn't been there for the only ten* or so years he's been an adult.
I wonder if, in contrast to the Source Dragons, who have been explicitly said to understand time differently from mortals, Arc Dragons intentionally experience time as a much-shorter-lived mortal would, so that they will not grow detached from the mortal world. This could also provide greater insight into why the Arc Dragon of Focus had such a different reaction to Arin and Lloyd using them to defeat Thunderfang than the Source Dragon of Focus -- the Arc Dragon is more like a mortal in their perception of events than a Source Dragon
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*the actual length of time depends on how long you think the Ninjago timeline has spanned, which is up for debate
