'Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy' Part 2 Ending Explained: How the Netflix show paves a way for the 2021 movie
Spoilers for 'Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy' Part 2
After several well-recieved seasons of 'Spirit Riding Free', the adventures of Lucky Prescott (Amber Frank), Pru Granger (Sydney Park) and Abigail Stone (Bailey Gambertoglio) are winding to a close as the girls reach maturity and start looking to the future. The 'Riding Academy' spinoff sees the girls start that journey, as they start their first year at Palamino Bluffs Academy. We take a look at where the series ends, and how it sets up the 2021 film by Dreamworks.
Throughout the series, the girls have taken on more and more responsibility, and as they pursue their studies at Palamino Bluffs Academy, they're all deciding what to study. Where Abigail has her heart set on a medical course for animals, and Lucky focuses on becoming a championship rider with her faithful Spirit by her side, Pru's journey is a lot more conflicted. She's always had ambitions of being a dressage competitor, but her meeting with world champions Sahir (Karan Brar) and Priya (Roshni Edwards) make her realize that in order to be a world-class dressage rider, she may have to give up on her parents' dream of taking over their ranch.
Pru's choice is resolved, more or less, in the final two episodes of the series. On summer vacation, Pru takes a job on the ranch with her father in order to work up the courage to tell him that she wants to be a dressage rider before coming back to the farm. While working on the ranch, however, Pru discovers that she's got a real aptitude for the work there, coming up with new ideas for ranch management and finding she really enjoys the work she does there. Though her parents find the drafts of all the letters Pru wrote to try and tell them she wanted to be a dressage rider first, and rancher later, she realizes that ranching is something she wants to pursue wholeheartedly - with her passion for dressage continued as a side hobby.
Lucky, in the meanwhile, inherits her grandfather's mansion at Rosemead Valley after his tragic passing. The mansion is in a state of disrepair, however, forcing the PALs to take on jobs to raise the money needed to fix it. While Pru works for her father and Abigail works as a vetinary assistant, Lucky manages to work her way into working at a championship racecourse in Rosemead Valley - eventually convincing the owners to let her ride in a championship race for the prize money. However, it only took a day in the professional world for Lucky to see that the life of a professional jockey is a lot more impersonal than she bargained for. The way injured racehorses are cast aside, or how riders are meant to work with whatever horse they're assigned instead of forming a personal bond with their favourites, leads Lucky to believe that perhaps professional racing isn't for her.
Lucky, however, is still one of the fastest riders there is, and manages to win her very first championship race - and more importantly, the prize money needed to fix her grandfather's mansion up. Lucky immediately knows what she wants the mansion to be used for, once it's renovated - a sanctuary, for animals of all kinds, to be fixed up and given a place to live when they're injured. It's a stroke of genius that combines the skills of Lucky, Pru and Abigail, allowing them to work together even as they pursue their chosen vocation.
How life in Rosemead Valley works out for them and how successful the sanctuary is will no doubt be the subject matter of the 2021 'Spirit Riding Free' film, which might be the closing chapter of the franchise. The girls have been through a lot together, and even though they're far from done with their education, it's clear that they know what they want to do with the rest of their lives - and have already all taken significant steps towards that. Most importantly, however, the PALs have all found a way to do that together, keeping their close-knit friendship intact.
All episodes of 'Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy' Part 2 are available to stream now, on Netflix.