I've always headcanon that for many dragons, they grow horns as they age hence why Jake and Haley lack horns due to their youth.
This makes sense since we see many older dragons in Hong Kong Longs and most have horns (the only exception being one of the councilors, the female one in blue robes but she might be an outlier)
Maybe Jake's horns would be blue like his grandpa (Jake already shares a blue transformation aura like his grandpa so it makes sense)
Sure we have Fred Nerk who has horns but they definitely retconned a lot in season 2 (like giving most of the dragons horns and more distinctive appearances). The only other young dragon we see in season 2 is Gregory who also lacks horns.
So if Nerk was in season 2 it's likely he'd lack horns.
What do you guys think? Horns grow in with age?
Yeah horns seem to only be an aesthetic thing (even though head butting would make horns pretty helpful) but horns could be seen as a sign a dragon has come of age.
Every time we see a young Lao Shi, he's still an adult and hence as horns.
Yes I did put a lot of thought into this....
Something I just realized was how in season 1 the dark dragon lacked horns (which makes sense since he was supposed to be an evil Jake) but with that idea scrapped they went all in with the scare vibes