How Hiccup and the five human villains are parallels of each other
Hiccup, Alvin, Dagur, Viggo, Drago and Grimmel are all different sides of one six-sided dice. I’m not including Johann or Krogan here, because they do not parallel Hiccup (although I will mention them at the end).
There are parallels between Hiccup, Alvin, and Drago, in that they all desire knowledge about dragons in order to gain the power that comes with it, but...
Hiccup gives up on that desire early on in favour of genuine curiosity.
Drago never gives up on it, and it is what destroys him eventually.
Alvin, meanwhile, represents the halfway mark. He himself is nearly destroyed by his desire for power, but because Hiccup managed to spark that curiosity in him, however unintentional - remember, Alvin was able to train dragons because he learned Hiccup’s method, while Drago never learned that - Alvin is able to bring himself back and learn compassion and true leadership.
Hiccup, Dagur, and Grimmel are a similar triangle this way, but for another reason.
They are all outsiders with heavy expectations placed upon them - Dagur and Hiccup as sons of chiefs, and Hiccup and Grimmel as members of dragon-killing societies.
They all eventually gain power through certain circumstances - Hiccup chooses not to kill a dragon, Dagur chooses to let people believe he killed his father, and Grimmel chooses the opposite path Hiccup chose and kills a dragon.
Grimmel and Dagur both represent who Hiccup might have become, but in two different aspects.
Grimmel is obvious - he chooses to kill a Night Fury as a young boy, and the glory he receives twists him into a murderous maniac bent on the destruction of all dragons, based on what gained him that glory in the first place.
Dagur, on the other hand, is who Hiccup might have become if there had been no Night Fury at all. We learn from Dagur’s backstory that he was pushed around himself as a kid and treated as an unfit heir to his father’s throne, and as so many unhappy people do, he coped by exercising power over others when he could - setting his own toddler sister adrift, bullying Hiccup, and eventually seizing power when his father disappeared.
But, like Hiccup and unlike Grimmel, the reason he is able to redeem himself is because he learns compassion when he sees himself in someone else - his sister Heather. Someone who made the best of a powerless situation. The only Berserker to actively question him and not let him push her around. The family he might have had if he’d been able to choose compassion the way Hiccup did. That is the reason Dagur is able to bring himself back, and Grimmel is destroyed because he was never able to bring himself back. Grimmel was never able to see himself in someone else, not even in Hiccup.
Viggo and Hiccup are sort of a mix of both.
We don’t know much of Viggo’s backstory, of how he and Ryker came to be dragon hunters. What we do know is that he is the only antagonist who ever came close to truly defeating Hiccup.
He and Hiccup are equals in a lot of ways. They are equally intelligent. They are equally good strategists. They can keep up with each other in a swordfight, and even moreso in a battle of wits.
What makes them so interesting as enemies is that they are equals in so many ways - but it is the parts they choose to focus on that make them different.
We know Hiccup has always been cunning. Our introduction to him has him build a weapon that takes down the dragon everyone thought was impossible to catch. He uses what he learns about Toothless to protect the arena dragons while appearing to defeat them: their fear of eels, their curiosity, their reaction to garlic grass, the pressure point in their necks. He figures out what angers them and what makes them feel respected.
And then it is revealed that Viggo knows as much as Hiccup does about dragons and their weaknesses! The difference is, while Hiccup uses his knowledge to protect dragons, Viggo uses it to hunt them.
And now I’m going to say something controversial: Viggo always had the same capacity for compassion as Hiccup did. He would not have completely changed his view of dragons when the Monstrous Nightmare saved him, if he hadn’t always been capable of compassion.
The difference between Viggo and Hiccup is that, while they are cunning and compassionate in equal measures, Hiccup chose to nurture his compassion, and became a leader who is kind, who is understanding, and who will always do his best to save as many innocents as possible.
Viggo, on the other hand, chose to nurture his cunning, and became a leader who takes pleasure in cruelty, who chooses profit over life every time, and who is as ruthless to his supporters as he is to his enemies.
Being equally capable of cunning and compassion is what makes Viggo and Hiccup so able to keep pace with each other.
Johann and Krogan are also interesting antagonists, and they do parallel certain characters - but they do not parallel Hiccup. They respectively parallel Viggo and Eret, and represent who they would have become if they had not been able to learn from Hiccup and the Dragon Riders.
Johann and Viggo are both cunning and ruthless businessmen, but Viggo is able to learn respect for dragons while Johann is not, because Viggo had the capability for kindness that Johann never did.
The same is true for Krogan and Eret - but it is not compassion that saves Eret; it is the ability to think for himself. Krogan never strays from Drago’s instructions, and follows them to the point where it kills him, but Eret, however self-serving his motivations are, betrays Drago’s instructions to save his own neck - and in doing so, sees an existence for himself where he is free from every obligation but one: respecting life. This is what makes him a parallel to the other Dragon Riders rather than to Hiccup, because it is not compassion or seeing himself in someone else that saves him, but rather the potential of a new, happier, safer, more fulfilling life, which is how Hiccup saved them all the way back in the first film.
In conclusion, I will never be over the amazing use of parallels and mirror imagery in this series.
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