How to Train Your Dragon - Ending Explained

The plot of the 2025 film hews very closely to the 2010 animated original. After Hiccup befriends Toothless and learns to fly with him, his knowledge of dragon behavior allows him to non-violently subdue dragons in his training arena, making him the star pupil over a suspicious Astrid. Astrid follows Hiccup and discovers Toothless, and after her initial fear is overcome during a beautiful flight, they inadvertently discover the dragons' nest.

The key twist is the discovery that the dragons who raid Berk do so not out of malice, but because they are forced to bring food to a colossal, tyrannical dragon queen known as the Red Death, who will eat them otherwise. This discovery reframes the central conflict entirely. When Stoick finds out about Toothless, he disowns Hiccup and uses the captured Night Fury to lead his fleet to the nest, intending to wipe out all dragons. This action proves disastrous, as the Vikings' attack awakens the Red Death, which decimates Stoick's fleet. Hiccup and the other teens arrive, riding the training dragons, to save the day. In the final confrontation, Hiccup and Toothless work together to defeat the Red Death by luring it into the sky and causing it to crash. During the battle, Hiccup falls and loses his lower left leg, an injury Toothless saves him from. The film ends with Hiccup waking up in Berk to find that the Vikings and dragons now live together in peace. He has a new prosthetic foot, mirroring Toothless's prosthetic tail fin, and is hailed as a hero.