"The massive and fearsome dragon tyrant, the Red Death…Secretly responsible for centuries of human and dragon conflict."
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Drago Bludvist is a madman, without conscience or mercy, and if he’s built a dragon army, Gods help us all.
—Stoick on Drago Bludvist, How to Train Your Dragon 2
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The many islands and tribes of the Barbaric Archipelago are filled with tension between humans and dragons. As a result, the franchise has produced many villains of all kinds. A few times, the worst villains are dragons, but more often than not, Humans Are the Real Monsters.
Novel Series[]
- Alvin the Treacherous, Hiccup's Arch-Enemy, is a man defined by his greed and lust for power. In his first appearance, Alvin manipulates the Hairy Hooligan tribe to help him find Grimbeard the Ghastly's treasure, betraying them by going to place them in slavery and letting his tribe eat Hiccup and his father Stoick. Upon escaping Grimbeard's treasure cavern, Alvin schemes with a small party of Romans to kidnap the Hooligan and Bog-Burgular heirs to incite a war between them to form a dragon army to claim the treasure from the caves for himself. Alvin later manipulates Humongous Hotshot to kill Hiccup and steal the Fire Stone for him so he can use it to command the Exterminators on Lava Lout Island and let him conquer the Barbaric Archipelago. On Berserk Island, Alvin sacrifices Hiccup and his friends to the Beast of the Berserk forests. Becoming the leader of the Vikings when the dragons trigger a war, Alvin enslaves countless humans—killing them en masse for whatever reason—to find the Dragon Jewel so he can become the King of the Wilderwest. When Hiccup becomes the King of the Wilderwest and tries to end the war between humans and dragons, Alvin breaks the truce by stealing the Dragon Jewel from him and attempts to use its power to wipe out every dragon.
- Excellinor the Witch is Alvin's equally horrid mother whose silver tongue conceals a heart of ice. Excellinor is first introduced having a sadistic game with Hiccup—whoever guesses the other's identity gets to kill them. When the Viking tribes have a sword-fighting competition to become the King of the Wilderwest, Excellinor manipulates the contest to try and allow Alvin to win, with her exposing Hiccup and his father to condemn them to slavery. Along with Alvin, Excellinor enslaves countless others, falsely promising their freedom if they discover the Dragon Jewel. Excellinor manipulates Hiccup's cousin Snotlout to bring him to her, then proceeds to have Hiccup tortured to reveal the location of the human rebels. When peace is almost achieved between humans and dragons, Excellinor aids Alvin in stealing the jewel and attempts to unleash its plague to wipe out all dragons. Even with peace achieved, Excellinor tries a final attempt on Hiccup's life, forcing the dragon Furious to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
- First book & How to Steal a Dragon's Sword: The Green Death, aka Merciless, is a colossal sea dragon who, over a thousand years ago, led the dragon race to eradicate humankind before being exiled by Hiccup's ancestor. Throughout his exile, Merciless would sink countless ships by devouring them, and their inhabitants, before drifting into slumber. After being washed ashore on Berk, Merciless devours another sea dragon that had also washed ashore with him because it "was full of itself". Merciless then announces to Hiccup that he intends to devour everyone on the island. After killing the Purple Death and being mortally wounded, Merciless swallows Hiccup alive. When he sneezes Hiccup out, Merciless decides to attempt to incinerate him and the others alive, relishing in their terror.
DreamWorks Franchise[]
- Drago Bludvist is an unfeeling madman who seeks to take over Berk and the entire world. Having lost his village, left arm, and family to dragons when he was young, Drago subverts a Freudian Excuse by becoming exactly like the ones on whom he sought revenge against and using fear to dominate anyone in his path. Prior to the plot of the series, Drago, in one of his earliest conquests, found the egg of a Bewilderbeast and horrifically tortured the baby dragon until the latter reached adulthood, thus forcing him to become completely submissive to his will. He also came to a chieftain's meeting and offered to drive away the dragons if they would kneel to him; when they declined, Drago responded by burning them alive and leaving no survivors but Stoick, Hiccup's father. In the TV series Race to the Edge, Drago has Krogan executed for being unable to capture a Bewilderbeast and because he can't trust that he will not fail him again, despite him already having a Bewilderbeast of his own by that time. In How to Train Your Dragon 2, Drago raises a dragon army led by his Bewilderbeast and attempts to execute his right hand man Eret for failing him just like he did with Krogan, as well as the Dragon Riders he brought with him. Drago enslaves the dragons living under Valka's care and kills their Alpha to assert his power. He even hypnotizes loyal Toothless to fire on his master, Hiccup, and simply scoffs when Stoick takes the blast instead. He then proceeds to lay waste to Berk with his new-found army. Even after his death, the massive impact of his crimes are still present, as in the video game Dawn of New Riders, it's shown that Drago murdered King Stormheart of the Mongrel Tribe. Eir Stormheart was traumatized by her father's death, and in the comic Dragonvine, it's shown that Bayana and his tribe kept trying to find a safe island for themselves to inhabit after Drago burned down their village upon finding out that they were farmers and not warriors. Power hungry beyond salvation, Drago ended up putting even the Red Death to shame.
- Grimmel the Grisly rivals the above-mentioned Drago Bludvist in darkness and depravity. Having been hailed as a hero upon killing the first Night Fury he came across as a boy, Grimmel has hunted all but one to near extinction, taking it upon himself to wipe out all dragons out of nothing more than Fantastic Racism and his own sadistic pleasure. Grimmel feels no empathy towards any living human or dragon, as evidenced by his treatment of his six Deathgripper dragon slaves, who are drugged with mind controlling venom collars, and fed innocent baby Dragons to make them even more deadly. In Dawn of New Riders, it's revealed that Grimmel, known as "G", created a dealership with the future warlord Eir Stormheart, with her giving him a drug that allows him to brainwash dragons to his will, and him giving her dozens of dragons for her to use for horrific, cruel experiments that drive them mentally insane through psychological torture so they could be used as shock soldiers. However, he eventually betrayed her and conducted these experiments himself on other dragons to turn them into his very own draconic shock soldiers. Even though the Chimeragon that he had captured fled from him, Grimmel has his followers burn down the sanctuary that Hiccup built for the dragon and others. In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Grimmel realizes Hiccup's dragon Toothless is the last Night Fury alive, so he invades Berk with an ultimatum of threatening to destroy everything Hiccup loves, before proceeding to torch his house and a whole part of Berk to the ground. Upon the Dragon Riders' failed attempt to capture Grimmel, he traps them in his base and tries to burn them all alive with his Deathgrippers. In the climax, Grimmel succeeds in capturing Toothless and the Light Fury, threatening the latter's life to force Toothless to call the dragons to the warlords who hired him. He then prepares to butcher them all while betraying his warlord allies at the same time. Once foiled by Hiccup and the Dragon Riders, Grimmel enslaves the Light Fury with a venom collar, using her as his personal steed, and tries to drag Hiccup down with him upon being defeated for the final time. Ruthless, sadistic, and with no qualms as to who he must kill or hurt in pursuit of his own self-gain, Grimmel proved to be an exceptionally dark villain in a film more lighthearted than its predecessors.
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010): The Red Death is the dragon "Hive Queen" of the archipelago, and is perhaps single-handedly responsible for all hatred of dragons throughout the archipelago. Enslaving countless dragons to its will, the Red Death has forced them to raid villages, kill hundreds of humans, and sacrifice thousands of their own kind to satisfy the Red Death's gluttonous desires, promoting bloody war between humans and dragons for centuries. The Red Death is quick to punish any dragons that do not properly serve it by eating them alive, and when the army of Berk arrives to stop its evil, the Red Death strands them on its island so it can slaughter them all in a flaming frenzy.
- Dragons: Race to the Edge:
- Ryker Grimborn is the brutish, less intelligent older brother of Viggo, but nonetheless proves himself to be the more depraved of the two. The co-leader of the Grimborn dragon hunters who hope to "skin or sell" every last dragon in the archipelago, Ryker works with Viggo to enslave innumerable dragons into torturous existences, eventually killing the dragons to sell their body parts. A full enabler and partner in Viggo's worst schemes, such as unleashing a plague in an attempt to blackmail entire islands with the cure, Ryker runs his own dragon fighting club on the side, where he forces the captured beasts to duel to the death for the amusement of crowds. Eventually growing weary of Viggo's reign, Ryker betrays his brother and takes control of the Shellfire project to launch the single most destructive campaign of death the archipelago has ever seen, Ryker planning to bomb every last island and their populations until all allies of Berk have been wiped out, Ryker bragging that he doesn't want prisoners; only bodies.
- Krogan is the leader of the Dragon Flyers and second-in-command to Drago Bludvist himself, having been right there at his master's side when he massacred the chieftains of the archipelago. The one whom Drago has entrusted with capturing a Bewilderbeast which Krogan knows what his plans with are, Krogan allies in a ruthless Big Bad Duumvirate with the Grimborns and later Johann, openly attempting to betray and kill them all at numerous points. At one point, Krogan lays waste to Berk, capturing and threatening the populace to cow Stoick into surrender, while attempting to massacre the captured dragons with a ballista for cruel sport. Easily the cruelest boss in the entire franchise, Krogan kills his own minions simply for being uneasy with the way he treats dragons, throws them dozens at a time to die either in an active volcano or at the hands of the Bewilderbeast, and at one point vetoes Viggo's option of a quick execution for a failed minion simply for the pleasure of torturing the mook to death himself. Considering how much of a bad boss he is, Drago ordering his execution for failing him doesn't feel as vile anymore.