- “It's like a giant beehive. They're the workers, and that's their queen. It controls them.”
- ―Astrid describing the behaviour of the Red Death's nest.
The Red Death is the main antagonist in the 2010 DreamWorks film, How to Train Your Dragon and its 2025 live-action adaptation. He is a gigantic dragon that forced other dragons to hunt for him and bring back their catch out of fear of being eaten themselves.
Background[]
Official Description[]
- This ultimate monster, seen pursuing Toothless and Hiccup, is the most vicious. According to legend, it lives 2,000 years and, before it dies, lays 3,000 eggs. The hatchlings fight each other to the death, a process that can take up to 100 years, until only one survives.
- All dragons have a blind spot. Except this one. That is one reason we gave him six eyes instead of two. The other reason is that we wanted him to be just generally upsetting. This one is our Godzilla.[1]
-Chris Sanders
We saw it first time in the theatre, it breathed this three-football-field-long piece of fire and then it went right up through its own shaft of smoke and fire and cut through it diagonally with his wing.
-Chris Sanders
Personality[]
Unlike the other dragons, the Red Death appears to be truly evil and monstrous. He is the largest and most powerful dragon of all so he is able to easily overthrow and enslave the other dragons. The Red Death appears to be very ruthless and intolerant of failure as he eats other dragons that fail to bring back enough food. The Red Death appears to be untamable, unlike the other dragons. And it is unknown if it has any fear, being the largest and strongest. He is also extremely selfish as he didn't care about neither humans nor other dragons.
Physical Appearance[]
The Red Death is a formidable dragon on the island which he and others of his kind consider home. His appearance is similar to that of a Gronckle and possesses six eyes (three on each side). This feature is shared with that of the deadly Nadder. His tail is pegged with spikes, similar to that of a mace or chain ball. His great wings allow him to take flight, despite his colossal size.
Appearances[]
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)[]
The Red Death first appears when Hiccup, Toothless, and Astrid discover the Dragon's nest. After a Gronckle drops a tiny piece of fish to the Red Death, he emerges and devours the dragon. Then, the Red Death tries to eat Hiccup and his friends when he spots that Toothless has contributed nothing and has humans on his back, but they manage to escape. The Red Death then appears again when Stoick attacks the Dragon's nest. He attacks the Vikings and destroys their ships in the process.
Fortunately, Hiccup and his friends arrive and stall the Red Death while Stoick frees Toothless. Hiccup drives the Red Death into the clouds and conceals Toothless' form. Toothless fires several lightning blasts at the Red Death's wings, angering the giant dragon monster. Enraged, the Red Death shoots fire in all directions around him and manages to light Toothless' tail ablaze. Using as much time as they had left, Hiccup and Toothless lead the Red Death out of the clouds and allowed him to chase them until he attempted to fire a finishing blast. However, Toothless fired a plasma blast down his throat and lit his insides ablaze. The dragon's wings are ripped apart, causing it to fall, impact with the ground and explode. In a resulting explosion, the Red Death is killed.
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)[]
TBA
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Red Death was the one who was responsible for the war between the Vikings and the Dragons in the Barbaric Archipelago.
- The Red Death resembles the Tyrannosaurus rex, which ironically, is not a flying dinosaur.
- Despite being called the "Red Death", the score that accompanies the final battle is named "Battling the Green Death". This is because the Green Death was the dragon's counterpart in the original book during the making of the 2010 film.[2]
- Although Red Death is the main antagonist, he only gets a total of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of screen time.[3]
- The Red Death is similar to the Spiny Mandrilla from The Croods: A New Age, which came out 10 years later.
- Astrid refers to the Red Death as a "queen" only to describe the behaviour of the Red Death's nest as it was behaving like a giant beehive. Ironically, his video game counterpart, the Green Death from School of Dragons, is instead female.
- Although the Red Death is a male, many people rumoured the Red Death to be female with little to no sources/citations backing them up (other than Astrid sarcastically calling him a "queen") prior to the rumours starting. The number of sources referring to the Red Death villain as male is expected to grow in future generations to come.
- The running quote "every nest has its queen" stated by Valka in How To Train Your Dragon 2 was only referring to every future Red Death dragons as female and therefore isn't associated with the Red Death from the 2010 film, as he was dead well before the quote was addressed.
- The Red Death is the only main antagonist in a 2010 DreamWorks animated film to not be a human, something that both Rumpelstiltskin and Tighten are.
- Ironically, both his franchise successors, Drago Bludvist and Grimmel the Grisly, are instead humans themselves.
