What made Hiccup and Toothless matter was not the spectacle of dragons. It was the argument the films kept making: that the scariest thing you can do is change your mind. A Viking boy who refuses to kill, a war chief who learns to stop fearing what he cannot control, a civilization that dismantles its own mythology when the evidence demands it. The How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, built by DreamWorks over nine years and rooted in Cressida Cowell's beloved book series, is one of the rare animated franchises that trusted its audience to grieve. Each film strips something away. By the third, the dragon age ends, and the boy who started it all has to let it go. If you loved the ache of that, here is where to go next.
Essential How to Train Your Dragon
The films and series at the heart of the franchise
The Other Great Animated Trilogies
Films and series with the same scope, emotional maturity, and willingness to let characters change
Boy Meets Monster: Stories of Unlikely Bonds
Films and series about kids who choose connection over fear, and what that costs them
Nordic Myth, Viking Worlds, and Wild Places
Games and books that share the franchise's Norse sensibility and sense of a world bigger than its maps
Where Dragons Come From: The Source Books and Their Kin
Cressida Cowell's original series and the children's and YA fantasy books that share its spirit
Games Built on Flight and Friendship
Games that capture the franchise's core pleasures: soaring movement, creature bonds, and worlds worth exploring
The Hidden World Stuck the Landing Most Animated Franchises Fumble
Most animated trilogies end with a bigger fight. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World ends with a goodbye. The 2019 finale asks whether some bonds are so precious they require sacrifice to protect, and it answers yes without sentimentality. Hiccup and Toothless part not because they have to, but because Hiccup finally understands what love actually costs. That is the logic of serious drama, not children's entertainment as usually defined.
John Powell's Score Is One of the Best in Animation History
John Powell's music for the trilogy does something rare: it sounds like the specific place these films live. Celtic percussion, Norse horn motifs, and sweeping strings combine into something that could only belong to Berk. 'Forbidden Friendship', the cue built around Hiccup and Toothless's first moment of trust, is five minutes of composition that carries the entire emotional logic of the trilogy. It belongs alongside Thomas Newman and John Williams as a score that elevates the film beyond what the images achieve alone.
The DreamWorks Animation Canon Deserves the Same Respect Pixar Gets
DreamWorks Animation spent most of the 2000s making films that were funny and sometimes great but rarely serious. The How to Train Your Dragon trilogy changed that. It showed the studio could build across films, honor continuity, deepen characters across a decade, and earn a genuinely sad ending. That is Pixar-level craft, and the critical record has been slow to acknowledge it. The Kung Fu Panda films and the HTTYD trilogy together make a strong case for DreamWorks as one of the most accomplished animation studios of the 2010s.
How the Franchise Grew
- 2003Cressida Cowell publishes the first How to Train Your Dragon novel in the UK, beginning a 12-book series.
- 2010DreamWorks Animation releases the first film. John Powell's score and the flying sequences redefine what animated adventure can feel like. How to Train Your Dragon
- 2012Dragons: Riders of Berk premieres on Cartoon Network, expanding the world between films.
- 2014The sequel arrives with a darker tone: Hiccup's father dies, the world expands, and the stakes become adult. How to Train Your Dragon 2
- 2015Cowell completes the book series with the twelfth volume.
- 2019The Hidden World closes the trilogy. The dragon age ends. The farewell scene becomes one of the most discussed emotional beats in animation of the decade. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
- 2019Short film Homecoming bridges the trilogy to a potential future. Homecoming
- 2021Dragons: The Nine Realms launches on Peacock, set 1,300 years after the trilogy. Dragons: The Nine Realms
- 2025Universal releases a live-action remake of the original film, bringing Hiccup and Toothless to a new generation.
Dragon riding and Norse myth
Dragons
Explore the Dragons guide →This is Berk. It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three. The only upside is the pets.Hiccup, How to Train Your Dragon (2010)