Viggo offers the Dragon Riders a truce, leading Hiccup to investigate what he's planning, which itself leads to a hidden village of warriors known of the Defenders of the Wing that believes the riders are in league with Viggo.
Tropes:
- Animal Wrongs Group: The Defenders are arrogant, self-righteous, and have an overwhelmingly one-track mentality.
- Arrow Catch: Astrid manages to catch a couple of arrows fired at her, but Hiccup can't, and him getting shot distracts her long enough for her to get shot, too.
- Batman Gambit: Once again, despite his best efforts to act outside of Viggo's plan, Hiccup plays right into Viggo's hands.
- Bring the Anchor Along: If you're a dragon, this is how you escape dragon-proof chains on a dragon-proof winch.
- Call-Back: The island where Viggo and Hiccup meet up is an island full of Blue Oleanders, which are poisonous to dragons.
- Cliffhanger: Viggo successfully captures the Defenders' great protector, the Eruptodon, framing Hiccup in the process and getting him sentenced to death.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: While on trial, Tuffnut tries to defend Hiccup. That goes about as well as you'd expect...
- Foreshadowing: Viggo tells Hiccup that he doesn't wish to rule the world, unlike "some people," a thinly veiled reference to the second film's Big Bad, Drago Bludvist.
- Hypocrite: Mala accuses Hiccup and the other riders of enslaving dragons, albeit through a softer touch. And yet, the Defenders use Sagefruit to calm aggressive dragons, AKA drugging them into compliance, and use this to prevent Berk's dragons from saving their riders. Luckily, Toothless is able to power through the effects to save Hiccup anyway.
- I Know You Know I Know: Hiccup's thought process devolves into this, constantly second-guessing himself on Viggo's intentions. Tuffnut tries to do it too but just gets himself caught in an endless loop.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Mala wields a long katana, keeping with the Defenders' Japanese inspired design.
- Logical Weakness: While Ryker has learned from previous experience and now has the dragon resistant chains on dragon resistant winches, Hiccup simply moves on to attacking the normal wood of the ship the winch is anchored to.
- Ninja: The Defenders are modelled after ninjas, using stealth tactics and incapacitating darts to defeat intruders as opposed to direct confrontation. They wear black robes with face masks, and their queen wears a regal kimono.
- Nothing Personal: Viggo tells Hiccup that dragon hunting is merely a business for him, and rather than damage that business through conflict, he's open to a peaceful compromise where he and his hunters stay away from Berk's territory.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Mala wonders if Berk's peaceful coexistence with dragons is just another form of the enslavement that the dragon hunters pursue.
- Reused Character Design: With the exception of Mala and Throk, the other Defenders of the Wing are just Hiccup and Heather's character models in face concealing masks.
- Revealing Cover-Up: Hiccup's line of reasoning is that Viggo would only want this deal to keep the riders out of someplace important, so the crew go to investigate the closest island to the border on Viggo's side.
- Running Gag: The saga of dragons vs. dragon-proof chains anchored to something on a ship continues.Fishlegs: The winch!Ryker: I'm afraid the chain and the winch are both dragon-proof this time!Hiccup: But that wood deck isn't...
- Taking the Bullet: With dragonroot arrows fired on Stormfly, Astrid kicks one away and simply takes the other one in the leg to keep Stormfly from being hit.
- This Is My Side: The terms of Viggo's truce are to essentially divide the areas of the archipelago in half between them.
- Weaponized Weakness: The location Viggo picked for his meeting with Hiccup turns out to be a field of Blue Oleander (aka dragon kryptonite). Suspiciously, in its introduction, the flower nearly killed every dragon who lived on a large island where it was planted. Here, Toothless can land right next to it with no problem, the rules now seeming to be "as long you don't touch the flower, you're okay."
