Red Death (Live-Action)

NOTE: This article is about the remake Red Death from the 2025 movie. The 2010 original version can be found here.

Pure Evil

Full Name

Unknown (presumably nameless)

Alias

The Red Death

Origin

How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Allies

Toothless

The dragons on Dragon Island (all formerly)

Powers / Skills

Longevity

Flight
Colossal strength
Dragon controling
High intelligence
Intimidation
Cunning
Fire breath
Great bite

Goals

Obliterate the Vikings of Berk.

Maintain her tyranny over the dragons as she pleases and keep them on feeding her.
Kill Hiccup, Toothless, and any other opposition (all failed).

Moral Event Horizon

Eating any dragon alive as sacrificial food if they didn't offer an appropriate amount of food for her or refuse to acknowledge her.
Blackmailing and enslaving dozens, if not, hundreds of dragon species to feed her and have no food for themselves, causing the war between humanity and dragon-kind as a result.
Attempting to slaughter or devour all of the citizens of Berk.

Kill Count

Thousands

Worst Crimes

Mass murder

Enslavement
Cannibalism
Arson
War crimes
Oppression
Starvation

Type of Villain

Tyrannical Predator

“	Here it comes!	„
	~ Hiccup and Toothless being chased by the Red Death.

The Red Death is the main antagonist of DreamWorks' 2025 live-action feature film How to Train Your Dragon, a remake of their 19th animated feature film of the same name, which was based on Cressida Cowell's 2003 children's fantasy novel of the same name.

Like her animated male counterpart, she is a gigantic kaiju-sized dragon who served as the tyrannical queen and empress of Dragon Island while being responsible for the deadly war between dragonkind and the vikings of Berk when she enslaved hundreds of dragons into getting food for her and destroying villages in the process, leading to the vikings developing a hatred towards her kind.

However, her reign of terror would eventually come to an end when Toothless, a Night Fury and one of the Red Death's former servants, meets, befriends and bonds with fellow viking Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III before showing Hiccup's father, Stoick the Vast, the way to the Red Death's lair in an attempt to stop his former master from killing both the dragons and vikings and end the war permanently.

She is also based off her original male incarnation of the same name.

What Makes Her Pure Evil?[]

She blackmailed and enslaved all the dragon species in the Barbaric Archipelago to her will, forcing all of them to gather food to offer for her while leaving little leftovers for her slaves, thus starving them to death.
- If any dragon didn't offer an appropriate amount of food for her or refuse to acknowledge her, she will eat them alive as sacrificial food. This was demonstrated when a Gronkle did not give her a large enough amount of food (one single, small fish), she devours the dragon alive, causing all the dragons to cower and flee in fear.
  - Once the rest of the dragons flee the nest to search for more food, she takes one of the Zipplebacks to consume.
She had her brethren raid villages for food and causing the deaths of hundreds of humans and thousands of dragons and starting the thousand year war between the two races.
When most of Berk went on another expedition and found Dragon Island, the Red Death crashes through the mountains and burns down their ships to strand them, which still had people inside and likely killed a sizeable portion of them, as they laid lifeless in the water.
Upon stranding them all upon the island, the Red Death attempts to slaughter or devour all of the Vikings there, which would have wiped out most of Berk had Hiccup, Toothless and company not intervened. She almost killed Gobber and Stoick if it wasn't for the timely arrival of the Dragon Riders.
She almost incinerated Barf, Belch, Ruffnut and Tuffnut with her fire breath.
She almost stepped on Fishlegs and Meatlug if it wasn't for Snotlout injuring her eyes. She also attempted to throw the latter off by shaking her head, almost causing him to fall.
She attempts to swallow Astrid and Stormfly whole by inhaling them, and would've succeeded if Astrid didn't break her fangs to free Stormfly.
She attempted to kill Toothless and Hiccup one last time by attempting to burn them alive and even eating them.
She is responsible for the loss of Hiccup's left leg.
The Red Death, like most dragons in the franchise, is shown to have some vague semblance of sapience and have agency.
While very flat in character due to being a voiceless mega-predator and being the only one of her kind, the Red Death has enough personality to not be a generic doomsday villain, in which her main motive is gluttony, something a GDV can never have, has shown some vague form of sapience, with her burning down the ships being a strategic tactic and preferring to not get her own food.
While her death of swallowing Toothless's plasma blast and exploding is very horrifying and violent, she 100% deserved it for all her crimes against the dragons and humans.