The Night and The Fury: Things I liked! Post 2

I love Toothless's terrifying presence in this episode

Alright, onto the episode! Just to give a really general sweep of why The Night and the Fury was such an excellent episode was the fact that we had Toothless being hunted. I just love that kind of angst! Now by "love" I mean that out of all plots that really, really engage my emotions, Toothless-hunted plots are some of the most powerful. It makes perfect sense that Dagur would single him out of all other dragons because Toothless, as a Night Fury, is still the only Dragon known to have never been killed by a Viking. Hiccup may have downed him, but in sparing Toothless's life he left the ultimate prize untouched. Anyone who killed a Night Fury would go down in history, and considering that Toothless cannot fly on his own, it leaves him easily cornered. 

He's really actually frightened at this point. I wonder what he thinks is going on with Hiccup.

The whole episode did a brilliant job of giving Toothless his old presence back. In the first film we met him as a terrifying creature who miraculously spared Hiccup's life. We met Toothless as the bane of Viking existence, as the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death. Sometimes it is easy to forget and lose that when he is calm and charming, but it is amazing to see him when he reverts back to his old way of living. Toothless has been trained, but he most certainly has not been tamed. 

Look at how sad, angry, and hopeless he looks! It is shocking.

So, all that to say it was truly spectacular to get an episode where we are reminded once again of how incredibly lethal and feared Toothless is. If Toothless wasn't such a frightening, powerful, deadly creature, then his friendship with Hiccup would not feel anywhere near as unique and precious. It is the fact that there is a loyal, loving heart at the core of that fearsome dragon that makes Toothless the amazing companion that he is.

My imagination works on mental images, so Dagur threatening to wear Toothless's skull as a helmet hurt.

And back to the whole idea of being hunted, look at who is doing the hunting! Dagur will definitely be getting his own post, but I just have to say right now that he was the perfectly awful villain! The moment where he says, "I don't care about sporting! I care about killing that Night Fury and wearing its skull as a helmet!" gets me absolutely every time! I've watched straight through this episode seven times to date, and that intense music and Toothless stumbling on a cliff edge right after that awful line from Dagur continues to give me chills. It is incredibly different, and incredibly sick. So far, most every villain has targeted Hiccup, and Toothless has been at Hiccup's side through thick and thin, but now our villain is homing his sights in on Toothless. He doesn't want to capture or learn from the dragon, he simply wishes to kill it for the sadistic pleasure of doing so. When you've grown to love Toothless as much as I have, anyone who wants to harm him feels evil, but any one who wants to kill him for pleasure and glory comes across as being the most vile and awful kind of character imaginable. This plot was golden! I've always wanted to have a really angsty Toothless centered set of events, and we got it! I've even written short stories with Toothless being hunted and Inhonoredglory and Toothlesslove's web novel hints strongly at it! It is just such a perfect way to throw our favorite characters into terribly dark conflict, but the darker the conflict, the more brilliant the triumph feels! When Hiccup walks out and throws down the gauntlet to protect his friend, I couldn't have been more proud of or excited by his action (and I'll be discussing that in a future post as well!) This was a broad sweep of the episode, a broad sweep of its major theme, and I hope I covered it well enough because the simple, cruel idea of having someone hunt our wonderful Toothless sucked my attention into this episode possibly more than any other in the series! Toothless-hunted angst is one of the most powerful, and though this wasn't able to be as dark as a sequel, for a tv episode it was spectacular!