Hiccup (How to Train Your Dragon): Actor, Story and Fate

Hiccup is the small, awkward teenage son of Stoick, the chief of the Viking island of Berk, and he is the central character of the How to Train Your Dragon films. In the credits he appears as Hiccup, as Hiccup (voice), and as Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (voice) in the short Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury, which gives his full name. No film credit or studio synopsis explains why he is called Hiccup.

Jay Baruchel voices him, with first billing, in How to Train Your Dragon (2010), directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. Baruchel returns for How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), both directed by Dean DeBlois. Mason Thames plays Hiccup on screen in How to Train Your Dragon (2025), also directed by DeBlois, so it is the only film where the character has a face rather than a voice.

At the start of the story Hiccup works for the blacksmith Gobber and longs to fight dragons like everyone else in the village. He is not built like a warrior, and his talent is for inventing: he brings down a rare Night Fury with a homemade launcher, and the rest of the series grows out of what he does next. How to Train Your Dragon (2010) is the first film to watch to meet him.

Across the How to Train Your Dragon films, Hiccup grows from an outcast blacksmith's apprentice into the chief of Berk, and in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) he gives up Toothless to keep dragons safe.

In How to Train Your Dragon (2010) he finds the wounded Night Fury in the woods and cannot bring himself to kill it. He names it Toothless, builds a replacement tail fin, and learns how dragons behave. That knowledge makes him the star of the dragon training class, which makes Astrid suspicious. When the dragons' nest and the Red Death are revealed and Toothless is captured, Stoick disowns him. Hiccup then frees Toothless and rallies his friends, and he defeats the Red Death, losing part of his left leg. He wakes up with a prosthetic foot built by Gobber.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) is set five years after peace was made. Stoick wants him to prepare to become chief, and Hiccup is unsure he is ready. He sets out to talk Drago Bludvist out of enslaving dragons, finds his mother Valka, and sees Stoick die shielding him when Toothless, under Drago's control, fires at him. Hiccup then frees Toothless from the hold, and he is named chief at the end.

In The Hidden World, a year after he became chief, Berk is overcrowded with rescued dragons and hunted by Grimmel. Hiccup realizes dragons are not safe among humans, says goodbye to Toothless, and the Berkians release their dragons. How to Train Your Dragon (2025) retells the first story with Mason Thames in the role, and it ends with the romance between Hiccup and Astrid beginning.

Hiccup's closest relationship is with the Night Fury Toothless, and his bonds with Astrid, Stoick, Valka and Gobber are shaped by it.

Toothless. Hiccup spares the dragon in the first act, and the pair become partners in flight, with Hiccup riding in a harness and working a prosthetic tail fin. In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) the Light Fury draws Toothless away, and Hiccup lets him go. See Toothless.

Astrid. She grows suspicious of him in dragon training, and she is won over after a flight with Toothless. They marry after The Hidden World and become chieftains of New Berk. See Astrid.

Stoick. His father disowns him in the first film, reconciles with him at the end, and dies in the second. See Stoick.

Valka. His mother, long thought dead, shelters dragons in a hidden ice sanctuary, and she stays in Berk with Hiccup at the end of the second film. See Valka.

Gobber. The blacksmith employs Hiccup in the first film and builds his prosthetic foot.

Enemies. Drago Bludvist and Grimmel each want to control or hunt dragons, and each forces Hiccup to choose between his people and his friend.

Fellow riders. Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut follow him into the battles.

Hiccup is alive at the close of every film he appears in, including How to Train Your Dragon (2025), and the animated trilogy leaves him a married father and a chieftain of New Berk.

His last major choice comes once Grimmel is beaten. Hiccup and Toothless reach the same painful conclusion: dragons can stay safe only if humans keep their distance. Hiccup says his farewell, and the Berkians let their dragons leave for the Hidden World. Some months afterward, Hiccup and Astrid marry. A decade later, Toothless and the Light Fury are raising three hybrid young, and Hiccup and Astrid come to see them with their own children. Hiccup promises that dragons will remain hidden until people and dragons can live side by side in peace.

The short How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming aired on NBC in December 2019. It takes place ten years after The Hidden World, just before that epilogue. In it Hiccup, with Astrid and Gobber, organizes a holiday pageant honoring dragons for a younger generation of Vikings that has forgotten the bond.

His story is set to continue in the live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027), dated for June 11, 2027, with Dean DeBlois writing and directing. Further plans for the character are covered under how to train your dragon 2 live action.

Hiccup's best moments are the ones where he chooses the harder, kinder option while the people around him expect the opposite.

1. Sparing the Night Fury in How to Train Your Dragon (2010). It is the first time he chooses mercy over the Viking way, and it sets up everything that follows.

2. Refusing to kill the captive dragon at his final exam in How to Train Your Dragon (2025). He gives up the public victory he wanted all his life, and it costs him his father's trust. It is the choice I would point a parent to when they ask what the series teaches.

3. Freeing Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014). After Stoick dies, Hiccup has every reason to turn on the dragon who fired the shot, and instead he frees Toothless from the hold.

4. Letting the dragons go in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019). This is the bravest thing he does, because it is a goodbye with no battle to soften it.

5. How Mason Thames plays the same scenes in How to Train Your Dragon (2025). Thames plays the first story's scenes on screen, and the comparison with Jay Baruchel's voice is a fair argument for the live action vs animated comparison.