Stoick: How to Train Your Dragon Character Guide

Stoick the Vast is the chief of Berk, a Viking island, and he is the father of Hiccup. In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, he leads a village that dragons raid constantly. His small and awkward son works for the blacksmith Gobber and longs to fight dragons like everyone else, which is the gap between father and son that the whole story grows from.

The credits use three forms of his name. "Stoick" is the on screen role in How to Train Your Dragon (2025), directed by Dean DeBlois, where Butler plays the chief in person opposite Mason Thames as Hiccup. "Stoick (voice)" covers the animated features: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), directed by Dean DeBlois, and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), also directed by DeBlois. "Stoick the Vast (voice)" appears in the short Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury (2011). Gerard Butler is credited under all three forms, and he is credited as Stoick (voice) in the NBC holiday special How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming (2019) too.

Gerard Butler plays Stoick in both the animated films and in How to Train Your Dragon (2025).

The next chapter is the live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027), dated for June 11, 2027 in the US. Whether Stoick appears in it, and who plays him, has not been stated in the reports on the film. For the wider cast, see how to train your dragon cast.

Stoick's arc runs from disowning Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon (2010) to dying for him in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), and the later films repeat or remember that arc. In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), he believes Hiccup has betrayed the village after Hiccup's secret comes out. He disowns his son and sails with the fleet to find the dragons' nest. On the battlefield he sees that Hiccup was right all along, and by the end he accepts his son, and Vikings and dragons now share their homes.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) gives him a new worry. He wants Hiccup to prepare to become chief, while Hiccup is unsure he is ready. Stoick also carries history with Drago Bludvist, the warlord who once tried to force the chiefs to follow him and attacked those who refused. When Stoick finds Valka, his wife, long thought dead and now living in a hidden ice sanctuary, the family is briefly reunited.

In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), Stoick is already gone. A year after Hiccup became chief, he wants to lead Berk to the Hidden World, a dragon haven his late father once described. Butler is still credited in the cast, so the character remains part of the story through memory.

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) retells the 2010 arc with Butler on screen. Stoick captures Toothless, disowns Hiccup, and forces the dragon to guide the Viking fleet to the nest. By the close he has reconciled with his son, Hiccup is respected in the village, and dragons live alongside the Vikings.

Stoick's family is his son Hiccup and his wife Valka, and his closest ally is the blacksmith Gobber. Almost every scene he shares with Hiccup is a version of one question: can a chief and a son who see the world differently still trust one another? How to Train Your Dragon (2010) answers it through conflict, How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) through trust and loss, and How to Train Your Dragon (2025) stages the break and the repair again with a live cast.

His bond with Gobber is the steadier one. Gobber is the blacksmith who employs Hiccup, voiced by Craig Ferguson in the animated films and played by Nick Frost in How to Train Your Dragon (2025), and he stands close to the chief throughout. Valka is the emotional center of the second animated film. She is Stoick's wife and Hiccup's mother, voiced by Cate Blanchett, and their reunion is brief but it gives Stoick something the first film never did, a life beyond his duties as chief.

Toothless, the Night Fury at the center of the series, starts as an enemy to Stoick and ends as part of his family's story, which is a long road for a man who led a village under constant dragon attack. Astrid, voiced by America Ferrera and played by Nico Parker in How to Train Your Dragon (2025), is one of the young riders who join Hiccup in the fight at the nest in 2010, the battle in which Stoick sees that his son was right.

His great antagonist is Drago Bludvist, the warlord who wants to control dragons for conquest. Stoick warns the others about him before Hiccup rides out to reason with him, and that history is why the conflict feels personal.

Stoick dies in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), killed by Toothless's blast while shielding Hiccup, his son, from the dragon under Drago Bludvist's control. Drago kills the old alpha with a Bewilderbeast of his own and takes control of every dragon in sight, and Toothless fires at Hiccup under that control. Berk mourns Stoick with a Viking funeral, and Hiccup is later named chief, taking up the role his father hoped he would.

Why was he killed off? The reporting on the films cites no filmmaker reason, so the reason given here is a reading of the story. The death clears the way for Hiccup to become chief and for Toothless to be accepted as the dragons' alpha, and it turns the father's long argument about leadership into a final act of protection. It also means How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) can treat Stoick as a memory.

Is Stoick alive in the third film? No. In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), Hiccup refers to his late father's description of the Hidden World.

In How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and How to Train Your Dragon (2025), Stoick lives. Both end with him reconciled to Hiccup. The live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027) has not had Stoick's fate confirmed in the reports on the film.

Stoick's best moment is his death in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), when he shields Hiccup from Toothless without a speech. The film gives the character one choice and he makes it, and that restraint lands because the earlier scenes spent so long on a father who struggled to say what he felt.

The second pick is the moment in How to Train Your Dragon (2010) when Stoick, having disowned Hiccup, watches the teens ride the training dragons into the battle at the nest and sees that his son was right. It works because the film lets a stubborn man change his mind in public, in front of the whole fleet.

Third is the reunion with Valka, a short scene that rewrites what we thought we knew about the chief. Fourth is the funeral on Berk, which gives the series its quietest and most adult sequence.

For animated against live action, the most useful comparison is Butler himself. In How to Train Your Dragon (2010) he gave Stoick a voice, and in How to Train Your Dragon (2025) he gave the chief a body, with the disowning and the later reconciliation staged all over again. If you want to see these scenes in order, start with How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and move on to How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014).