Valka How to Train Your Dragon: Hiccup's Mother Explained

Valka is Hiccup's mother, a dragon rider voiced by Cate Blanchett in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019). She first appears in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), directed by Dean DeBlois, where she is billed second, directly after Jay Baruchel's Hiccup. The credits list the role simply as Valka (voice). Blanchett returns for The Hidden World (2019), also directed by DeBlois, where she is billed fourth.

Valka is not among the credited cast of How to Train Your Dragon (2010). So, if you are looking for Hiccup's mom, the sequel era of the saga is where to find her. Both animated sequels are rated PG in the US, which gives parents a clear starting point when deciding whether a film suits their child.

The next chapter is the live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027), which Dean DeBlois writes and directs, with Cate Blanchett joining as Valka. Universal dated it for June 11, 2027, and the film is in production. Blanchett's casting means the role keeps the performer who gave Valka her voice in the animated films.

Valka's arc moves from years of hiding among the dragons she saved to a home beside her son on Berk, and almost all of it plays out in how to train your dragon 2, released in 2014. She enters as a stranger: a mysterious dragon rider who pulls Hiccup out of danger while he is on his way to confront the warlord Drago Bludvist.

The stranger turns out to be his mother, long thought dead. In the years since, she has rescued dragons and sheltered them in a hidden ice sanctuary ruled by a giant alpha dragon, the Bewilderbeast. Her life there is the opposite of the Viking tradition of fighting dragons.

Stoick comes looking and finds her, and the family is briefly reunited. The reunion is cut short when Drago captures Astrid and the other riders, then attacks the sanctuary with a Bewilderbeast of his own. His beast kills the old alpha, and every dragon in sight falls under his control. Toothless, controlled by Drago, fires at Hiccup, and Stoick dies shielding his son. Berk mourns him with a Viking funeral.

The arc closes with a choice to stay. After Hiccup frees Toothless and the freed dragons rally to him, Drago's Bewilderbeast is driven back into the sea with Drago on it. Hiccup is named chief, and Valka remains in Berk with him instead of returning to the sanctuary.

Blanchett is credited as Valka again in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), where the plot records no death for her.

Valka's main relationships are with her son Hiccup, Hiccup's father Stoick and the dragons she shelters. With Hiccup, the bond begins as a rescue: she pulls him out of danger while he is searching for Drago, and by the end of How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) she has settled in Berk with him after he is named chief. For his side of the story, see hiccup how to train your dragon. Stoick finds her in the ice sanctuary, and that meeting reunites the family for a short time before Drago's attack; his arc is covered at stoick how to train your dragon.

Her relationship with dragons sets her apart from the other adults on Berk. Where the Vikings spent generations fighting dragons, Valka spent years saving them, and the sanctuary she shelters them in is ruled by the Bewilderbeast. Drago, who wants an army of enslaved dragons, is her opposite number, and his own Bewilderbeast kills the old alpha in the attack on the sanctuary.

Is Hiccup's mom a villain? No. Nothing in the plot of How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) casts Valka against Hiccup or Berk, and her role is that of rescuer and protector. Fans also ask whether Valka married Snotlout. She did not: Snotlout, voiced by Jonah Hill in the 2014 film, is one of Hiccup's fellow riders, and no film plot pairs him with Valka.

Valka does not die in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014); she stays in Berk with Hiccup after he is named chief. The death viewers remember from that film is Stoick's, killed while shielding Hiccup from Toothless under Drago's control, and it is often mixed up with Valka's story because the two are reunited so briefly beforehand.

In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), Valka is credited in the voice cast with Cate Blanchett again, and the plot records no death for her. Her status after the animated trilogy is therefore alive and unresolved rather than confirmed either way.

The live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027) is in production with Blanchett joining as Valka, so her story is set to be told again on screen.

Valka's best moment is her rescue of Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), which turns an unknown dragon rider into his long lost mother. It works as a reveal because it answers a question the audience has been asked to wonder about since the trappers first appear, and it gives the second film its emotional center.

The ice sanctuary comes a close second. In my opinion, the sharpest contrast in the series is between the dragon training class in How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and a sanctuary where a woman has spent years saving dragons. Valka is the proof that Hiccup's approach was never a fluke of one boy and one Night Fury.

The brief reunion with Stoick sits third in my ranking. It is short, and the shortness is the point: the film gives Hiccup's parents only a little time together before Drago's attack, which raises the weight of Stoick's death.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) is the film to watch for Valka's full story.