also this literally proves the villain right? he's such a stupid villain with no depth but at the start hiccup initially believes dragons can coexist, and then over the course of the story he learns the hard truth that they can never work together. which is what grimmel thinks!
if you want to have a "the villain is right" story that's one thing, but this goes against the message of the first two films and the shows.
you also have grimmel being obviously wrong about a lot of other things, which makes me think that this (that the ending agrees with grimmel's pro-separation argument) was unintentional.
for example, he claims hiccup has never faced a foe like him before. then a dragon bursts in to defend grimmel, which grimmel is controlling through means of venom, not friendship. this is just drago. this is exactly what drago did at the meeting of chiefs stoick talked about. whether the dragons are being controlled by venom or an alpha species is irrelevant fantasy nitpicking, both fulfil the same purpose in the story and are narratively identical plot devices to demonstrate how evil the villain is and give him access to the threat of dragons. you can switch grimmel and drago from httyd 2 + 3 with no difference in the story.
back to the idea that dragons and humans cant coexist. and why its stupid.
part of it, i believe, needlessly paints dragons as saints.
dragons are not ontologically good or ontologically evil. some are good and kind and peaceful, sure. see toothless who forgives the boy who cripples him. dragons have enormous capacity for forgiveness and goodness.
but some, like changewings and deathsongs, are cannibals. some, like the red death, cause mass destruction for their own gain. (and to further complicate this, some of these cannibals develop relationships and come to love others and have depth! see garff, the deathsong from rtte.)
dragons hurt other dragons. they're not perfect. they are, like humans, a sentient species who have complicated relationships to the world they live in.
dragons hurt humans! sometimes they're compelled to do it, but (as demonstrated in the shows) a lot of the time dragons are super hostile to humans. as any predator might be, if an unknown potentialy threat approached.
this flattens the entire concept of dragons down. you go from a wide range of species and individuals, each of whom have inner worlds and unique reactions to the environment they live in, and instead you get "perfect dragons who never did any wrong were hurt by humans."
now, the film wants to present berk as having an overcrowding problem, okay, sure i'll accept that idea as legitimate. but it also presents berk as being okay with leaving this island behind because berk is a people, not a place. this is stupid and contradictory messaging.
find a new place. hell, keep berk as berk and find a new island to be a dragon sanctuary. who cares. there are so many options available.
tldr; the idea that dragons must live apart to protect them from humans is stupid.
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