All right, I have something to show you. It’s too strange of a glitch for me to not question it.
Y’all can check this on Netflix if you don’t believe me. These are the cover images for the episodes. Which if you read the plot and recall the episode, the thumbnail does not fit.
Neither fits their episode, because Astrid didn’t have Stormfly by the time Hiccup and Toothless booked it armorless, and with Viggo and Ryker, well I am confusion.
I remember initially looking at it and thinking, huh well this wasn’t an episode with the Hunters. Maybe it was just a quick scene like at the end of Between a Rock and a Hard Place. But then I came to inspect the image further. The dragon that Ryker and Viggo are looking at, what is it? Because the only dragons I remember with double wings are Cloudjumper and Krogan’s Singetail. Yet, you see me name those. Neither of which Ryker and Viggo met.
Then I thought it was maybe an image from Buffalord Soldier, but I can shoot it down just like with the others. The Buffalord doesn’t have double wings, and that look of shock on their faces would’ve been for when they went pufferfish mode, which is not seen in frame. When I went to the episode to see if that’s where it could be, it’s not the right setting. The Buffalord goes puffer mode and takes the Hunter ship into the sky, nearly knocking the men overboard had Ryker not cut the chain in time. It’s not a grassy knoll where they would have made that face.
So I come to this conclusion: this image isn’t from any existing episode. Viggo and Ryker never encounter a dragon with double wings and, I also pay particular attention to the spikes at its head. The shadow we as viewers can see. It reminds me of a Skrill. But lemme remind, we do not see a Skrill with double wings. Sure there may be some out there, but not seen in RTTE canon.
Which also may mean, that we got an incidental hint at an episode that never aired. Or the thumbnail used was a frame that was animated but never integrated into an episode. That image leads me to think, perhaps we were meant to get an episode centered around Viggo and Ryker. See something as to their day-to-day. And it never made it in the six seasons because the crew had to cut. Once again I outline, Race to the Edge was meant to be four seasons, not six. It also isn’t entirely clear as to how much was out by the time the crew was greenlighted for two more seasons, meaning they had to come up with more since the Dragon Hunter’s defeat was no longer their endgame.
If that truly was a written episode that didn’t make the cut, then perhaps it was omitted because an event would’ve have fit the ending to four seasons, not six. But I look at that mistake, the improper thumbnail, the look of shock on Ryker and Viggo’s faces, and I wonder what was behind it. What was it about that dragon that caused them to look like that, why was that dragon never introduced later on? Was it a filler, or something Viggo could have come to use against the Dragon Riders.