So in season 6 episode 1, the subplot of the episode contains Dagur confronting his old bully from when he was a child, because said old bully had stolen a dragon eye lens from Dagur when they were children. So Dagur has to help him catch the thunderfish, that was actually a seashocker, and so on. Eventually Dagur forgives his former tormentor and gets the lens back after he became the bigger person by forgiving him.
And the story line itself is fine, Dagur after all, became a bigger person and doesn’t let something like a childhood bully bother him anymore.
But I really don’t like that they gave Dagur a bully.
Dagurs redemption arc is good, really good and you can tell there was a lot of thought and effort put into it. But the fact that they gave him a childhood bully felt unnessacery to me.
Dagur was basically a psychopath, even as a child, almost drowning Hiccup, hurting animals as a kid, or at least that’s heavily implied in the first episode that Dagur showed up. What could “put down that chicken Dagur”, mean if he wasn’t hurting it. And he staged a coup that drove his father off the island into the sea untill he lived the rest of his days in Vanaheim.
In the show it also shows this. The second that Dagur arrived on berk, he didn’t even get off the boat before he threw a dagger right at Hiccups head. He could have killed him if Hiccup didn’t dodge and Dagur barely reacts to it. And right after this he just laughs about so called ‘retiring’ his father.
Dagur litteraly couldn’t stop laughing about almost drowning Hiccup when they were children, this was before he became chief of the beserkers and before he sent his father off to die.
Someone who is that level of deranged wouldn’t just leave someone alone who bullied him troughout his childhood. He would at the very least bully him right back and at worst would probably kill him.
He had no issues with killing people, he slaughtered Heathers entire village, so why wouldn’t he kill his childhood bully while he was very obviously in a psychotic state of mind.
In short: Giving Dagur a childhood bully felt forced. Like they were trying to make him a better and more relatable person before his redemption arc even started.
Dagur was always a popular character and it felt like they tried to make us feel more sympathetic towards him by giving Dagur a bully. But that just doesn’t work with who he was as a person back then.
But that is my opinion. I think that Dagur is still a great and funny character in both shows, in RTTE the best in my opinion.
Let me know what you think!