One of many things I love about Midnight Scrum is how it shows us the two faces of Hiccup in danger: when he is with his captor/attacker and when he is alone.
When he first wakes up below deck in Amos and Berthel's ship, he's visibly disoriented and scared. His expression, the way he desperately tugs at the ropes, the panicked gasps. And yes, he does immediately go into figure-it-out mode, but when he hears his captors walking around above deck, he pauses his desperate attempt to cut through the ropes and looks up with this expression:
I mean, look at him. He's been kidnapped and bound and is on his way to being delivered to his greatest enemy. He's terrified.
But the moment his captors are with him, he hides his fear and goes into what I affectionately call chihuahua mode: he puts on a fearless facade like a mask, barks big and loud with bold threats and snarky comebacks and angry retorts, and refuses to let any fear through the cracks.
Even in moments of desperation, like when he tries to convince Savage to ransom him instead of taking him to Viggo, or tries to jump ship with his hands tied, he doesn't let his fear show and instead relies on earnest appeals to logic and anger respectively to fuel his words and actions.
And like, even with a chain around his neck, Hiccup still leans into the defiance and problem-solving, looking-for-any-chance-to-escape mode far more than fear, and he never panics once.
The only times we see the mask slip in front of his enemies are near the end of the episode, when he has been tossed around, tied up multiple times and passed between bounty hunters like a hot potato, has had a chain wrapped around his neck and been dragged around like an animal, nearly fallen to his death after making the conscious decision to kill his enemy rather than save him, has been rendered completely helpless and at Ryker's mercy at the loss of his prosthetic and is about to be dragged off to Viggo to have Thor knows what done to him, is being used as a human shield.
And of course when he's tied up, legless, and has Throck looming over him with a knife. When he literally thinks he's about to die.
And I love that his exhaustion and fear show through in these moments because it allows us to see that Hiccup has reached his limit, reminds us that he's human, and also shows us that even when he's scared, he doesn't panic - he thinks, he acts where he can, and he musters as much defiance as he can, even though his mask is beginning to crack.
Like, even in these moments where shit gets really, really real, you can see no trace of panic, Hiccup is thinking, planning his next escape attempt, looking for any way out. Scared, yeah. But determined, defiant. And not letting his enemies see him panic, not even once.
I could literally go on for ages about this. I love this man so much; he's such a complex, interesting, psychologically fascinating, and wonderfully whumpable character.
