The Next Big Sting

The Next Big Sting is the twelth episode of the first season of Dragons: Race to the Edge. It was released on June 26, 2015 on Netflix.

Overview
Hiccup and the Dragon Riders rescue a wounded Speed Stinger and take it back to Dragon's Edge, unaware of the dangers that follow.

Plot
On another island, the Riders arrive exhausted at a tall cliff as Hiccup invites them to witness his latest invention, the Dragon Fly 1, a flight suit. Though most of the Riders are not amused reasoning that their dragons already allows them to fly with them, Hiccup explains that the flight suit will prove useful if a Rider gets separated from their dragon in mid-flight, allowing them to catch up and remount with their dragon. The Riders still expect that Hiccup's invention will fail, Hiccup ignores it and proceeds to test it by jumping off the cliff. In his first attempt, the flight suit quickly fails, causing Toothless to roughly rescue Hiccup on the way down. Hiccup tries numerous attempts in which the flight suit does little progress and Toothless repeatedly rescuing him, but in one attempt, where the wind is heavy, Hiccup's flight suit finally works and he glides through the river swiftly. When he meets a dead end, Hiccup realizes he needs to improve his turns, so he once again shouts for Toothless' rescue in which Toothless barely makes it. After the rescue, Hiccup's flight suit gets severely damaged, ending it's tests for the day, and Astrid says he is done with the flight suit.

Suddenly, a distress call from a dragon is heard, where Snotlout is nervously familiar of. The Riders check it out, they spot a young Speed Stinger all alone, to which they wonder it should be sleeping due to being nocturnal dragons. The Riders noticed the Speed Stinger's leg is badly injured making it vulnerable for predators. Snotlout suggests they leave it but Hiccup is eager to help it, which Snotlout reluctantly accepts.

When they observe the young Speed Stinger's condition, they conclude that he is defenseless after being separated from it's pack. A few hours later, Hiccup plans to nurse the dragon, bring it to their main quarters, and later return it to where they found it. Hiccup must first place a splint(which is spare parts from his flight suit) on the Speed Stinger's injured leg before they can bring it to Dragon's Edge, so he assigns the Twins to secure it's tail when it tries to resist. However, the Twins do it in a different way, hilariously they secure the Stinger's tail by mocking it and daring it to attack them. This irritates the Speed Stinger, causing it to sting Ruffnut, but only paralyzing her upper body in which her lower half remains functional, Fishlegs observes that young Speed Stingers don't yet have the full potency of paralysis when it is still an adolescent.

It's now up to Tuffnut to secure the tail, he eventually grabs hold of the Speed Stinger's body, however, the tail is still in reach of him. Quickly, Fishlegs and Astrid jumps in to secure it's head and tail, Hiccup hurries to place the splint. After that, the Speed Stinger is able to walk again and confronts Hiccup, Hiccup attempts to bond with it making the Speed Stinger see them as friendlies. With the Speed Stinger calming up, the Riders prepare to take him to Dragon's Edge, aware that the pack will do anything in it's power to retrieve their lost brethren. Just as they fly home, a few Speed Stingers acknowledges them, including the pack's Alpha.

Inside the Riders' arena, Fishlegs rearranges the place to be the Speed Stinger's rehabilitation home, where it gladly observes it's surroundings. However, Fishlegs' left arm got paralyzed as he reveals the Speed Stinger at first didn't get along with him. As Fishlegs tries to bond with it, even though the Stinger is ornery and stubborn, it slowly begins to accept Fishlegs as 'part of the pack'. Snotlout interrupts applying negative comments toward the Speed Stinger as Snotlout has a bad history experience the last time he met a Stinger, he tries to imply that the Speed Stinger is a menace and will just try to sting everyone anytime now. Snotlout demands the Stinger to be thrown back out and attempts to grab it, unfortunately, the Speed Stinger hates him and tries to sting him but Snotlout easily dodges it, and instead Ruffnut gets stung again and paralyzes her legs, as she arrives informing everyone that her paralysis just went off.

Hiccup tries to tell everyone to settle down as the Speed Stinger is getting very agitated as it begins to even see Hiccup as a threat. However, loud noises and activities continue as the Twins pick a fight on each other after Ruffnut's leg suddenly moves and kicks Tuffnut in the butt. Consequently, the Speed Stinger hyper-actively attacks the group and the dragons, where it stings Barf. Stormfly and Toothless attacks it to get it to it's cage where they successfully does so. When the Speed Stinger's mayhem ends, Ruffnut crawls in support of Barf, now immobilized. Belch struggles to walk around as Barf's head is just being dragged all the way while he is still bursting gas.

The Riders and their dragons are exhausted, while Snotlout still continues to express his claims about the Speed Stinger being extremely dangerous. Hiccup just tells him to rest and talk about his claims in the morning. Secretly, Ruffnut is in favor of Snotlout after being sick of getting stung, and gladly complies to whatever Snotlout plans to do with the stinger. The next morning, Fishlegs and Meatlug announces to the Stinger that his splint comes off today. When Meatlug removes it, the Speed Stinger reacts in joy by sprinting around the area as he can use his leg again. However, Fishlegs and Meatlug begins to chase him as he sees the Speed Stinger about to go through a deep pond, as Speed Stingers can't swim. But incredibly, the Speed Stinger runs around it for a long time and does not drown. Fishlegs examines the Speed Stinger's foot where they discover evidence of dragon evolution, the Speed Stingers have developed webbing as they needed to find a way to island-hop as they have no wings, so they adapted and evolved. Fishlegs rushes to tell Hiccup the good news.

Unfortunately, the discovered dragon evolution can be bad news, as the Alpha Speed Stinger prepares the pack to hunt down and find their lost brethren by any means necessary, and they began to sprint across the sea towards Dragon's Edge.

At sunset, Hiccup is glad to hear the news of real Dragon evolution evidence, also the stinger webbing inspired Hiccup to create new improvements to his flight suit, namely Dragon Fly 2 but Astrid demands that he does not say a word about it. As they check their Speed Stinger they find him gone out of his cage, Hiccup suspects that someone took him unauthorized. It is revealed that Snotlout and Hookfang prepares to take the Speed Stinger back to where they first found it, while Ruffnut guards the tied and resting Speed Stinger. However they're too late, as night falls, the Speed Stinger awakens and quickly breaks the ropes holding him, the Stinger attacks Ruffnut, paralyzing the right side of her body and she plummets, Snotlout grabs hold of her. The Speed Stinger also stings Hookfang, paralyzing half of his body, making him unable to fly, and they crash.

The Riders catch up to them in their crash site, Hiccup is disappointed at Snotlout for dragon-napping while Ruffnut is unable to walk in a straight line due to the paralysis, and she just keeps walking in circles. Suddenly, they hear the other Speed Stingers nearby who have now reached the island. Hiccup tells them to quiet down for a chance they might not know their exact location but the young Speed Stinger blows their cover anyway as he calls for his pack. Dozens of Speed Stingers surround the Riders, Hiccup orders them to stand their ground. However, they overwhelm the Riders, Snotlout suddenly feels being selfless as he declares he will not leave anyone in harm.

As more Speed Stingers prepare a full assault against them, Snotlout decides to do a heroic sacrifice by grabbing the young Speed Stinger and run as far as he can to draw the pack away from them. As he rests, the Speed Stingers surround him. Snotlout is all alone and is about to meet his doom. But the young Speed Stinger defends him by betraying his original pack by paralyzing a few of them. Snotlout is confused, as the young Speed Stinger resists the Alpha Speed Stinger. Hiccup explains to Snotlout overhead that the young Speed Stinger has broken it's alliance to it's original pack and decides to defend the 'pack' that saved his life, it's the Stinger's instinct to protect his group at all costs despite the Stinger's hatred at Snotlout.

But Snotlout still has to flee before the young Stinger realizes he has to choose a side. The Riders inflict heavy assaults on the Speed Stingers forcing them and the Alpha to fall back to shore. Tuffnut uses Barf's paralyzed condition as an advantage, as they fly along, Barf creates a huge wall of gas and when Belch sparks it, it creates a huge stretching wall of fire where the Speed Stingers cannot go through and are forced to retreat through the ocean instead. However, the Alpha retaliates by climbing in a high point and stinging Barf and Belch, paralyzing them completely.

Hiccup and Toothless must get rid of the Alpha Stinger, Hiccup and Toothless flies towards it head on while the Alpha Stinger jumps and prepares to counter by stinging Hiccup. However, they counter his move as Hiccup initiates his second new and improved flight suit into action, and at first try, successfully works as Hiccup and Toothless separates and the Alpha Stinger missing it's target causing it to painfully fall down to the ground. The Alpha Stinger still regains consciousness, but finds himself no match against the Riders if he still tries to intervene. So, the Alpha Stinger sees that the young Speed Stinger has taken alliance with them and changing his mind is futile, so he leaves with the rest of his pack.

Hiccup confronts the young Stinger who still appears to miss them even after deciding to stay with the Riders. Hiccup sees that keeping the Stinger is not right, and apologizes to tell him that he needs to return with his pack because that's where he truly belongs. The young Stinger seems to happily accept his statement and decides to catch up with his pack before they are long gone. Snotlout becomes upset and frustrated as he sees the young Speed Stinger return to his pack, as the two of them were now getting along.

Astrid expresses her experience with the young Stinger and for what he did for them to be unbelievable, as he'd rather stand and defend against his own pack and the Alpha than to see the 'pack' that save his life to be repaid with harm. Hiccup sees that moment to be where the young Stinger was once part of their group, even Snotlout somehow. Meanwhile, Snotloug brags his bravery, confident that he wasn't afraid of the Speed Stingers. However, when Tuffnut and Ruffnut informs him that they claim the Speed Stingers are coming back for him, Snotlout becomes extremely nervous and runs in fear. In truth, the Twins pranked him and a still half-paralyzed Ruffnut comments him as stupid.

Meanwhile, the young Speed Stinger makes his way to catch up and reunite with his Speed Stinger pack.

Transcript
The transcript for this episode is here.

Trivia

 * When Speedy is captured in a cage, Toothless blasts the lock and it falls down almost identical as it fell down when the leader of the Speed Stinger pack was captured in Frozen.
 * Hiccup begins working on his flight suit.
 * This is the first time a Speed Stinger is trained.
 * Some Speed Stingers were found to have evolved web flaps on their feet in order to run on water.
 * When the riders discover Speedy injured, Hiccup incorrectly says "pedators" instead of "predators."
 * Young Stingers are able to be trained but it is shown to be quite difficult as they are aggressive and hyperactive. This was also mentioned in School of Dragons.
 * This episode is slightly similar to a quest in School of Dragons where you rescue a young Speed Stinger and return it to the pack. Though the events turn out differently.
 * The only time any of the Speed Stingers had webbing were close ups of Speedy's and the lead Stinger's feet.
 * Normally when a dragon is paralyzed by a Speed Stinger they retain their normal coloring. However, when Speedy stung the other Stingers, they turned pale just like humans do.
 * In real life young venomous animals have venom as potent as adults do, with the venom sometimes being even more potent in young ones.
 * The events in this episode are loosely based off "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"
 * The Speed Stinger is based off the Jurassic Park Universe's Velociraptors. It even uses their sound effects. But this point is not fully related with TLW: JP
 * The episode presents a juvenile Speed Stinger with an injured leg. The Baby Tyrannosaurus in the movie also suffered a similar problem. Plus, both of them were brought back to the protagonists' respective bases and healed by them.
 * Like the film's Tyrannosaurus parents, The Stinger pack went after the missing juvenile, which involves them attacking the main characters.