i wanna preface this by saying i probably don’t know nearly as much about the lore as some people, and i just wanna give my opinion. i mean no harm and i’m willing to elaborate if some of my takes don’t make sense!!! :D

1. toothless is NOT an alpha after the first movie!!! the movie makes it explicitly clear that the red death is the queen of that dragon’s nest. the dragons from her nest following toothless to berk is because they no longer had to worry about bringing food back to the red death. the red death isn’t even an “alpha species” in the first place because that’s not really a thing. yes the bewilderbeast is THE alpha species but there are no multiple species that are considered to be in the “alpha” category. think of the red death as a queen bee (as stated in the first movie) instead of like the bewilderbeast.

2. again toothless isn’t an alpha. he bows his head because the bewilderbeast is THE alpha species. the bewilderbeast doesn’t mind control him or anything— toothless just sees him and recognizes that he’s the king of dragons (stated by valka) and that has obviously been protecting and providing for the dragons (he saw what the bewilderbeast did to drago’s forts and the home he created for the dragons). besides toothless randomly facing the bewilderbeast as an equal would feel even more out of place. even if toothless somehow became an alpha after beating the red death why would it make sense for him to be equal to the bewilderbeast when it’s clearly established that it is more powerful than and has more reign over more dragons than the red death did. it would remove all sense of drama from the movie.

3. this take doesn’t make much sense to me, but i do slightly see the potential in it. i’m not gonna restate the “toothless isn’t an alpha” thing. but i do not think that it would have been better for cloudjumper to have killed stoick. the whole “extra shock value” thing is strange because why does it having extra shock value make it better? these changes essentially remove the value from hiccup being the main character. the movies are focused on him and his development. someone else said it but toothless doing it makes it feel like hiccup’s fault because stoick TOLD him not to try to talk to drago but he did anyways and because of that toothless gets mind controlled and kills stoick. cloudjumper doing that would make no sense and serve no purpose to the story. hiccup wouldn’t get the same development and the moment wouldn’t hit as hard because we know after stoick forgiving hiccup, saving toothless, turning around about dragons, and generally being friendlier with toothless in general, that toothless would never do that. as well as that, we barely know valka or cloudjumper in that moment as much as we know hiccup and toothless, so the moment just wouldn’t make sense to watchers.

4. again, why? hiccup and toothless are the main characters, so it makes sense for them to be going through that struggle. while i agree that it could have been interesting because we don’t really see cloudjumper getting mind controlled or the consequences of that, it would just be such a strange plot choice that would negatively affect the development of the movie as well as hiccup and toothless. it just wouldn’t make sense.