What do cats and dragons have in common? When Hypable sat down with star Jay Baruchel and director Dean Dublois of How To Train Your Dragon 2 at WonderCon 2014, we learned the surprising connection. (Mild spoilers)

With the highly-anticipated animated sequel set to hit theaters in less than two months, Baruchel (who voices Hiccup) and Dublois attended the Anaheim, California pop culture convention to promote their film.

Hypable: Five years after is a big change for Hiccup and his team. Is there going to be a grasp of teamwork for this one as opposed to every for themselves?

Jay Baruchel: Yeah, very much so. Very, very much so. On the micro level between Hiccup and his friends, but also on the macro level with the species themselves. The whole thing is something of a love letter to compromise and finding a way to be stronger together than apart. One culture, race, species on its own is not as impactful as two that come together. They’re both better for being a part of the other one.

Dean DeBlois: Hiccup as a character is so tenacious that he ultimately, when bad news arises, strokes responses to protect their own, circle the wagons, lock down the island. And of course, Hiccup being Hiccup is like “No, I’ll just fly out there and fix it!” So he ends up dragging everybody with him despite their intents. He absolutely can’t get away from the flock of humans and dragons he’s surrounded himself with. It furthers the story, obviously. I think it’s Hiccup’s genuine tenacity through the first movie, and the second, and certainly the third that’ll ultimately be the glue that fuses everyone.

Related: First five minutes of How To Train Your Dragon released

Hypable: Let’s talk more about the second movie before we get on to the third. I’m really interested to know that there’s enough material already to make a third.

JB: Oh, well do you know how many books there are?

Hypable: There are more than the movies!

JB: (to Dean) Eight, right?

DD: There’s going to be twelve, I think.

JB: The very first time we started, we were always only to get this far out of here, because the author wrote this over the course of a generation, and created a very open-ended world. So we always knew that there was more to go. Long before Dean had ever mentioned to me the idea of doing another one, I had felt in my bones that the story had — that we had just scratched the surface. As epic, meaningful, and impactful as the first one is, we had so much left to cover.

Hypable: I agree, and I feel that there’s a lot more to be explored because the training of the dragons doesn’t really start until the end when Hiccup and his friends pick up their respective look-a-like dragons. I assume we’re going to see more characters pick up dragons other than Hiccup and his friends?

DD: Absolutely. This movie broadens the scope. We’re going to find out that he’s not alone, and that there’s a dragon rider out there on the far edges of the Viking map. There’s another notorious dragon rider who turns out to be his mother.

JB: We also get to see the cultural impact of what you’re talking about at the end of the first movie. When we pick up at this one, we see the direct results of that. On our island, they’re now so interwoven, humans and dragons. Through the first one, you spend most of the first movie trying to convince the rest of the people on Berk that these things aren’t dangerous, that they’re actually beautiful. When we pick up this movie, there’s a conclusion, that now it’s ingrained in this society, you couldn’t remove these dragons from Berk.

Hypable: I see already where you’re coming from in that they’re ingrained in the Berk society, and proving it from the opposing monologues at the beginning and the end of the first film. Leading off of that, does that leave room for compromise in a workspace, as we saw Hiccup building swords and the like for the dragons to come along and perhaps, help build some armor?

DD: They’ve managed to bring dragons into every aspect of their lifestyle. In fact, that blacksmith stall where Hiccup was an apprentice to Gobber, has actually become — it’s actually like the Harlem barbershop of Berk. Everyone hangs out there, and it’s where they make saddles for dragonracing.

JD: And they’re lined up around the block. We can’t move them through quick enough!

Hypable: Like Starbucks!

JD: Honest to God! They take claim numbers and everything (laughs).

DD: It’s where everything gets done. If your dragon has a sprained wing, or needs some dentistry done, it’s all been completely repurposed to peaceful times, which is a fun playful way to show how far they’ve come, but also setting up the stakes. This dragon utopia is what’s at stake, and there are people out there who would love to extract those dragons from Berk, and they create a lot of havoc.

On page 2: How DeBlois ‘deliberately tried to avoid’ a similarity to ‘Mulan’ with his ‘HTTYD 2’ villain

Hypable: And we see a little bit of that in the trailer with this very menacing figure, who reminds me a lot of the character design of the enemy in Mulan. Do you have any influence from Disney movies within your film?

DD: Oh sure, I worked on Mulan! We were deliberately trying to avoid any direct relation with that guy. He actually has a lot more in common with the James Earl Jones character in Conan the Barbarian. With the long hair… But he really is designed to feel exotic, and to feel of a different part of the world, without being specific.

Hypable: There’s one character that completely blows me out of the water whenever I see her gorgeous character design, and that is Astrid. She is a great person to look at! She has everything you could look for in a heroine and more. Jay, what is your favorite characteristic of Astrid?

JD: Just that she’s the alpha male, that there’s nobody tougher on that island, that there’s no one who’s more definitive and can take charge. She plays wonderful counterpoint to Hiccup’s shit — Hiccup-ry, his Hiccup-ry. I love how ballsy she is, and I love how fierce she is. I love how there’s no preamble that’s required. She doesn’t need to explain “Yes, I am the island girl.” You know, who gives a shit? She needs to know that she does what she does, and she can beat the crap outta anybody.

DD: But she’s also, we get to see a little more in this “five years later,” we’re suggesting that they’ve had a relationship for five years, and now they’re [Hiccup and Astrid] comfortable as girlfriend and boyfriend. Ultimately, she’s his conscious in a way. She’s a few steps ahead of him, in a way, in realizing that they’re no longer kids, and that they have to embrace adulthood and responsibility. She’s probably the only person who can have a frank conversation with him [Hiccup] to tell him that he’s acting like a kid, and that he needs to grow up.

JB: And she gets to play shrink for him too. With Astrid is where we get to hear Hiccup at his most earnest.

Hypable: I think that another character that can work as a shrink is perhaps Hiccup’s father and maybe even his mother. How will the roles of Hiccup’s parents change Hiccup in this film?

JB: He just starts to piece together a bit more of his origin myth. He starts understanding who he is, and why is he the way he is. He kinda, throughout the movie, comes to the same realization that all of us do which is that we are each both of our parents and neither of them, if that makes any sense. We have to forge our own way, and find our own being. He’s equal parts both of them, and they are at odds, those two sides. But through him, they find a cohesiveness, and then some. Basically, he takes the best aspects of both, without any of the failings.

Hypable: To close off, a fun question: If you had a dragon in real life, would you treat it like a dog, cat, or…Where do these dragons relate to real-life pets?

JD: I would treat it like a cat. I’ve maintained that my cat looks a great deal like Toothless. I would just do a lot of baby talk, and embarrassing stuff.

DD: I have three French Bulldogs, and there’s a lot of their behavior in Toothless as well. He was deliberately designed to mirror a lot of cute aspects of cats and dogs, because we wanted people to see their pets. This counterbalances the ferocious qualities that he has as well. So we watch a lot of YouTube cat videos. We like to pull little traits that we can transplant into his behavior.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 opens in theaters June 20, 2014. The film includes the voice cast of Jay Baruchel (Hiccup), Jonah Hill (Snotlout), Gerard Butler (Stoick the Vast), Kristen Wiig (Ruffnut), America Ferrera (Astrid), Kit Harington (Dragon Prince), and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fishlegs).