Monarch comes searching for Randa's lost files, forcing Cate, Kentaro, and May on the run.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: Shaw ditches Keiko and Bill when the former teams up with the latter despite his complaints, but he comes back to save the pair from the Ion Dragon.
- Blindfolded Trip: When Tim and Duvall try to take Cate with them, Tim puts a bag over her head so she can't see where they're going. Unfortunately, this ends up triggering her PTSD and she has an anxiety attack that causes the car to crash upside-down.
- *Click* Hello: This is how Lee Shaw first meets Bill Randa, minus the actual clicking. When he bungles out of the jungle and runs into Keiko, Shaw pops up behind him with his pistol out and threatens to put a bullet in his head.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Lee initially doesn't believe Keiko is the scientist he's been sent to meet, assuming that "Dr. Miura" is her father. It's downplayed since he gets used to this quickly after learning the truth. He does think having a female scientist on their mission means it's not getting taken seriously by the government however, as otherwise they would send a lot of men.
- Desk Sweep of Rage: Kentaro starts trashing his father's desk after Cate decides to go home. In the process, he ends up finding the file on Shaw.
- Distressed Dude: Bill gets pinned under debris when the Ion Dragon starts attacking and the USS Lawton begins toppling around them, forcing Keiko and Lee to work urgently to get him free.
- Gilded Cage: The Monarch retirement home is a pretty nice place, if you ignore the ankle bracelets and heavy surveillance.
- Oh, Crap!: Keiko and Bill are alarmed when they see oozing slime dripping from a hatchway that hadn't been there when they entered—indicating that whatever creature made its home in the wreck of the USS Lawton has returned.
- Police Are Useless: Thanks to losing her bag while escaping Tim and Duval, Cate wasn't able to convince the police of her story, with them thinking she had partaken in drunken escapades.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Lee Shaw is assigned to guard Monarch scientist Dr. Miura—a post that has already led to a few fatalities—as punishment for getting into a bar brawl with some fellow soldiers.
- Saharan Shipwreck: The USS Lawton, which was mentioned to have disappeared near Pearl Harbour here and in Kong: Skull Island, found its way to a jungle clearing in Manila, thousands of miles away.
- Samus Is a Girl: In-Universe. Shaw in The '50s is quite surprised that the Dr. Miura he's supposed to be escorting is a woman.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Cate's certainly feeling the paranoia fuel on the streets of Tokyo after narrowly escaping a kidnapping attempt by what she knows are a covert group.
- Unseen No More: The USS Lawton, the sinking of which was described by Bill Randa in Kong: Skull Island when transcribing his backstory, appears in the flesh as a Saharan Shipwreck in the Philippines, in which the Ion Dragon has made its den.
- Very Punchable Man: Shaw's first chronological scene in the series in 1952 is him getting into trouble with General Puckett for beating up a pair of drunken soldiers who were sexually molesting an unwilling Filipino barwoman.
