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Kur was actually not as terrible as the show made him sound.
We don't learn much about Kur in the show, other than that he's apparently the evilest evil to ever evil the idea of evil. But where did anyone get that idea? Sure, he's powerful, and most certainly dangerous, but so is ever other character and Cryptid in the show, even if Kur is unusually moreso. In the present Kur isn't well thought of, because for some reason every scientist and historian in the show 100% ascribes to the never-explained legends surrounding him, but in the past it seems he was actually well-respected. Clues:
  • The Sumerians respected Kur enough to worship him as a deity and build him temples, suggesting that he may have been considered at least a patron god somewhere (in Sumerian religion, cities usually declared one or more of the gods as patron deities of their city in hopes that they would extend favors of protection to the people, a practice also done famously in Ancient Egypt and Greece). But regardless of what kind of relationship he had with them, Kur is constantly referred to as a Sumerian god, meaning he had a part in their culture and was definitely important enough to them that they went to extreme measures to protect his temple complex. That he had a functioning place in human society despite being a Cryptid that ruled primarily over other Cryptids is telling. Even more so is the fact that he chose to live in Sumer in the first place, the cradle of human civilization, when he could have picked anywhere else and never had to deal with humans that well-organized.
  • Kur, while having the unusual ability to reincarnate, seems to have been a quasi-mortal being. He was likely mainly active, as noted above, in Mesopotamia during the golden age of Sumer, because he's never mentioned in relation to any other historic time periods. Somehow, he clearly died—whether during the time of Sumeria or after—and his soul entered the Kur stone. Possibly, he was killed and sealed inside it, and like we saw in the show, when the Kur's soul is removed from his body, he dies. The fact that he had a tomb implies that even after his death, he was respected enough by whatever civilization he lived among then to be laid to rest inside his temple complex which became his tomb. After all, with Kur dead and his soul and powers inside the Kur stone, he would have no remaining magical influence over the actions of the Cryptids and people he ruled over, yet they still willingly put him to rest respectfully. Even more, they used his Soul Jar to create a painstakingly world-encompassing map back to where his remains were. Both the Secret Scientists and Argost assumed the map led to some way of getting ultimate power, which was why it was so complicated, but it didn't: it just led to his mundane, non-powerful tomb. The only thing useful that came out of it was a detail about Kur's life: that the Lemurians were his enemies. And details about the deceased's life being painted on the tomb walls is pretty standard for ancient burials.
    • The Lemurians, as mentioned above, obviously didn't like him, but we don't know anything about them either. It's quite possible they were combative enemies with Sumer when Kur was in power or even were the ones who had Kur killed. For all we know, they could have been giving themselves good publicity and defaming their enemy in one go. After all, in history the only thing the future knows about you is usually whatever label sticks longest, and if you've got an enemy who outlives you, chances are they're going to do their best to make sure that label's a nasty one. If that's the case, their belief that Kur was evil and fear of him resurrecting makes perfect sense. He's their ultimate political enemy that they turned into the Bogeyman.
The point is, Kur appears to have ruled over Cryptids as a warlord king, just like every other king in his time. And looking back, a lot of them were cruel, but rarely were they truly evil. The standard of justice was "eye for an eye"—kings who overdid this looked cruel, but kings who didn't ascribe to this kind of justice looked weak. So Kur could have truly been evil, but he also could have just been morally normal king for his time, because who Kur actually was is never explored in the show. The fact that characters who claim to be the best in the fields of science and history just accept the ruling that Kur was 'evil' despite never actually presenting anything about him or what he actually did in his life and despite insisting they need to be "scientific" and "unbiased" about their investigations... makes them all look genuinely terrible at their jobs.
  • You could also look at Zak Saturday's Kur powers and compare the them to Zak Monday's Anti-Kur powers. Kur's power can only influence a cryptid but not outright control them, meaning that couldn't force a cryptid to do something they absolutely didn't want to do but the Anti-Kur powers instead drive them into a frenzy and force them to attack even when they don't want to,note  and considering that the two would be complete opposites the Anti-Kur could have some kind of Villain with Good Publicity.
  • Kur, by all rights, must have had a good relationship with humans; otherwise, human-ruled civilizations wouldn't have flourished in the same citystate he lived in and ruled cryptids from. Given that Kur clearly reincarnates, it's also possible that Zak isn't the first time Kur has reincarnated as a human.
  • Another hint at Kur not being so bad: the Flute of Gilgamesh. Despite being the story's "Hero," Gilgamesh was more like a Villain Protagonist, with the Gods spending much of the story trying to punish Gilgamesh for his insults, terrible actions, and bad rulership. Unlike other, more morally upright protagonists, Gilgamesh in particular being possibly linked to a weapon fatal to Kur implies the possibility that Kur's enemies - whoever truly used the weapon (for a name does not necessarily mean a genuine connection; some artifacts are named just because of a cultural relation, assumption, or bias, rather than an historical connection) were also not quite morally upright.
  • Kur's powers enable him to control cryptids, physically and possibly mentally. If the Lemurians were standing against Kur when he was active, the very fact that the Lemurians could stand against Kur in the first place means they must have had agency and autonomy despite this power, meaning either that Kur isn't as powerful as the characters tout or that he didn't actually use this ability very often to force his subjects to bend to his will.

Kur is not a single past entity, but a series of reincarnations ala Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Given that Kur can reincarnate and seems to have preferred such a diverse group of subjects, it's possible there wasn't one Kur, but many, and Kur that has previously reincarnated as some of the sentient species seen throughout the show, including other humans.
  • If true, this theory becomes Fridge Brilliance when you consider where the show's writers got the name Kur. Kur is alternatively used in ancient writings from the period to describe: 1). An anthropomorphized concept of the Underworld, 2). the actual word for the underworld itself, and 3). the title for the king of that underworld (Sumerians often referred to political leaders by the lands they ruled). This underworld association actually works well with the show's mythology, if you know how Sumerians seemed to have interpreted the underworld. Going by the funerary artifacts they left behind, the Sumerian underworld appears to have been conceived as a topsy-turvery place where monsters dwelled, feasting was done, and animals were as intelligent, developed, and skillful as people. This could, in the show's context, be interpreted as different depictions of Kur's subjects, the cryptids. And Argost's insistence that Kur is an ancient being that "existed before time began" could mean that Kur did perpetuate himself by reincarnating as different beings, which would definitely associate him with death and the afterlife to ancient peoples. Also, "Kur" as a title further implies the possibility of a succession of Kurs, reincarnation-style. So to the ancient mind, it'd be easy to view Kur as a deity of the underworld and assume his subjects, the cryptids, came from there - and the fact that these underworld creatures obeyed him would obviously make him the king of the underworld in their eyes. Kur's supposed power over death, or at least his known ability to reincarnate, also explains why he was locked within the Kur stone: his enemies expected that otherwise, he would have just been reborn. Of course, this also further implies that it was Kur's enemies who killed him, and it was they, not his subjects, who hid the Kur stone and set up the deadly Red Herring tomb map.

To formalize the above suggestion: Kur was the victim of a political and character assassination by the Lemurians.
Consider the facts:
  • Kur was worshipped as a Sumerian deity, meaning he had contact and connection with their culture.
  • Kur dwelt in Sumer, the cradle of human civilization, despite the fact that he could have ruled from anywhere else and not had to deal much with humans in any sort of large-scale society.
  • Sumer had continuous strings of human kings and human wars and conflicts, meaning that, if the show's historical record of Sumer is anything like our historical record, Kur did not rule humans, and the Cryptid and human societies existed simultaneously in the same place but were not ruled by the same powers. Keep in mind: Kur didn't rule over these people. By the show's accounts, all our historical evidence is true in the show too, there's just simply more that's been hidden from us - an alternate side of history that the Secret Scientists have hidden. Meaning that Sumer was still a human power structure ruled by human kings; it wasn't dominated by Kur and his Cryptids, but co-existed with them until Kur's death.
  • The Flute of Gilgamesh, which can aparently kill or excercise Kur, takes its name from Gilgamesh, believed to have been a Sumerian King who, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, ruled for 126 years in 2600 BC. This gives us a date for when the Flute, if not used, at least was known to come into the picture.
  • The fact that Shangri La, a hidden city inhabited only by Lemurians, knew of Kur means they were likely in contact with him, and Sumer in some form, around this time.
  • The talking Lemurian head confirms the 'Kur is Evil and must be stopped' idea.
  • The Lemurians were in contact with the Nagas as well, as their hidden chamber in the Library of Alexandria is full of depictions of them.
  • The Lemurians, Kur's contemporaries, were intelligent Cryptids who built a hidden utopian city and who don't recognize Kur as their king, despite also being cryptids.
  • There was an extremely complex system of clues and 'keys' in place to reach Kur's tomb, but inside there was nothing but ancient wall art depicting his history and likely, at one point, his remains.
  • The Soul Jar his spirit dwelt in was used as a map to find this tomb.
In other words, between the two parties - Kur, and the Lemurians - who is more likely to have been what we consider evil? The tolerant, multi-cultural king who was completely fine with sharing power with and granting political independence to the physically weaker beings who shared his very headquarters, or the isolationist single-racial "utopian" society that hid itself and all of its discoveries away from people unlike them and despised that multi-cultural king enough to consider keeping him dead the major perogative of their society? It's bascially canon that they rebelled against Kur at some point, after all: Kur is the King of Cryptids, and they are Cryptids. The Lemurians must've initially grown to hate Kur while he was active; otherwise, their actions make no sense. Therefore, if we assume that all the events in this timeline are related - as usually is true in the basic contruction of story narratives - the Kur-paranoid, isolationist Lemurians, who rose to independence and power after the fall of the tolerant King Kur, are likely the cause of his demise.

(For a Genius Bonus connection: one of the ways the Nazis tried to claim they were the Master Race is by proving that "Aryans" came from the super-advanced mythical cities of Atlantis or Shangri-La. So there's actually already a real-life connection between Shangri-La and the ideology of racial supremecy).

The Monday Family are EVOs, and their antimatter world is in fact the Generator Rex world
  • It explains the mutations, their hostility with each other (If you aren't emotionally attached to someone, it's a lot easier to attack them if they turn into an out of control monster) and the general negativity of their world. Since Ben, Rex, and Zak are all the same age, it puts Zak Monday's world before Rex was curing EVOs. Also, the antimatter thing was supposed, not proven. It could easily be caused by Zak vs Zak and their powers colliding.

All Cryptids have encountered a certain mechanical being.
If you remember correctly, Jay Stephens said himself that "cryptids are to normal animals as the X-Men are to humans". Demon: The Descent states that cryptids are the result of normal animals bestowed with power by the God Machine. Thus, in my theory, every cryptid known in the series, from the bunyips to Kur himself, had been encountered by the God Machine at one point. It also could explain the origins of the cryptid's powers — few animals evolve a luck-changing aura like the blue tiger, aquatic protists that can manipulate water is naturally improbable at best, and no organism, even a snake, can explode!
  • The only known exceptions are the swamp monsters from "The Ghost in the Machine" (normal creatures who were fused together), and Komodo, though the latter's debatable (who knows who worked on him?).

The identity of the first Epsilon is...
...the Ghost Host. Or rather, He's the man that becomes the Ghost Host. He was born as one of a pair of twins into the Gracey Family, destined to be the heir to the Manor. However, he left home for some reason, leaving his brother to be the heir. This brother was betrothed, wife died, he died, everyone else but Epsilon died, the end for that leg. His people made a cover-up to prevent word from coming out.
  • Years later, in my theory, the case reopens, and Epsilon takes the case, against his people's will. From there, he tries find out the truth. The ghosts responsible for it, not wanting the truth to come up, decides to torment him, from making the old artwork become gruesome at random moments (the changing portraits) to repainting his portrait (The Hanged Man from the corridor of doors) to making him see his brother age and decay at a rapid rate (the Master of the House portrait). On one night, everything goes freaky, and he loses his remaining sanity and hanged himself, and, well, you know the rest. Just as they hid the incident at Gracey Manor, his people sealed the room he hung in and claimed he disappeared. It remains an "unsolved case" to this day.

All Cryptids are the progeny of Kur.
If you remember correctly, Jay Stephens said himself that "cryptids are to normal animals as the X-Men are to humans". The implication in the series is that Kur was the first Cryptid, and the one that all the others are descended from. That is why Kur can control them all (he is, technically, their "father").
  • The only known exceptions are the swamp monsters from "The Ghost in the Machine" (normal creatures who were fused together), and Komodo (who was genetically engineered).
  • Kur created all the Cryptids to serve as its followers and weapons (see the Naga) but some rebelled and aided Gilgamesh and the Garuda into sealing its spirit into the Kur Stone. Kur (and those that are vessels for its spirits) can control Cryptids because of the lingering essence within all its creations, but Kur's essence is so widespread among non-human life that any of them can be "activated" under the right conditions like Komodo, making the X-Men comparison even more apt.

Zon is actually not an Ornithocheirus but an entirely new species of ornithocheirid pterosaur
She lives in about the right geological location (ornithocheirid fossils have indeed been found in South America, mostly in the Santana Formation of Brazil) for species to have lived there in the past, but she's shown living in the Amazon rainforest instead of living out at sea like other ornithocheirids. Perhaps her kind persisted to the modern day by adapting to the climate changes, eventually becoming forest dwellers with an appetite for freshwater fish instead of saltwater ones.

The etchings on the Kur stone were carved to be a death trap wild goose chase for anyone searching for Kur's power.
Possibly by someone (coughGilgameshcough) who didn't realize that Kur's essence was inside the rock, or maybe through circumstances they DID know and were trying to protect his reincarnation from corrupting influences, or maybe it WAS Kur that put the etchings in in order to hide/protect his reincarnation, but hear me out:

The first part of the Kur stone's gauntlet involve collecting several items...from several very nasty locations. The horn of an aggressive lake monster, a nesting crystal from inside an active volcano, a map to the Tomb of Kur guarded by the Owlman, a medallion given to the king of the undersea Kumari Kandam (as a gift from the Sumerians - in other words, humans). In the 5000, 6000 BC (or older!) that the Kur stone's etchings were made, heat-resistant bodysuits and submarines weren't really...a thing. If that wasn't enough, the Tomb of Kur was guarded by a particularly ferocious cryptid, which Argost felt the need to stage an entire cryptid fighting ring in order to get rid of it.

If, somehow, someone was able to gather these items and make it past the guardian on the outside without dying, once within the tomb they would find...a relief of a Lemurian on the wall. The Lemurians who are self-proclaimed "guardians of the world against Kur." Who were "scattered across this world and beyond." So, not only likely impossible to find, but, in the event that one was found, then very likely to try to stop whoever was searching for Kur.

And, finally, if somehow this hypothetical person searching for Kur managed to track a Lemurian willing to help (or else otherwise coerced it into using its instincts to help)...said instincts would point this person to Antarctica, where the biggest and angriest creature yet slept in deep freeze. Since it didn't attempt to fly until after Argost took control, it could be feasible that on its own it wouldn't know how; thus, if it WERE woken up by this hypothetical person, and said person was much less prepared than Argost, they would likely die to it and then the beast would go straight back to sleep, stuck on the frozen pole as it were.

Self-sustaining death trap!

(Also very interesting to note...Fisk never says himself that Antarctica is where Kur will be found - just that his instincts have been forcing him to make the divining rod. In fact, at the beginning of Shadows of Lemuria, when Zak is spinning a globe on his finger and asks Fisk to use his instincts to point out where Kur is...

...Fisk points so hard that his finger goes through the globe. Towards Zak.)

Both Zak and the Antartic Cryptid are Kur

  • As Drew points out, dark magic can cause unpredictable side effects. In relation to the previous posts regarding Kur being Good All Along, this theory suggests that Kur may have been a benevolent entity that only turned evil because of dark magic. Somehow, someway, somebody manages to extract the evil out of Kur and placed it in Antartica, which will be known as the Antartic Cryptid while the real Kur was transfered into the Kur stone. The only reason the Naga's Kur Detector set off only on Zak is because the evil Kur is dead and it's only responding to the still alive Zak.
    • If this is true, that means that Zak Monday may not have been the good Kur but the evil Kur.
    • This troper doesn't know about dark magic, but the idea of Kur's soul having split from Kur's former physical form would explain why Fisk's divining took them to Antartica to find Kur despite Kur being right next to them. Perhaps the Antarctic Cryptid was violent in part because it'd been stripped of part of itself.
      • If true, this would add a lot of fridge narrative significance to the early episodic plot of Professor Mizaki being stuck in the body of a hibagon. Just like Kur, his "self" was torn from his original body, and the original is now uninhabitable. An early introduction to the idea that such a thing is possible, perhaps?

The reason Dr. Henry Chevejo gave Argost the Kur Stone because he was traumatized by Weird World
Henry never appears again after the first episode so we never find out more about him as a character or what it exactly he and Argost discussed. Just that the villain promised not to hurt the Saturdays if he was given the Kur Stone and Henry allowed himself to be used as a spy to find the last piece's location.

What exactly do we know about him? We know he was one of the seven surviving Secret Scientists that raided Weird World to retrieve the Stone, he was trusted enough to guard a piece of the Stone and was willing to sacrifice himself to save the Saturdays.

So, why did he just give Argost the map to unlimited power?

Well, Doc might have shown us why.

When the Saturdays later invade Weird World to rescue Fiskerton, Doc and to a lesser extent Drew, clearly don't have good memories of the place, the former showing and admitting to having some PTSD from the raid. Doc even goes into a rage when he thinks the death trap that killed forty three of his colleagues, most likely all seasoned adventurers and action heroes if the rest of the Scientists are anything to go by, has taken his family from him. Drew describes the noise of a trap she recognizes as "not a good noise", this is a woman who faces several kinds of death traps in month as a part of her job and chosen lifestyle, but those gears stick with her?

It's possible Henry also has some form of PTSD from the mansion's nightmare fuel security or even had the unfortunate luck of facing Argost himself in the villain’s own home, not a situation most would walk away from with out some damage.

The Lemurians were once in the service of Kur

it seems odd that Rani Nagi would call Fisk, who is a Lemurian, "A kur guardian" and he was the only one that could find Kur.

So it's possible that once long ago, the Lemurians were once in the services of Kur before they were sealed.

The Secret Scientists are an off-shoot of the Plumbers.

Specifically, the earth-based Plumbers spawned from the secret society that George Washington and Ben Franklin were a part of, in fact, Franklin himself was probably the original Secret Scientist, if only in spirit. As the Plumbers expanded their scientific divisions began to specialize until each area of research had a single head researcher (or small group like the Saturdays) which branched into the loosely organized Secret Scientist cadre of the modern day. Max asking for the Saturdays' help during "T.G.I.S." was the standard operating procedure for when the main Plumbers needed specialized assistance in areas like Cryptids. This would explain why the Scientists have so much leeway in working and traveling the world as it's stated that the Plumbers' authority is recognized by all Earth's governments in Ultimate Alien and, as extensions of the Plumbers, the Scientists get the same privilege as part of The Masquerade that was in place until Ben was outed as a superhero and Earth became an open system by the time of Omniverse; the only reason Cryptids are still being kept secret is that they can be manipulated by villains like Animo and the reanimated Argost, so the fewer people that know about them the better, thus the Secret Scientists are still kept, well, secret, while the Plumbers are publicly known.

Zak's birth caused complications that rendered Drew either infertile or unable to give birth again.

Even putting aside carrying a child with all that Kur energy inside probably not being good for Drew's reproductive health, the Saturdays are very quick to adopt and claim Cryptids as family members even with their calling to study and observe their kind, such as accepting Fiskerton at Zak's insistence despite their intent to simply relocate him. While it would be a little heavy to include in a show at this level, both Drew and Doc are shown to be healthy adults well into their reproductive prime. It's feasible they simply chose not to have any more biological children, it wouldn't be a stretch that Drew faced some complications from her pregnancy of a Sumerian god-baby that is stated to have a hatred for humanity. It certainly makes her affection for her non-human children both more heartwarming and sadder at the same time.

Doc is related to William Nekton.

Distant cousins due to the lack of resemblance, but the similarities between the two (brilliant and accomplished African-American men with wives that are ace pilots of their chosen element that live and travel on a Cool Ship with their families of both human and non-human members) might just be In the Blood. William and Keiko know about the Saturdays' work but keep it secret from their children because of the inherent danger of the Saturdays' Rogues Gallery being much more dangerous than their own. Though this does make Fiskerton being a Lemurian rather amusing in context, though the Nektons being descended from human Lemurians could still jive with Fiskerton's race being a member of the nation instead. Zak may not be that close to Ant or Fontaine, not because he doesn't like them or vice-versa, but because he has to keep the existence of his Cryptid siblings a secret from them; heck, they probably feel bad for Zak because they think he's an only child that has nothing to do while his parents work in their lab.

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