Western Animation / Skull Island (2023)

Spoilers from Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned

Skull Island is a 2023 animated action series and the first television series to be set in the MonsterVerse franchise. It stars the voices of Nicolas Cantu, Mae Whitman, Darren Barnet, Benjamin Bratt, and Betty Gilpin. The series was developed, executive produced, and written by Brian Duffield (Love And Monsters, The Babysitter).

Set 20 years after the events of Kong: Skull Island, the series follows a group of castaways as they wash up on the titular island and must contend with the titans that inhabit it… including Kong. The series premiered on Netflix June 22, 2023.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

---

Skull Island contains examples of the following:

• The '90s: The show is set about twenty years after the events of Kong: Skull Island, placing it around 1993.

• Adapted Out: This is the only major MonsterVerse media which does not feature or even mention Godzilla in any way (although there's a flashback of Cap witnessing something glowing swimming under his boat, invokedWord of God has clarified that this unseen creature was not Godzilla), nor does Monarch appear at all (at best there is a vague mention of an expedition in the 1970s). It's also left ambiguous whether the Skull Island natives seen in the show are the Iwi, or a totally different and unrelated group of natives (as they do not live in the same location, have a distinct culture, and speak Spanish, rather than being voluntarily mute).
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Kong is dark-grey in the series instead of brown, as in other MonsterVerse media (even though the poster shows him as brown).
• Advertised Extra: A Skullcrawler and the Croc Monster are featured on the series' promo poster, despite both these creatures having only a single scene each in the series proper and both having no real impact on the plot.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Nose:
  • Dog lets Charlie press his palm on the former's nose as a sign of trust when they agree to work together to find Annie.
  • The Island Girl who Kong befriended in the origins episode places her hand on Kong's nose as she dies, acknowledging him as her king once more.
• Alien Blood: The Kraken and the giant chameleons bleed bright blue. Strangely inverted with the Skullcrawler, previously established to have green blood, but here it bleeds red.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The huge burrowing crabs immediately hide when they hear Kong's roar. And the Croc Monster that ate a man whole is nothing but a bite-sized snack for Kong.
• Animesque: As seen in the teaser, the art style is very anime inspired.
• Artistic License – Biology: Dog is clearly a giant modern-type bulldog, a domestic breed which has only existed in its current form since the late 19th century. Due to their stout, brachycephalic anatomy, they are incapable of running at high speeds, have an intolerance for tropical climates, an extreme degree of debilitating health issues, often require Caesarean section during birth due to the breed's oversized heads, and have a very short lifespan for a dog, making Dog's design basis extremely questionable on multiple fronts.

• Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: The eighth episode ends with Annie waking up in a hospital two weeks after being knocked out during the Final Battle, with only Irene by her side. At the same time the fight with Kong was happening, some other characters were facing their own perils (Mike being poisoned, Charlie being captured by a group of Iwi whom intend to see him pay for endangering Kong), and we are not told of their current statuses.
• Bookends:
  • The Final Battle between Kong and the Kraken takes place on the very same beach where Mike and Charlie washed up in the first episode. Furthermore, when the boys wash up there at the end of the first episode, there's a broken mug presumably from the Once Upon a Maritime – that same mug reappears in the final episode, having been seized by a hermit crab. This also applies in a chronological sense: that beach is heavily implied to be the same one where the Island Girl's village was based, and where Kong lost her to the Kraken, in the Whole Episode Flashback.
  • The shipwreck of the Once Upon a Maritime, which hasn't been seen since the ship went down in the first episode, makes a return in the final battle when Kong uses it as an Improvised Weapon against the Kraken.
  • The first season begins and ends with Annie cast into the sea and waking up in a new environment. The series begins with her escaping into the sea from a boatful of mercenaries, losing consciousness, and getting rescued by the Once Upon a Maritime and subsequently ending up on Skull Island with them; and the series ends with Annie getting knocked into a coma while caught in a tsunami, and waking up in a hospital back at civilization (much to her distressed bewilderment), under Irene's care. Annie's situation at the end of the season finale, thrust into a civilized world which she has no memory nor understanding of, is also a mirror image of Charlie and Mike's situation at the end of the first episode when they wash ashore on the wild, uncharted, monster-infested Skull Island.
• Brainy Brunette: The majority of the human cast including all of the major scientists, brains and other notable think-tanks have dark hair. By contrast, a blonde-haired member of the mercenaries is kind of a goofball who's not very useful.
• Canon Foreigner: With the exception of Kong, a Skullcrawler, and a dead Sker Buffalo, the latter two only appearing briefly in flashback, every creature in the series is new, and the same applies to the human characters.

• Commonality Connection: It's heavily implied that one of the main foundations of Irene and Sam's profoundly-close working relationship and friendship is that they both lost people dear to them, and they had to seek out group therapy sessions to get them through the grief which is where they met.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • This version of Skull Island lacks the Perpetual Storm circling around it established by other media in the MonsterVerse, the entire reason the island is uncharted and unexplored, making it seem like anyone can get to and from the island with ease. It also suggests Skull Island is part of an archipelago with similar nearby monster-filled islands, but no other media agrees with this, as MonsterVerse maps have consistently only shown one island with no others nearby, and it's clearly stated to be the only island with monsters anywhere.
  • Kong is shown living in a gigantic temple ruin, when other media consistently showed his lair as being a large cave.
  • The flashback episode with the unnamed Iwi girl has her wondering what the outside world is like (with her only frame of reference being the expedition to Skull Island twenty years prior), seemingly ignoring the fact that the film established that two outsiders lived amongst the natives for decades.
  • The show depicts Skull Island as having arid regions and a habitat of bright-red grass, but neither of these is noted on otherwise detailed and consistent maps of Skull Island in other MonsterVerse media, which otherwise consistently show the island as being made up almost entirely of tropical forest and wetland (the red grassland area is an especially egregious habitat, since it would've clearly shown up).
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • The Skull Devil in Kong: Skull Island was a green, reptilian-looking monster which primarily lived on land, specialized in close-ranged attacks, only awoke and showed up near the end, and it has the excuse that it's so hostile and murderous because its own biology plagues it with Horror Hunger that constantly drives its species to attack anything made of meat. The Kraken which serves as the Big Bad of this show's first season, on the other hand, is a bluish Sea Monster which is actually a chimeric blend of fish, crustacean and cephalopodic traits: its Combat Tentacles make it a lot more efficient at very long-ranged attacks, it was awoken and has been a menace since before the series' start according to the Whole Episode Flashback, and it's extremely sadistic to the point that it's practically a piscine version of Ghidorah, with the cast concluding that it just acts this way because it's an asshole.
  • Irene with her band of Private Military Contractors contrast Colonel Packard from Kong: Skull Island. Packard was a military man motivated by revenge, and he started out as a relatively good man but he was consumed by his vendetta, increasingly endangering everyone else around him whom he was originally supposed to be protecting. Irene on the other hand is a botanist and a Mama Bear motivated to get her now-feral Missing Child back, she acts increasingly less antagonistic and more genial to the heroes the closer she gets to her goals, and she and her mercs ultimately help everyone to take down the Kraken.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: See here.
• Cryptic Background Reference:
  • Kong is shown dwelling in an otherwise-derelict, intricately-carved temple high on a mountain, which was built with human-sized steps and a bridge but is big enough to house creatures his size multiple times over, and has statues of his species dotted around the place; indicating that the Iwi's ancestors on Skull Island used to have a much more advanced society than they do now, and that their regression after being driven out of the Hollow Earth by Godzilla wasn't immediate.
  • In "Breakfast Fit For a Kong", Charlie finds an antiquated rapier (a sword of Spanish origin used in the Renaissance) buried in a Giant Ant colony. Earlier MonsterVerse instalments made it clear that people from various periods of history have been getting shipwrecked on Skull Island for centuries, and the Island Girl's people in the Whole Episode Flashback are a Spanish-speaking people, distinct from the Iwis, who've apparently been living on Skull Island for generations since before the advent of aerial transport.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most characters in the show have this, but Annie gets to show it off the most due to her No Social Skills.

• Downer Beginning:
  • The first episode climaxes with the Once Upon a Maritime being destroyed by a malevolent sea monster; killing most of the crew including Hiro, and shipwrecking the surviving crewmembers and Annie on the titular Isle of Giant Horrors, separated from each-other, kicking off the first season's plot. Episode 2 opens to the immediate fallout of the Kraken's attack.
  • "Doggone It" opens with Irene's group successfully tranquilizing and recapturing Annie, Dog getting snatched and carried off by the Hawk Monster that hunts for food; and Mike, whose growing increasingly sick from the toxic sting that the Kraken gave him, allowing the mercs to find him rather than be a life-endangering hindrance to Charlie. Which leaves Charlie completely on his own on Skull Island with no idea how he's going to rescue any of his friends.
  • The opening scene of "Terms of Endearment" is a flashback to the last time Annie saw her father alive, before he laid down his life protecting her from an attack by Dog's father. From there, this episode climaxes with Annie and Dog, and Cap and Charlie reuniting in the present.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • To the main human cast throughout the season, Kong is nothing more than an enigmatic giant ape who has occasionally been in the right place at the right time to eat one of the smaller monsters that was threatening them whilst the humans themselves avoided garnering his direct attention, and circumstances prevented the cast from seeing Kong's peaceful and philanthropic side. Unlike a viewer who's familiar with Kong's other MonsterVerse appearances, the cast have no idea of Kong's benevolent morality, his role as the king and peacekeeper of Skull Island, or even his name, and it's an Internal Reveal for Charlie when the Iwi tell him Kong's name and reveal they view him in a reverent light.
    • This gets played for conflict at the series' end, when the humans conclude that they need to antagonize and bait Kong into attacking the Kraken head-on so that the latter monster won't bar them from escaping the island any longer. But based on Kong's reaction to Charlie, Annie and Dog's intrusion in his lair before they got to the baiting part, it's heavily implied to the viewer that Kong could've been persuaded to help them out voluntarily if they'd merely communicated their troubles to him and asked for his help.
  • Only Kong and the viewer know of Kong's past with the Island Girl and the Kraken from the Whole Episode Flashback. To the series' main human cast, the Island Girl's necklace which Kong broods over in private is nothing more than a trinket that Kong has some mysterious attachment towards.

• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: This is Skull Island, of course almost everything will try to kill or eat you if you aren't careful.
• Evil Is Bigger: Although Kong is huge, his final opponent, the malicious Kraken, towers over even him.

• Family Eye Resemblance: Irene and Annie have the same amber eyes, indicating they're mother and daughter.
• Foreshadowing: There's a lot of foreshadowing to Irene's connection with Annie and reasons for pursuing the girl. From Irene getting angry at one of her mercs calling Annie a "feral freak" and threatening her, to Irene looking regretful after tranquilizing Annie, to her tending to Annie's unconscious body, to their matching eyes; it's not surprising when Irene reveals that she's Annie's long-lost mother.

• Giver of Lame Names: Neither Annie or Mike are very good at naming things, although she thinks she's better at it.

• Homefield Advantage: The crux of the stalemate between Kong and the Kraken; Kong has the advantage on land and the Kraken in the sea, so despite Kong's hatred of the Kraken and its desire to usurp Skull Island from him, they refuse to engage the other beyond the Kraken occasionally tossing whales his way.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Kong as per usual, who's shown swinging from heavy logs embedded in a stone bridge, and moving his fists quickly enough to blur when he delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the Season Finale. There's also the Killer Chameleons, which, despite being about the size of a truck each, can be extremely fast and agile when they want to be; dodging in swift bursts of movement around Kong and the Island Girl's strikes.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • Kong continues his penchant for this trope, culminating in him beating the stuffing out of the Kraken with half of the sunken Once Upon a Maritime.
  • In the final episode, Mike, in a call-back to the climax of Kong: Skull Island, fires a flare gun that he found in the mercenaries' camp at the giant centipede's head.
• Internal Reveal:
  • It's revealed to the viewer via a flashback that Mike and Hiro secretly took money from Irene to move the Once Upon a Maritime's cryptid surveys into the waters near the area where Irene suspected Annie was located, to aid Irene's own search for the girl. Charlie finds out in the same episode during the present time, while Cap doesn't learn of it until three episodes later.
  • In the season finale, Charlie discovers that Skull Island's natives speak English (as they did in the MonsterVerse graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong), and he also learns that the giant gorilla he's been encountering on the island is named Kong, and the natives don't appreciate anyone disrespecting or endangering the gorilla in question.
• Isle of Giant Horrors: Apart from the Isle of Giant Horrors that was made iconic in 1933 — and which even has a Giant Footprint Reveal in this series' first episode — it's revealed that there's another island approximately twenty miles away. This second island is where the giant, ferocious, pitbull-like Dog came from, and where Annie was cast away for ten years.
• It Can Think:
  • Besides Kong — who's just about at his most expressive and emotionally-intelligent here that he's ever been in the MonsterVerse so far, when the series shows things from his perspective instead of the humans' — there's also...
  • The Kraken. It demonstrates clear intelligence early on, toying with Mike as he tries to strike it. It later brutally throws a whale's body at Kong's home, apparently for no other purposes than to be a gigantic dick and to present a challenge. Charlie theorizes that the Kraken is refusing to leave the water itself to face Kong because, although it wants to usurp Kong as Skull Island's apex predator, it knows that he'll have the Homefield Advantage on land, whereas the opposite would be true if the Kraken can goad Kong into venturing into the water. During the Final Battle, the Kraken takes advantage of the latter by dragging Kong down to the sea floor and restraining him there, nearly drowning him.
  • Intellectually and emotionally, Dog is no more mindless than Kong. Introduced onscreen bowling through two mercenaries before throwing Annie to the air, he's fiercely loyal and protective towards Annie — who he first met when distressed over his father's death, and who he hunted, fought and sheltered alongside for years afterwards — and he makes it clear he's wary of Charlie getting too close to either of them. It's also clear later in the series that Dog can understand verbal English commands and physical instructions to a degree, but he'll only heed them if convinced that doing so is in his or Annie's interests.
  • The Hawk Monster, which at first appears to be a Brutal Bird of Prey with a fixed hunting behavior pattern, is no mindless beast. It's a hunting bird that's been tamed by Kong from a young age and is profoundly loyal to him. In the Whole Episode Flashback, it's intelligent enough to intervene specifically to rescue the Island Girl from a long fall on its master's behalf when the latter is unable to act in time, and it gives a Killer Chameleon that painfully bites its leg an unambiguously pissed-off look before it proceeds to send the creature into a deadly freefall.

• I Will Only Slow You Down:
  • In Episode 5, Mike confirms when arguing with Cap that one of the reasons why he turned himself in to the mercenaries is because he knew that if he stuck with Charlie for much longer, he would soon just be a physical hindrance to Charlie that could very well be the death of them both, since Mike is getting sicker and weaker from the Kraken's toxic sting.
  • Charlie throws himself off Dog while he's fleeing from an enraged Kong with both him and Annie on his back, theorizing that Dog isn't used to carrying two people. It works quite well, because Annie still has the necklace Kong is after.

• Kraken and Leviathan: The Big Bad of the series is a giant sea-monster with venomous cephalopod-like tentacles, Cap catching brief glimpses of the rest of its body as it sinks his research vessel in the first episode.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Cap is a dedicated cryptozoologist who's happy with scouring the sea in a boat for cryptids, and he thinks a normal life would be boring and unremarkable: his son Charlie on the other hand would love nothing more than to go to college and leave his father's quirky way of life behind for some normality. Charlie also isn't smooth-talking nor as good at reading people as his father, and he frequently vents his stress at the overwhelming situation he's in as his nerves get wracked, whereas Cap near-constantly maintains a cool head no matter what's happening around him.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: A major mystery of the first season is what Irene exactly wants with the castaway Annie. It turns out that she is her mother and just wants her daughter back.

• Monster Delay:
  • The Kraken isn't shown in full until near the season's end, with only its Combat Tentacles lurking above the water, and flashing close-ups on parts of its underwater body being seen prior.
  • Kong's animated appearance is obscured for the first several episodes: when he shows up, he's either in silhouette against the sun or among mist, or alternatively most of his body is offscreen; or otherwise, at the very least it's impossible to catch a good glimpse of his face. It's only from Episode 5 onwards that the viewer clearly sees Kong's face and his full appearance in the show's animation style.
• Monster Munch: The smaller Titans are nothing but snacks for Kong.

• Mythology Gag:
  • Annie's name is a reference to Ann Darrow from the original 1933 King Kong movie. Like Ann Darrow, Annie is also lost in the jungle with only a native monster to rely on as her companion, even if said beast isn't Kong himself in this case and the relationship is A Girl and Her X rather than Beast and Beauty.
  • Charlie's early assumption about the Private Military Contractors that harassed the heroes and have reappeared on Skull Island is that they're monster-poachers. He's wrong in this work, but several past King Kong works did have poachers with an interest in Skull Island as their antagonists, including Kong: The Animated Series and Kong: King of the Apes.
  • The Island Girl appears to be based on Lua from Kong: The Animated Series, being a redheaded, tribal Skull Island native whom Kong personally protects.
  • The Island Girl, when musing on what the technology of the people in the outside world beyond the island can accomplish, thinks that they could build a machine version of Kong to act as a servant.
  • For pretty much the first time in the MonsterVerse, the Iwi become deliberately hostile to one of the western visitors to Skull Island and forcibly capture them, which is in-line with the mainstream reputation of Skull Island's natives due to their role in the original King Kong narrative formula.

• No Full Name Given: None of the human characters' last names are known. They're all known solely by their first names, or, in Cap's case, by a nickname.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. The Big Bad is a cephalopodic-crustacean marine Titan called the Kraken, the same name which another cephalopodic but very distinct Titan in the MonsterVerse was initially known by before Monarch renamed it Na Kika. Mike and Sam both share their respective given names with Sam Coleman and his father^note Named on the Monarch website in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and with Sam Brody from Godzilla (2014).
• Out of Focus: Kong, despite the story taking place on his home turf, is only seen in fleeting glimpses for the first several episodes. He begins to take a more active role in the latter part of the series.

• Planimal: Many of the creatures on Skull Island, just like in the movie, appear to be part plant, like a tortoise with a back full of aloe, or a huge cat whose fur looks like tall grass.

• Private Military Contractors: Annie is being pursued by a group of mercenaries who get stranded with her and her rescuers on Skull Island. They were actually hired by her mother to rescue her and bring her home.

• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Croc Monster, the Chameleon Titans and the Skullcrawler are all reptilian and are far more vicious than the mammalian and bird-like Titans, like Kong, Dog and the red hawk.
• Robinsonade: The central conflict is that Annie, the explorers who rescue her, and the mercenaries tracking her down are all shipwrecked and stranded on Skull Island.
• Say My Name:
  • In the first episode. Mike screams Boomer's name when the Kraken kills the latter, and a few minutes later, Hiro screams his son's name when he sees the latter in danger.
  • Charlie when he believes Annie is under attack by a creature in the second episode:
    "Annie!"
  • Mike and Charlie howl each-other's names when trying to find the other in the third episode, after going over the waterfall to try and escape the Croc Monster.
  • Sam when his employer and close friend Irene is attacked by a Venus Fly Trap Creature in front of him, before he starts hacking her free:
    "IRENE!"
  • The blonde mercenary calling out for help from his comrades in the sixth episode:
    "SAM!"
  • The island girl in the Whole Episode Flashback when things are dire in the fight against the Killer Chameleons:
    "Kong!"
• Sea Monster: The biggest obstacle to the protagonists leaving the island is the giant sea creature that shipwrecked them to begin with and will destroy any chopper that approaches the island.
• Series Continuity Error: Two with the series' portrayal of the titular island relative to its MonsterVerse movie and graphic novel appearances. The bright aurora which fills the MonsterVerse Skull Island's nighttime sky is completely absent throughout the series' nighttime scenes. Likewise, there is no sight, mention nor reference to the Perpetual Storm encircling Skull Island whatsoever, even though it's established that the storm is the entire reason why the island remained uncharted to the outside world for so long and why entry to or exit from the island without being stranded is so difficult for manmade craft.
• Shared Family Quirks: Irene says that she's not very good at social interaction with people, and it turns out she's not the only one in her family who's like this. Annie, a Wild Child who has very little common social knowledge, a streak of Brutal Honesty, and wariness of people (albeit justifiably after Irene's party shot at Dog and then imprisoned her without explaining themselves); is later revealed to be Irene's daughter.
• Shipwreck Start: The first season, which follows the crew of the Once Upon a Maritime, Annie, and the group of Private Military Contractors led by Irene all getting stranded on the Isle of Giant Horrors, starts with the Kraken violently attacking the former ship in the season premiere, with the next episode confirming that the Kraken also destroyed Irene's group's ship offscreen; shipwrecking the entire cast. The overarching plot of the first season focuses on the cast trying to find a way off the island, which is further hampered by the Kraken continuing to destroy any potential rescue that comes by sea or air for the group.

• Spiritual Antithesis: See here.
• Squashed Flat:
  • Hiro suffers this fate courtesy of the sea monster in the first episode. The body isn't shown, but Mike's horrified reaction confirms it was messy.
  • Kong kills a giant chameleon that has its tail trapped under a boulder twice its size, by rolling the boulder over the rest of its body.

• Super-Persistent Predator:
  • The Croc Monster relentlessly pursues Charlie and Mike for food immediately after it's already slain a grown mercenary, but it's smart enough to strictly stick to the river bank and above-water natural formations due to the rapids carrying anything caught up in them to a nearby waterfall. Then after Mike and Charlie survive falling over the waterfall, the Croc Monster fully embraces this trope like there's no tomorrow, jumping after them.
  • Dog's father on Annie's Island was so persistent in hunting Annie and/or her father that he clawed through the metal hull of their shipwreck to try and get to them, a process which would've taken him several minutes to complete from what we saw in the flashback, and he fought Annie's father to a Mutual Kill despite having a small pup to look out for. What we see of Dog's first interactions with Annie in the flashback hint this might have been because food for their kind was scarce at the time.
  • The Killer Chameleons, once they're antagonized by Kong and once they catch sight of the Island Girl as a prospective extra meal, absolutely do not stop for either of them until they're dead. In particular, the chameleon that goes after the Island Girl keeps trying to eat her even when they're both in freefall hundreds of meters above ground, and even after it's been horrifically impaled through the chest by its landing.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: It would ultimately be a little bit of an exaggeration to call the Sympathetic party villains, but they do function as antagonists for the series at first.
  • Sympathetic: The mercenary group are actively trying to capture Annie and bring her back to the U.S., being (understandably) willing to kill Dog to get rid of the threat he poses to them, and they're also initially willing to bribe or intimidate the other human heroes if the latter group are between them and their goal; but they're ultimately just trying to bring a lost feral child back home to civilization per the orders of her grieving mother who is their leader, they never go any further than threatening the heroes into backing down or helping them, and most of them are quite affable and generous if you're not being a problem for them.
  • Despicable: The Kraken, despite being a sea kaiju, is established to be intelligent and utterly malevolent, displaying a psychopathic and homicidal personality akin to Ghidorah. It kills and toys with any one or thing that approaches the waters off Skull Island, using its tentacles to cruelly toy with its human victims before it kills them, and it's responsible for killing Kong's beloved island girl and eradicating her entire village in a single day. Apart from satisfying its vile urges, the Kraken's only other objective is to kill Kong so it can apparently claim his kingship over Skull Island, goading Kong through methods like brutally murdering a whale in an effort to lure Kong to his death.

• Tranquillizer Dart: The mercenaries use tranquilizer darts in some of their handguns, specifically when they're trying to capture Annie alive. Sam fires a dart at her in the series opening, and Irene successfully tranquilizes her in Episode 5.
• Two Guys and a Girl: Twofold if only counting human party-members.
  • Two teenage boys, Mike and Charlie, band together with teenage girl Annie (and her non-human male companion Dog) on the island. Charlie is clearly interested in Annie, while Mike is not and often banters with her. Per the trope standard, the trio's token female gets tranquilized and kidnapped by antagonists midway through the series, although it should be noted that neither of the two teen boys fare much better, on account of one being crippled by a poisonous sting to a point where he has to resort to giving himself up to those same antagonists for medical aid before he becomes bedridden, and on account of the remaining boy subsequently being left alone at the mercy of an Isle of Giant Horrors, and (not for a lack of trying) being a bit too late to actually rescue his comrades per se.
  • Meanwhile, amongst the Private Military Contractors who Cap ends up tagging along with on the island, the only three named members of that party as well as the members who get the most characterization and plot relevance, are: Cap himself, and the merc leaders Sam (male) and Irene (female). Sam and Irene are close and old friends to each-other due to a commonality connection based in grief and loss, and they both get along quite swimmingly with Cap despite the bad first contact between their respective parties while they're on the island.
• The Unreveal: It's never shown what monster Cap spotted that inspired him to hunt for cryptids, but the offscreen glow and description of it as like a dragon suggests that it may have been Godzilla himself (invokedWord of God has Jossed this however, stating that it's another Canon Foreigner).

• Viler New Villain: Compared to the Skullcrawlers in Kong: Skull Island, who are so vicious, voracious and hostile because they're hypervores who can't help themselves; the Kraken in this series has no such excuse, and it's even more sadistic and cruel in personality — think if King Ghidorah got reincarnated inside a Sea Monster. Among the Private Military Contractors however, this trope is inverted — compared to the human antagonists of preceding MonsterVerse instalments, whom conspired and plotted murder, mass endagerment, genocide, and Protector Titan regicide, the mercs in this series are among the nicest human villains in the franchise; being cordial to the human heroes once they get to know them, and ultimately being out to bring a feral child back to civilization and to her long-lost grieving mother.

• World of Snark: Almost everyone has at least one moment of snark, even the mercenaries do it occasionally.

---