Warning: SPOILERS for the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 premiere are ahead!
At the end of the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1 finale, Kong decided to crash the party by arriving at the site where Cate Randa, Keiko Randa and May Olowe-Hewitt reemerged from Axis Mundi in 2017. The Monarch Season 2 premiere, which is now available on the 2026 TV schedule, picked up immediately afterwards, but we didn’t just see the giant gorilla rampaging in the middle of that stormy night.
It turns out Kong had an even bigger role to play later in the Apple TV subscription-exclusive episode. Monarch executive producer Tory Tunnell talked with CinemaBlend about why it was important to bring him and his home turf of Skull Island back into the MonsterVerse.
Why Kong Appeared in The Monarch Season 2 Premiere
There was something bothering Kong in “Cause and Effect,” and it wasn’t just the thunder and lightning. Our protagonists only barely managed to avoid being stomped by him on that night, and when they returned to Skull Island the following day to reopen the portal to Axis Mundi to rescue Lee Shaw, he showed up again in a foul mood. It soon became clear that Kong is not ok with open access to Axis Mundi and any Titans coming through it, including the mysterious Titan X.
Remember that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters takes place between Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, so Kong is still living on Skull Island and many years away from moving to Hollow Earth. That makes this his third chronological appearance on the MonsterVerse timeline following Kong: Skull Island, which takes place 1973, and the animated series Skull Island, which takes place in 1993 and can be streamed with a Netflix subscription. As for why Monarch decided to utilize Kong, here’s what Tory Tunnell told me after we’d talked about how the show goes about deciding on Easter eggs:
I think that we're really excited to bring people to Skull Island, but also not repeat what's been done so incredibly well in the film Skull Island. That we want to give them a taste of a hero Titan like Kong and surprise people by why he reacts the way that he does and continue our story from there.
As the undisputed alpha Titan on Skull Island, it’s up to Kong to maintain the established order. Titan X clearly did not align with that, and Kong was pretty angry that the tentacled creature escaped Skull Island after it killed Monarch deputy director Natalia Verdugo. Lee Shaw is back on Earth, but at what cost?
Why We’re Revisiting A Specific Location On Skull Island Again
The good news for Kong is that this won’t be the last time we see him in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. In the trailer released last month, Lee and Keiko are seen in front of the Skullcrawler Boneyard from Kong: Skull Island, meaning something will draw the characters back to this chaotic environment sometime later this season. When I brought up the Boneyard to Tory Tunnell, she said this about its inclusion in the new season of Monarch:
We're always looking for opportunities to have that connective tissue with our features, with our mythology. We want the world to feel integrated. We want to hook in fans of the features, but also welcome new audiences. So for them, something like that will be a really new exciting experience. And then for super fans, they get to revisit and be excited by the fact that it's all of a piece.
Kong: Skull Island viewers will remember that this is where Bill Randa, whom Anders Holm plays as a younger man in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, was devoured by a Skullcrawler. Because Lee and Keiko look so calm in that brief footage we see of them at the Boneyard in the Monarch trailer, it’s probably safe to assume those creatures are no longer lurking there. The last thing we need is to see them suffer the same fate that Bill did.
New episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 will continue being released Fridays on Apple TV, but it’s unclear when the main characters will return to Skull Island. What is scheduled is our reunion with the present-day Kong in the MonsterVerse. Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, a.k.a. the franchise’s sixth movie, hits theaters on March 26, 2027.
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