This article is from Den Of Geek US. It contains big spoilers for Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the third chapter of the MonsterVerse and centres around Godzilla’s endless rivalry with Ghidorah, the three-headed monster. Ghidorah is Godzilla’s go-to top nemesis in the older incarnations, so building to this epic clash makes all the sense in the world.
It also makes sense that perhaps Legendary isn’t finished with him.
Midway through the movie, they reveal how reality-breaking Ghidorah really is by showing that it not only doesn’t need oxygen to survive, but that it’s able to regenerate an entire head after Godzilla had previously chomped it off. This is due to Ghidorah being extraterrestrial in origin, as figured out by members of Monarch shortly after.
The movie ends with Godzilla going into full Burning Godzilla mode to not only defeat Ghidorah, but to vaporise the creature entirely. There’s no regenerating from that.
But…doom is not lost. The post-credits shows a fisherman leading Colonel Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) and his men to the remains of Ghidorah’s decapitated head from earlier in the movie. It’s long-dead and swarmed by flies, but Jonah ominously offers to buy it. Not only are Godzilla and Kong going to throw down soon, but apparently Jonah and the rotting head of Ghidorah are going to be an x-factor.
Between this, Godzilla’s third act resurrection, Rodan enduring an impaling, and Mothra recuperating in a cocoon, it really is hard to kill one of these buggers for good, isn’t it?
In terms of references to previous versions of the Godzilla mythos, this post-credits cliffhanger appears to have a lot to do with Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah from 1991. Late in that movie, Godzilla was able to straight-up kill Ghidorah and blew off one of his heads. This incarnation of Godzilla was one of the more “rampage against mankind” types, so he went and started busting up Tokyo afterwards.
To stop Godzilla, one of the main characters went to the future, where Ghidorah’s remains were found, and enhanced it with cybernetics. Mecha-King Ghidorah was brought to the present to stop Godzilla’s rampage. In a later movie, the robot replacement head was used to create this continuity’s Mecha Godzilla.
Another possibility is Destoroyah from 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. The monster was originally a race of crustaceans that were altered and awakened by the use of the Oxygen Destroyer from the original Godzilla movie. They eventually evolved, grew, and merged into a beast capable of dwarfing Godzilla. This story is notable for not only introducing the Burning Godzilla concept, but for killing Godzilla himself at the end of the movie.
Jonah and his eco-terrorists deal with titan DNA, so their meddling can easily create something similar to Destoroyah. The real question is: to what end? All things considered, Earth is in a fairly OK spot by the end of King of the Monsters. Jonah’s views appear to be disturbingly extreme when he’s choosing to help bring extinction to mankind when it all seems even less necessary. He’s always been nuts, but now he’s going out of his way.
It’s also worth noting that messing around with monster DNA is what gave us the plant creature Biollante from Godzilla vs. Biollante.
Will Ghidorah be cloned, turned into a cyborg, or mutated into something much worse? We’ll have our answer once Godzilla vs. Kong hits cinemas in 2020.
