'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' Post-Credits Tease a Dangerous New Kaiju

Proving just how much Marvel has influenced blockbuster filmmaking, nearly two dozen people who attended an advance screening of Godzilla: King of the Monsters in Times Square stayed in their seats through the credits, hoping for a post-credits scene. (There was also a violent fist fight between two patrons, and some had to answer questions to staff. It was weird and kind of scary.)

Our patience was rewarded. Yes, there is a post-credits scene for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and it teases an even scarier (and way more awesome) version of King Ghidorah than the one in the film.

Major spoilers for Godzilla: King of the Monsters ahead.

In the thrilling final fight of King of the Monsters, Godzilla powers up to become Burning Godzilla, an homage to the still-amazing 1995 smackdown Godzilla vs. Destroyah. As Burning Godzilla, the Big G obliterates King Ghidorah, his main rival, with pulsing atomic blasts. As the humans escape, Godzilla roars over a flattened Boston.

King Ghidorah is dead. But in the post-credits, Jonah (played by Game of Thrones star Charles Dance) is invited by fishermen to take a look at what they’ve found: A severed head of Ghidorah. Jonah smirks, telling the fishermen, “We’ll take it.”

In the film, Emma (Vera Farmiga) and Jonah are eco-terrorists who want to awaken and unleash the sleeping kaiju, dubbed “Titans,” one by one. It’s observed in the movie that the Titans have a bizarre, restorative effect on Earth’s greenery. With humans having devastated the planet and spurring climate change tenfold, the two hope the Titans can rejuvenate the planet.

Throughout the credits, news clippings and headlines prove that Jonah and Emma were right. The planet does heal a little from climate change, but now humans are forced to co-exist with giant beasts roaming the planet.

Ghidorah, however, is a different case. Revealed to be an ancient alien who challenged Godzilla eons ago, Ghidorah has extra powers that the other Titans don’t have, mainly an extremely fast regenerative factor.

While Ghidorah is capital-D dead at the end of King of the Monsters, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Jonah is intent on reanimating Ghidorah. The expansive film canon of Toho’s Godzilla shows that there is a second form of Ghidorah to be unleashed: Mecha King Ghidorah.

Introduced in 1991’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Mecha King Ghidorah (“MKD” for short) is a robotic, Frankenstein’s Monster-like version of Ghidorah who was brought to the future by time-traveling humans called Futurians. It was engineered in the future and sent back to 1991 as an anti-Godzilla weapon to protect Japan.

(In the “Heisei Series” canon, which ran from 1984 until the release of Godzilla 2000 in 1999, Godzilla was an animalistic monster who acted on instinct compared to the more sentient hero the original series portrayed him. Thus, humans were quite keen on killing the poor lizard rather than celebrate him.)

In the new MonsterVerse, it’s possible that Jonah will try to use the DNA from Ghidorah’s head to rebuild him as Mecha King Ghidorah. Exactly how this would fit into Jonah’s plans, or even how that would work, remains to be seen.

It should also be said that MKD has long had the center of the three heads synthetic, with the left and right heads remaining organic. With just one head at Jonah’s disposal, we could be in for a way different MKD in a future Godzilla movie. The only question now is if MKD will run interference when Godzilla and King Kong square off in Godzilla vs. Kong next year.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is in theaters now.