Tamal Kundu
Based on ‘King Kong’ by Merian C. Cooper & Edgar Wallace, ‘Skull Island’ is an action anime series. It is the fifth entry and the first TV series set in Legendary and Warner Bros.’ ‘MonsterVerse.’ Predominantly set on the eponymous island, the home of Kong, the story follows two groups of shipwrecked people as they try to survive in their extremely hostile surroundings. The series references other monsters in the universe, including Godzilla, though, unlike other entries in the franchise, the focus primarily remains on the human characters. Here is everything you might want to know about the ending of ‘Skull Island’ season 1. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Skull Island Season 1 Recap
The series begins with a mysterious girl with stunning agility and the ability to evade capture. She dodges the attempts of professional mercenaries to capture her as she tries to escape from their ship. Eventually, she manages to get on a lifeboat. Somewhere else in the South Pacific, Charlie argues with his father about his desire to attend college. Unlike Cap, whose soul sings for adventure, Charlie craves normalcy. He wants to do the regular young adult things: go to college, make friends, and meet girls. And his father seems to have a way of turning every argument into a circular conversation that leads nowhere.
Cap is an adventurer and has spent his life looking for a legendary creature he saw in the ocean (it is implied that the creature he saw was Godzilla.). The ship belongs to Hiro, who seems to have been Cap’s partner for years. Charlie and Hiro’s son, Mike, are best friends, but unlike the former, Mike is perfectly content with his life on the ship. While standing on the deck alone, Charlie spots the mystery girl from before in the water and jumps in to rescue her. Barely conscious, the girl mumbles about her dog. After bringing her on board their ship, Charlie alerts the others. When the girl gains consciousness and learns that Cap and the others are using small bombs to find legendary creatures, she warns them about a massive sea monster. The mercenaries from earlier come looking for the girl, whose name is eventually revealed to be Annie (Perhaps, she is the ‘Monsterverse’ version of Ann Darrow, the main human character in several movies about King Kong)
The sea monster eventually attacks and destroys the ship. Hiro is killed right in front of his son, who will likely carry the trauma for the rest of his life. Mike also gets electrocuted by the sea monster, but he and Charlie end up on an island together. Annie saves Cap after he gets tangled in a net underwater. The survivors soon realize that they are not on an ordinary island. The place is teeming with colossal flora and fauna. As Charlie and Mike try to evade the giant crabs hiding underneath the beach, Annie comes to their rescue. They later meet her dog, a massive canine that she named Dog. Apparently, their fathers killed each other, and the two quickly realized that working together was the best possible way for them to survive. They lived on an island nearby until a woman named Irene came looking for her. She and her mercenaries tried to kill Dog and take Annie captive. They succeeded in the latter task, but then Annie escaped.
While Charlie and Mike are with Annie, Cap encounters Irene and the remaining members of her squad of mercenaries. Realizing that she is looking for Annie, he makes a deal with Irene. They will help each other look for their respective children. Although the sea monster is never called as such, and this was likely a conscious choice, it is clearly supposed to remind the viewers of the Kraken. As the episode progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent to survivors that until the sea monster is dead, they can’t leave the island. After reuniting with his father, Charlie devises a plan to take out the sea monster with the king of the island, Kong.
Skull Island Ending: Why is Irene Looking for Annie?
From the beginning, Irene goes to extreme lengths to capture Annie. Even after losing several of the mercenaries she hired, she remains undaunted. It is revealed that Irene also hired Hiro and Mike to look for Annie. They spoke to a GI, who told them about the uncharted islands, especially mentioning Skull Island. He also warned them if they went there, they would not return. This proves to be prophetic in Hiro’s case.
Irene succeeds in separating Annie from Dog by using a tranquilizer on Annie and luring Dog to an open field where it can be snatched up by a massive hawk, which, as it turns out, takes some of the things it grabs for Kong. When Annie gains consciousness, Irene tells her the truth: She is her mother. Irene thought her daughter died along with her husband and a funeral. For ten years, she believed that Annie was dead.
That changed when a fishing vessel spotted the island and Annie’s ship on the shore before calling it in and going missing moments later. By her own admission, Irene is an extremely wealthy woman. She had resources to find out about this and launched a massive search operation for Annie. Hiro and Mike were only a tiny part of it.
Their first encounter went horribly, during which Dog attacked the mercenaries, and they fired back. Annie would have never forgiven Irene if Dog died after the hawk took him. Fortunately, he succeeds in escaping from it and Kong with Charlie, and they find their way to the camp. Dog attacks Irene, but she stops her people from retaliating. This seems to bring peace between the mother and the daughter, and Annie tells Irene that she has to apologize for not looking for her for ten years.
Is Dog Dead? Do Charlie, Mike, and Cap Leave the Skull Island?
The first season of ‘Skull Island’ ends on a cliffhanger, indicating that the creators have plans for more seasons. Episode 7 is entirely devoted to Kong’s past, and we see him bonded to a tribal girl. It’s Kong’s blood that awakens the sea monster, which later kills the tribal girl and all her people as if challenging Kong. Things have been caught in a stalemate since. The sea monster knows it is weak on the land, so it remains in the water save for hurling occasional whales at its rival. Kong leads a secluded existence walling in his grief and pain.
Charlie notices Kong’s attachment to a necklace, not knowing that it once belonged to the tribal girl. With Annie and Dog’s help, he steals it and rushes toward the sea to force an encounter between Kong and the sea monster. Although his plans work, and Kong kills the sea monster, we aren’t told what happened to Charlie, Mike, Cap, and Dog. The series skips two weeks and ends with Annie waking up in a hospital in a city.
We know that Irene survives and has returned to civilization, so there is a considerable chance for Charlie and Cap to be there as well. Perhaps, after noticing that Kong is victorious in his battle against the sea monster, the mysterious group of people Charlie encounters has let him go. The last time we see Mike, he saves Cap from a giant centipede. He is extremely weak but still alive. If help got to him at the right time, he is also alive. This leaves Dog. Seeing the bond he shares with Annie, Kong forgives them. If Annie is indeed supposed to be Ann Darrow of the Monsterverse, it makes narrative sense for Dog to die so that she can form a bond with Kong in the future seasons.
Who Are the People in Masks?
If the tribal girl and her people are supposed to be the Iwi, the native human residents of Skull Island, the people in the masks must be a separate group. Both tribes worship Kong as their deity, with the Iwi seeing him as their protector. There are paintings all over the island that depict Kong fighting the monsters. This is what gives Charlie the idea of getting Kong to fight the sea monster. One thing to note here is that these people can speak English. They may be descendants of people who shipwrecked on the island and made their home there, despite the danger. They can also be people from the Hollow Earth, and they learned English from shipwrecked sailors.
Read More: Review: Kong: Skull Island Doesn’t Live Up to the Hype
