After a solid opening that brought us back to Skull Island with a bump, Neflix’s King spinoff already set up some reassuring credentials. Neither slavishly dedicated to Legendary’s MonsterVerse, nor utter divorced from it either, Skull Island was fair game for anyone from Kaiju fanatics suffering from a severe case of FOMO to curious walk ins with a weakness for oversized simians. But after viewing the second episode, evocatively titled The Last Blank Space On The Map, I have a theory that the show runners may be using the show to give us a greatest hits of fantasy monsters. Think about it, while the previous episode featured an appearance of a humongous squid, conjuring up fond memories of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and a smattering of Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, this installment feature truck-sized crustaceans may invoke such films as Mysterious Island, The Lost Continent and, unsurprisingly, Attack Of The Crab Monsters.Whether my theory is bang on the money or I’m just seeing things that just aren’t there, one thing is certain – Skull Island is still packed with a monstrous menagerie.
After a quick flashback that not only clues us in where exactly Hiro and his son, Mike, managed to get hold of a map that leads to Skull Island, but what decade the show is actually set in (the 90’s, in case you were wondering), we pick up with Charlie and Mike as they try to get their bearing after being washed up on the eponymous body of land – however, don’t exactly have time to fully process their predicament thanks to an attack of some giant killer crabs that Guy N. Smith would be proud of.
While they make their escape, we also find that Charlie’s father, Cap has also survived, but after narrowly escaping the mandibles of a huge bug that’s part insect, part geode, he runs into Irene, a survivor of the mysterous ship that was also sunk by the giant squid that took down his craft. After witnessing a turtle that’s part Aloe, the two realise that the eco-system and the wildlife on Skull Island are way more interlinked than anywhere else on Earth.
Meanwhile, Charlie and Mike finally manage to subdue their uncomfortable attack of the crabs due to the arrival of Annie who, despite claiming not to be from this particular island, still has enough monster fighting chutzpah to make up for the boy’s terrified cowering. However, their safety is short lived when they are held at gunpoint by more survivors of the ship that tried to kidnap Annie who also manages to take the men down without breaking a sweat.
While Cap starts putting two and two together and realises that Irene was responsible for Annie’s capture in the first place, he makes an uneasy truce with the woman that he’ll help he find the girl if she and her men will help him find Charlie. But unbeknownst to all, Annie’s had some help surviving on the most inhospitable island on the planet and it’s big, its fast and its barreling out of the jungle like a locomotive with large, jagged teeth…
The notion of Skull Island settling into a new episode = new monster pattern isn’t exactly a surprise, after all, how would you lay out eight episodes of kids wandering around an island of slavering beasties, but while we wait for the King to grace us with his presence, it’s a no-brainer to get us reaquainted with the titular body of land. In fact, if memory serves, Kong: Skull Island was fairly episodic itself, presenting a string of razor-faced birds, bamboo-legged spiders and bungalow-sized buffalo for our human-shaped leads to tangle with before Kong took the wheel.
Speaking of the movie, the episode also provides some tangible tissue that fully connects it with the movie thanks to a smart, concise plot point that eschews unlikely cameos of one of the film’s cast in favour of being fairly realistic – after all, why would anyone who had actually been on the island be even remotely ok with anyone else going there? Sure, it would have been nice to get a more direct reference, but a random G.I. who was on the transport ship will do quite nicely, thank you very much.
Elsewhere, the second episode doubles down on three major points to keep things ticking until a certain, gargantuan ape staggers into frame. The first is the mystery surrounding Mae Whitman’s Annie as we have no clue what her story is apart from she apparently lived on one of the many smaller islands that make up the whole, she is incredibly adept at taking care of herself and that she had been captured by whoever the hell Irene is working for – which brings us to our second point. Voiced by GLOW’s Betty Gilpin, Irene is yet another female character who is carrying a whole load of intrigue with her alongside a bag full of provisions and a quick wit. Is she a member of Monarch? A sinister protege of Charles Dance’s Alan Jonah from Godzilla: King Of The Monsters? Or (most likely) someone complety new? While I have to admit, I’m hardly on the edge of my seat waiting to find out – it’s mysterious monster movie antagonist 101 – the fact that she’s forged a necessary union with Cap will no doubt reap the necessary drama later in the season.
However, this unsurprisingly all falls into second place compared to the episode’s desire to shove our face directly into Skull Island’s murderous wildlife as we are graced with Predator-faced crabs and a bug that uses an abdomen full of hypnotic bling that go out of their way to remind us that death not only lurks under every rock, but it probably is the rock too.
However, if I’m being a mite picky, it’s fairly standard monster movie stuff. Yes, it sets up everything cleanly and plainly while laying out the stage for Kong himself, but I guess I was more traumatised than I thought by the agonisingly long wait for Godzilla to show up in Netflix’s other animated Kaiju show, Godzilla: Singular Point. Slow burns are great, especially if you’re binging the show in one, two and a half hour extravaganza, but I can only watch them as fast is I can review them and episode two of Skull Island is working from the first act of the Kaiju/fantasy playbook, step by step.
Still, the show is still slick and still fun, offsetting the panicked whining of the two male leads with some cool animation (I’m loving the long, drawn out, unbroken, action shots as the camera pans around them) and some nifty creature designs.
We’re guaranteed a new, heroic monster at the start of the next episode (the cliffhanger ending wasn’t fooling anyone, Netflix), but it may be time for Kong to tag in maybe sooner, rather than later.
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