Godzilla: King Of The Monsters Ending Explained

Godzilla: King of the Monsters ends exactly the way you'd expect it to: With a massive Titan vs. Titan showdown in the ruins of Boston, as Godzilla and Ghidorah battle it out for apex predator status. The film ultimately reveals that Godzilla, who seems to be working side by side with humanity, has prevailed by showing us the King of the Monsters chowing down on one of Ghidorah's heads before blasting the remains of the alien monster with his atomic breath. Dr. Stanton responds to this by saying "Thank God he's on our side," to which Dr. Ilene Chen replies "For now."

It's an ominous postscript added by Monarch's resident mythologist, who seems to understand that even though some version of a balance has been achieved with Godzilla's victory, it could all go very wrong at any moment. Humanity is still a force in the world after the battle of the Titans, but the rules of existence are going to change from the biggest biological concepts all the way down to daily life. It might just seem like a line left in to tease more sequels, but Dr. Chen's warning speaks to the fragility of life on Earth in the wake of the film. Everything old is new again, and that means new rules for everyone that could be breaking at any moment.

It's been a common feature of Godzilla films for decades now that Mothra emerges as a benevolent, self-sacrificing figure who wants to live in harmony with humans rather than battle them, and the Queen of the Monsters lived up to that legacy in this film. After defeating Rodan, a weakened Mothra sacrificed herself in battle against Ghidorah to help Godzilla, with her essence falling on the King of the Monsters to give him a little added boost when he needed it.

Luckily, that's not the end of Mothra. News clippings in the film's closing credits suggest the Queen is simply regenerating, and will eventually emerge from another cocoon. The film also suggests that when she does return, Mothra won't be alone. The Chen twins, Ilene and Ling, seem to be more than just two scientists with an intense interest in monsters. They are third-generation members of Monarch, part of a line that's followed the Titans for decades. This devotion to Titans, plus their status as twins, points to them being the MonsterVerse version of the Shobijin, the twin fairies (in the original films) who worship Mothra on its home of Infant Island (also referenced as part of the Chen family legacy) and call the creature forth in times of need. We very likely haven't seen the last of them.

Early in the film, Dr. Stanton theorizes that Godzilla is able to move so quickly underwater because the earth is, in fact, hollow, and the Titan is using tunnels under the oceans that have yet to be discovered by man. His theory is laughed off, until the Monarch team follows a dormant Godzilla into the depths later in the film and discovers that there is, in fact, a system of tunnels down there that modern humans were unaware of. They're not just tunnels, either. There's also an entire underwater city down there that Stanton claims is quite a bit older than something even the ancient Egyptians could have built.

News clippings in the film's closing credits reveal that this information has been made public, and now the whole world knows that "Hollow Earth Humans" once worshipped and co-existed with The Titans. Of course, the underwater city we see in the film was presumably entirely destroyed by the nuclear explosion that Dr. Serizawa set off to re-power Godzilla, but if there really was a culture of people worshipping "The First Gods," it's hard to imagine that city was the only one.

Even as monster chaos swirls throughout the film and cities of the world are destroyed in the wake of the Titans, Godzilla: King of the Monsters also does its best to keep a human heart at its center. In this case much of that heart centers on the Russell family, which was torn apart by Godzilla's battle with the MUTO creatures in San Francisco in 2014. Emma and Mark lost a son, Mark started drinking, and their marriage ended. Their daughter Madison stuck by her mother, then had to watch as even she descended into a kind of madness as she felt the Titans would save the planet by culling out portions of humanity. As the film goes on, Maddie has to watch her mother, who was once her hero, become what she calls "a monster" before ultimately redeeming herself in the fight to defeat Ghidorah.

When the dust settles, Mark and Madison are the only two members of the family left, and they've both just helped Godzilla become the alpha among the Titans. There's no going back to the world they knew, Mark's idea to wipe the Titans out is a moot point, and Madison has clearly developed an emotional connection to both Mothra and Godzilla. The film leaves their future open-ended, but we already know Millie Bobby Brown will return for Godzilla vs. Kong, so the Russells are clearly planning to stick close to the Titans for at least a little while longer.

When Dr. Emma Russell reveals her plan to awaken the Titans and balance out the world by achieving a co-existence that will also result in a certain degree of culling when it comes to humanity, she doesn't know that this supposedly necessary evil will blow up in everyone's face. When the Titans awaken all at once, mass destruction occurs on a global scale. Cities are leveled as the Titans respond to Ghidorah's command, and while we really only see Washington D.C. and Boston up close, we can speculate that such devastation has happened everywhere.

So, let's say that Dr. Russell's plan worked in some twisted way, and that humanity can now co-exist with the Titans. What does that mean for civilization? Well, our population has likely been greatly reduced by the initial Titan attacks, so perhaps concerns about overpopulation have been alleviated, but where will we live? Will we gravitate to the remaining major cities, or use the natural growth boost provided by the Titans' radiation to live a more agrarian life in the places they destroyed? Perhaps more importantly, what will the Titans eat? What will it take to permanently sustain them? We'll have to wait until the sequel to find out for sure, but this balancing act doesn't seem like something that will happen overnight.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a massive, globe-hopping film that is in many ways just an excuse to get a bunch of giant monsters together and let them fight. It's a popcorn movie to its core, packed with cheer-worthy moments and unabashedly setting up sequels for the MonsterVerse to keep exploring. That doesn't mean it's without deeper concerns, though. In an interview, director Mike Dougherty touched on the power big blockbusters have to shield big thematic concerns in a layer of popcorn fun, while still raising some major questions. In this case, the question was how long humanity can continue unchecked.

"I tend to find that with these pop culture movies, it's a way for us to collectively address subjects that are too difficult to bring up in other ways," he said. "I'm not advocating for their point of view, but it's a very tricky thing to bring up without it turning into a controversy that there are only so many resources, and is slowing our growth rate something that we should consider, without having to go through any drastic measures? I'll leave that to the media pundits."

Obviously, this is a question the film only tackles in a very bombastic, plot-driven way, but it's certainly a trend in major franchise films right now, and seeing that pattern is enough to send audiences home pondering their own impact on the world.