Skullcrawlers

“Kong is God on the island, but the Devil lives below us… I call them ‘skullcrawlers’.”

~ Hank explaining the Skullcrawler species.

The Skullcrawlers are the central antagonists-turned-minor protagonists of the 2017 adventure film Kong: Skull Island, the second installment of the MonsterVerse franchise. They are an invasive species of two-legged reptilian-like Titans that seek to kill Kong and eliminate all life on Skull Island. They are also led by ramarak, the alpha of their kind.

## Personality

The Skullcrawlers are violent and savage creatures that appear to attack and kill anything in sight. Monarch describes them as "hypervores," due to their insatiable appetites, and classifies them more broadly as "destroyers," along with King ghidorah, Camazotz, MUTO Prime, and MechaGodzilla. Though the Skullcrawlers seem to act primarily on instinct, most of the species demonstrates some intelligence when Ramarak swats Earl Cole away with his tail before his grenades can detonate.

## Origins

According to Hank Marlow, Skullcrawlers had aided the Kong’s in protecting Skull Island for thousands of years, fighting against demon-clones called hęærtłèß (pronounced heartless), forcing the native Iwi tribe to build a huge wall outside of their village to keep them out. To the Iwis' surprise, the giant apes that they once feared began fighting alongside the Skullcrawlers against the hęærtłèß, eventually driving them all aunderground. The Skullcrawlers remained allies of the Kong’s until Ramarak declared war against Kong’s father, Kore’ona. When Kong imprisoned Ramarak, the skullcrawlers hid primarily underground until the seismic charges dropped by the Monarch expedition to the island in 1973 began drawing them back to the surface.

The novelization of *Godzilla vs. Kong* states that the Skullcrawlers evolved from a lineage of non-amniote basal reptilomorphs that possibly originated from the Hollow Earth.

## History

### Kong: skull island

Voracious and violent creatures, the Skullcrawlers once terrorized Skull Island under Ramarak’s command, forcing the native Iwi tribe to cower in fear behind a massive wall. Eventually, Kong began fighting back against the Skullcrawlers, thinning their numbers and forcing the remaining ones to retreat underground after Kong imprisoned Ramarak. It became Kong’s duty to prevent the Skullcrawlers from ever returning in vain.

In 1973, the Monarch-led expedition to Skull Island began dropping seismic charges onto the island's terrain, allegedly to map the island. These charges brought several Skullcrawlers back to the surface, much to the anger of Kong, who brought down all of the expedition's helicopters. Kong came upon the corpse of a Sker Buffalo, which had been freshly killed by a Skullcrawler. The Skullcrawler was joined by another member of its kind and attacked Kong, who was able to quickly dispatch the smaller creatures. The survivors of the Monarch expedition eventually regrouped and passed through a huge crater littered with skeletons. As they passed through the boneyard, they were attacked by a Skullcrawler, which was responsible for killing Chapman, the soldier they were all searching for. The Skullcrawler killed several of the humans, including William Randa, and was eventually killed when Mason Weaver used a lighter to ignite an explosive gas pocket as the creature passed by it, blowing it apart.

Later that night, when Lt. Colonel Packard and his men ambushed Kong in the swamp, a gigantic 95-foot Skullcrawler, which Hank Marlow identified as "the Big One," and referred to as the Skull Devil, though named Ramarak, emerged from the water. The beast attacked the wounded Kong, who had just killed Packard, but the humans were able to escape. By sunrise, the humans were attempting to rendezvous with Houston Brooks and Lin San, who were commanding the boat the *Grey Fox*. However, they were set upon by the giant Skullcrawler. One soldier, Earl Cole, attempted to sacrifice himself by detonating two grenades in front of the Skull Devil, but the beast simply smacked him away with his tail. Kong soon arrived and smashed a boulder into the Skull Devil’s face, buying time for the humans to escape.

Kong grappled with the Skull Devil, but the beast overpowered him and nearly clamped his jaws upon his throat. Kong kept up the fight, even breaking a tree across Ramarak’s face, but the monster was too powerful and knocked Kong into an old shipwreck, where he became entangled in its anchor chain. Weaver got to a vantage point and fired a flare into the Skull Devil’s eye, enraging him. Kong broke free of the chain and converted it into a makeshift flail, with the boat's propeller at the end, and attacked the Ramarak again. This time, Kong gained the upper hand and slammed him into the same hill Weaver was standing on, causing her to fall into the water below. He then cut through Ramarak’s flesh with the propeller. Kong seemingly finished the beast when he slashed Ramarak’s throat with the propeller, causing him to fall limp to the ground. Kong took the moment to pull Weaver from the water, but as soon as he had her in hand Ramarak rose back to his feet and bit down on Kong's free arm. Kong fought back and tried to keep Weaver away from the Skull Devil’s mouth, but the creature used his prehensile tongue to pull Kong's hand, with Weaver held in it, down his throat. Kong desperately pulled his hand free of the beast's gullet, tearing out Ramarak’s innards and killing him instantly. After this, the other skullcrawlers bowed down to Kong as their alpha, and thus, the alliance between the skullcrawlers and Kong’s was restored.

#### *Godzilla vs. Kong*

The
Apex Cybernetics bred Skullcrawlers to serve as test subjects for the machine they hoped would dethrone Godzilla: MechaGodzilla. Bernie Hayes, Madison Russell, and Josh Valentine, a trio of infiltrators hoping to expose Apex, found themselves on a transport to Hong Kong with several of the beasts' eggs. Inside Apex's headquarters, they found a test chamber where CEO Walter Simmons released one gigantic Skullcrawler, codenamed "Number 10," as the Mecha awaited him. The Skullcrawler immediately set his sights on the trio. He lunged at Madison as she dropped prone, but never reached her. Mechagodzilla seized him, held him by his arms, and sliced him in half with its Proton Scream before powering down. Later, number 10 was revived when Shanezilla and Twilight Sparkle began to undo the impact left by Mechagodzilla.