King Ghidorah (MonsterVerse)

"The Devil has three heads."

- Dr. Vivienne Graham's field notes about King Ghidorah.

King Ghidorah is the main antagonist of the 2019 action/disaster movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the third installament of the MonsterVerse franchise and a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla film.

He is a ancient giant extraterrestrial three-headed dragon-like kaiju who came to Earth seeking to conquer it and terraform it to a state more to his liking. He is Godzilla's oldest and most formidable enemy, who has fought Godzilla many times over the course of Earth's history for the title of Alpha Kaiju.

His middle head was portrayed by Jason Liles who also portrayed Rodan in the same movie, while his left head was portrayed by Richard Dorton and his right head by Alan Maxson.

Biography
King Ghidorah's past is largely unknown, but it is known that he arrived to planet Earth a very long time ago as an alien from another planet. It is also known that Ghidorah and Godzilla have previously battled, and they've been enemies for ages. At some point, Ghidorah was frozen in Antarctica and was therefore unable to move.

In the present, Alan Jonah and his terrorist organization go to Antarctica to free Ghidorah, as they believe he will be able to complete their goals to let the monsters overthrow humanity. Upon being released, Ghidorah instantly destroys everything in his path, before Godzilla arrives and tries stopping him, but Ghidorah manages to defeat Godzilla. Ghidorah proceeds to kill Dr. Vivienne Graham and eat her, and then disappears. After locating Ghidorah, MONARCH manages to lead Rodan to Ghidorah's location planning to have the two kill each other, but it ends up with Ghidorah nearly killing Rodan, before going after MONARCH. However, before he can kill them, Godzilla comes and stops him from doing it, but once again Ghidorah manages to defeat Godzilla, this time more devastatingly than last time. Godzilla does get up again though and rips off one of Ghidorah's heads, but the military had something else in mind; using a de-oxygenator to kill both of them. Godzilla is hit by the de-oxygenator and seemingly dies, but Ghidorah survives the attack, flying away and preparing to get his plan in motion now that his main opposition is dead.

Ghidorah flies to the volcano that Rodan used to be imprisoned in and regains his lost head by absorbing energy. Rodan flies to Ghidorah and submits to him, becoming Ghidorah's right-hand. Other titans across the world awaken and become Ghidorah's henchmen. Having no opposition and lots of henchmen, Ghidorah and his henchmen go around the world and start massacring and destroying entire cities. However, Godzilla is revealed to be barely alive, and awakens to stop Ghidorah from completing his goals. Ghidorah is lured to Boston where the other monsters are by a device known as the Orca, and upon arriving there he starts chasing Madison Russel who is carrying the Orca, before Godzilla arrives. Mothra and Rodan start fighting, while Godzilla and Ghidorah battle to the death. Ghidorah is winning again, until Godzilla gets atomic and thus becomes more powerful, and nearly defeats Ghidorah. But Ghidorah decides to absorb electricity to get more powerful as well, and becomes stronger than Godzilla again. Ghidorah manages to get Godzilla down on the ground but as he's about to kill him, Mothra comes and sacrifices herself after defeating Rodan.

The Russel family try escaping from the ongoing chaos, and to prevent that anything bad happens, Emma Russel, the mother, distracts Ghidorah by driving with her car in front of him so that he would chase her. Ghidorah kills her, but the rest of the family does manage to escape. Godzilla awakens again and kills Ghidorah by melting him with his stomps which have atomic energy and then with fire explosions, before firing atomic energy in Ghidorah's throat, and finally eating the remains.

However, a post-credits scene shows Alan Jonah with one of Ghidorah's heads and planning on using it for unknown purposes, suggesting that the King may not be gone for good.

Personality
King Ghidorah is, as he often is in the Godzilla franchise, a malicious creature who frequently commits sadistic acts. However, this adaptation might be even worse than the previous ones, as Ghidorah's goals are more fleshed out here and are purely egotistical, wanting to destroy humanity so that the Earth can adapt better to himself, so that he can have an easier time living there. That said, Ghidorah isn't shown to be as openly sadistic as previous incarnations as most of his singular human victims are people who got in his way, rather than complete innocents.

Ghidorah, despite being revealed to be an alien, is very intelligent and aware of the consequences his actions cause. He is surprisingly capable of manipulation, managing to get multiple titans to help him with his goals in destroying big parts of humanity to adapt the environment to him. Ghidorah and Godzilla have been archenemies for an unspecified amount of time, but most likely they've been enemies for a very long time.

Ghidorah's heads each have different personalities. The middle one is rather obviously the leader of the other heads and the colder, more focused of the three. The head on the right is more focused on battle and not as calm as the others. The head on the left is the calmest of the three and also the most harmless, being very unfocused on battle and preferring to analyze what is happening, leading into the middle head sometimes being disappointed in the left head.

Trivia

 * This is the largest live-action incarnation of King Ghidorah and second largest Kaiju in the entire franchise (next to his anime counterpart).