Jurassic World Dominion Fails To Payoff The Trilogy's Biggest Setup

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Warning: SPOILERS for Jurassic World Dominion below.

The scarcely seen mosasaurus emerged on screen in the Jurassic World series but its build-up to a bigger role inJurassic World Dominion isn't paid off. This oceanic predator resurrected from the Cretaceous Period promised a showdown due to its gigantic size and brute strength. The third and most recent installment of the Jurassic World franchise depicted the mosasaurus but didn't give the intimidating carnivore a satisfying sendoff.

First seen in Jurassic World 2015, the Mosasaurus begins as an attraction at the in-universe amusement park Jurassic World. The whale-like predator is not a dinosaur but a carnivore of squamata, which is a classification of scaled reptiles. With a size bigger than the franchise-infamous T-Rex, the mosasaurus becomes a symbol of fear when chaos erupts in the park. InJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it's released into the sea when Maisie Lockwood frees the dinosaurs from Lockwood Manor. The ending of Fallen Kingdom implies a larger and more antagonistic role for the creature in the future since it is last shown swimming underneath surfers in a Jaws-type sequence.

Related: Everything We Know About Jurassic World 4

There was an expectation that the mosasaurus would have more to do in Jurassic World Dominion because of how ginormous and destructive it can be compared to other major antagonists in the franchise. The first two films foreshadow this by focusing briefly on its eating habits as well as its speed and strength underwater. Dominion neglects to pay off its best setup by allowing only the opening scene to show off the mosasaurus' predatorial impact in the new world. The scene is notably short, depicting the carnivore taking down a boat