BODY: The thing that has been haunting Monster Hunter players since 2004 is back, and it has learned some new tricks.
At Tokyo Game Show 2026, Capcom ran a live gameplay demo of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, the "super-large" expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds, and used it to announce the return of Khezu — Fulfur in Japanese, and still the most reliably unsettling design in the series. The demo showed a full fight against it, including the wyvern charging itself with electricity and, in the segment that drew the loudest reaction, grabbing a hunter and swallowing them whole.
GAME Watch's report also highlights a nastier piece of staging: Khezu extending only its neck through a narrow gap in the environment, head emerging from a crevice while the rest of its body stays hidden. That's a meaningful upgrade over the monster's older behavior, where it mostly clung to cave ceilings and dropped. Wilds' larger, more vertical locales appear to give it somewhere new to hide.
Ascendance is currently slated for 2027 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Khezu joins other monsters already shown for the expansion — hands-on sessions earlier in the show week put attendees up against Arakeeta and Teostra with new hunter actions in the mix. Capcom's Day 1 stage stream at Makuhari Messe carried the demo live rather than cutting a pre-rendered trailer, which is usually a sign a build is further along than the release window suggests.
The insider take
Japanese players have a specific, affectionate loathing for Fulfur that doesn't quite translate. It debuted in the original 2004 Monster Hunter as a blind, pallid, skinless thing that lived in caves, and generations of PSP-era hunters formed their opinions in cramped tunnels with bad camera angles. It sat out the Monster Hunter: World generation entirely, so its comeback reads to the domestic fanbase less as a new monster reveal and more as an old grudge being settled — which is precisely why Capcom put the head-through-the-gap moment in a live demo instead of a trailer. It plays better when the crowd gasps.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).