Same happen to my Macbook Pro 15" 2017 and it seems this issue started after upgrade to MacOS Monterey. It caused the whole laptop freeze and unusable. Can't believe such a premium laptop have this kind of problem! I even formatted my harddisk and reinstalled the Monterey but the issue still persists! Resetting the SMC did not help but disconnecting the monitor immediately see kernel_task dropped. Reconnecting back the monitor will not immediately trigger the problem but after awhile the problem came back.