We at Knight Edge Media were given early access to the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+. This is our mostly spoiler-free review of the upcoming season. The second season follows the same storytelling from the first season, with older Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell) and younger Lee Shaw (played by Wyatt Russell) investigating titans across the globe in two different timelines. The second season also picks up directly where the first season ended, as Cate (played by Anna Sawai) emerges on Skull Island from Axis Mundi, 2 years in the future. Along with her long-lost, unaged grandmother, Keiko (played by Mari Yamamoto). Cate reunites with her previously missing father, Hiroshi (played by Takehiro Hira), and her half-brother, Kentaro (played by Ken Watabe).
This is where the current storyline and characters shift in importance. The show’s writers decided to make Cate, Kentaro, and their hacker friend May take a back seat going forward. The season centers on Hiroshi reuniting with his long-lost mother, Keiko, after decades apart (though for her it was only a few months). Keiko isn’t written as a typical “fish out of water” when she emerges in the present day after coming from the 1950s. Though she does mention Asian-Americans and specifically Japanese-Americans are treated much better than they were following World War 2. The mother-and-son duo is now firmly the main characters as they navigate their new relationship after many years apart with the secret organization Monarch.
The series lays heavy on the generational trauma of absentee parents as Hiroshi begins to relive the pain from when Keiko “died” and how his stepfather Bill Randa (played by Aders Holm) left him as a child to find her. The two timelines once again mirror each other, as Bill Randa’s 1950s research into the Titan rifts becomes a main plot point. They allow Bill to take center stage as the main character on screen. Once again, Lee Shaw’s past and future selves tie the show together.
The newer main characters’ storylines with Hiroshi, Kekio, Bill Randa, and Lee Shaw are the most interesting. Unfortunately, the original main characters of Cate, Kentaro, and May really don’t have much to do early on. Kentarao is reduced to the background most of the time, but does off-screen develop a relationship with Hiroshi during the 2 years Cate was in Axis Mundi. May just sounds annoyed in everything she does that the writers literally have her show up, say her line, and walk away pissed off multiple times. It’s intended to be a forced love triangle among the half-siblings, and May that mirrors the one between Lee, Kekio, and Bill Randa, but it simply doesn’t work. Or, more accurately, there is no chemistry between any of the younger actors. They all tolerate each other.
While the writers struggle with love triangles, they have surprisingly captured how the Titans interact with our Earth perfectly in this series. While season 1 was almost exclusively about Godzilla and his attack on San Francisco in 2014, he also takes a back seat in the new season (as well as Kong). The writers introduce a new aquatic Titan, Titan X, which has not yet appeared in any of the films. This mysterious Titan serves as the central creature for the entire season, tying together both the past and future timelines. This Titan has existed for centuries and has been revered by multiple cultures worldwide. Which makes it ironic that the creature is never mentioned in the films, though that’s a production downside rather than a historical choice.
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
All-in-all, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has been developed as a “must-see” cinematic experience for television, all made possible by Apple TV+. It is almost night and day different between the films Kong x Godzilla and the Monarch TV series. Usually, a spin-off series in a film franchise is the ugly stepchild that can be easily skipped, but not here. The writers have made you care about the human storylines just as much as the Titan storylines, and blended them seamlessly in a multi-timeline mystery. Many fans of the Kajiu franchise will talk about this show for years to come, rather than the mediocre feature films that have recently been released.
(Side Note: Ironically, if you remove the secret organizations of this show with Team Rocket and the Titans with Legendaries, you’d have a pretty fantastic Pokémon TV drama.)
