MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS Review – Godzilla's Flawed Prestige TV Series
Godzilla is an emblem of a nation’s loss. Godzilla is an icon of monster action. And after 70 years, Godzilla is bigger than ever. After being brought to atomic life by Ishiro Honda in 1954’s Gojira, The King of the Monsters went through decades of evolution, changing from Japan’s greatest fear to its strongest defender and everything in between. And in the midst of his longest dormancy in Japan, Godzilla was brought back to life by American studio Legendary Pictures for a cinematic universe. As we’ve discussed, Godzilla has evolved across four distinct periods – Showa, Heisei, Millennium, and Reiwa,
but we’ve also explored Godzilla’s exploits in the United States, becoming the centerpiece of the ever-expanding Monsterverse, which began in 2014 and whose lifespan has surpassed its original expectations with a 5th film soon on the way. But this American reinvention of Godzilla would see it’s largest expansion yet at the end of 2023, not with a movie, but with a TV show – Apple TV Plus’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.” Here, we’ll explored this newest addition to the Monsterverse – a decades-spanning globe-trotting adventure that seeks to fill in the gaps and expand the mythos left in the shadows
by Legendary’s Godzilla movies, all while telling a story of family and government secrets exposed in the wake of The King of the Monsters. This is Godzilla on
for 5 years prior to the show debuting. Monarch was developed for Apple TV Plus by Chris Black, known for producing shows such as Severance and serving as showrunner here, and Matt Fraction, known for writing comic books like Hawkeye and Sex Criminals and serving as producer, with both Black and Fraction co-writing the series with a writers room. So there’s actually very little creative crossover with any other Monsterverse entry beyond a few shared executive producers and visual effects supervisor Sean Konrad, who also worked on King of the Monsters and the 2014 film. And while there’s not much
information in the way of what Monarch was not allowed to touch, there’s enough unexplored time throughout this shared universe that I think the show had a lot of creative freedom in what it could cover. Legacy of Monsters is split between two time periods – 2015, shortly after Godzilla’s battle with the MUTOs in Gareth Edwards’ film, and the 1950s, where the government organization known as Monarch first encounters Godzilla and the ancient monsters known as Titans. Within these two time periods are two groups of characters attempting to understand a secret world they’ve been swept up into while
being connected across generations by family ties. “People go to Godzilla movies to see Godzilla, but we knew we couldn’t compete with the spectacle, and we weren’t even going to try,” said Fraction. “We wanted to build a show that lives in a world where Godzilla’s real, and Titans are real. But now what? It’s not a 9/11 show; it’s a 9/12 show. The movies are where the buildings get knocked down, but this show is where people are getting up again, dusting themselves off, and figuring out, “What does my life mean now when my world has changed entirely?”
And this is where we get into SPOILERS! So be warned, we’ll be diving into everything that happens in Monarch, and this is a show that really keeps its mysteries under wraps until deep into its season. So again, SPOILERS! In 2015, Cate Randa, played by Anna Sawai, discovers that her recently deceased father had another family in Japan, including her half-brother Kentaro Randa, played by Ren Watabe. Not only that, but their father, Hiroshi Randa, works for Monarch, the secret monster-investigating government organization first introduced in the 2014 film, and was investigating titans around the world when he disappeared.
Together, Cate and Kentaro, along with mysterious hacker May (lots of mysterious people in this show), played by Kiersey Clemons, follow Hiroshi’s trail, which soon leads them to former Army colonel Lee Shaw, played in the present by the goat, Kurt Russell. In the 50s, Shaw, scientist Keiko Miura, and cryptozoologist Bill Randa, played here by Wyatt Russell, Mari Yamamoto, and Anders Holm, encounter and document Titans around the world, including Godzilla, and help found Monarch, only for tragedies over the decades to tear them apart. Beyond a little jumping around in time during its first episode, the show essentially
moves linearly through both of its periods, tracking our present day characters as they uncover more about Monarch and the Titans, which coincides with what is slowly revealed as we move through the 1950s. Some episodes split their runtime between these two time periods pretty evenly. Others are almost entirely set in one generation or the other. And I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that our 1950s story and its characters are just so much more interesting than our present day heroes. Partly, that’s because the 1950s narrative is about big discoveries, momentous encounters with monsters, and three people
trying to really change the world. It’s also because Shaw, Keiko, and Randa are just more complex, less bickering people than our contemporary group. But this isn’t really their story. This is Cate and Kentaro’s story, not just coming to understand the world of monsters, but understanding their secret lineage within Monarch and its connection to the Titans that shaped their family over the decades. Oh and May is here too. No offense to Kiersey Clemons, but almost every show has that one secondary character whose side story is not interesting at all and takes up too much time. That’s
May. I guess the question going into this show for most people would be: how much Godzilla is there? And the answer is: not much. Then again, the show is called “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” and not “Godzilla: Legacy of Godzilla.” Godzilla is the spark for so much of what happens throughout the narrative and not really part of the main story, as our split timeline story takes place shortly after the 2015 events of the first Monsterverse Godzilla movie and in the past shortly after the US military’s first encounter with The King of the Monsters. So given that
the show happens within the already established time periods defined by the movies and stars characters that have never even been mentioned previously, it shouldn’t be too surprising that nothing earth-shattering happens within these 10 episodes. So what is Monarch about? Well, to quote Fast and Furious, Rise of Skywalker, and just about everything modern franchise that’s trying to keep its series alive, it’s about family. Most specifically, it’s about families being broken apart by circumstances beyond their control, with our monsters standing in as metaphors for natural disasters and family tragedies, but also because Hiroshi Randa is a piece
of shit. According to Black, “My personal rule was, ‘It can’t be a monster series.’ The worst version of this would be a sucky monster show.” Agree to disagree. There’s a recurring theme of children losing, either literally or metaphorically, their parental figures, and not fully understanding how the decisions of their parents have shaped the rest of their lives. This is Cate and Kentaro’s story because both the audience and these characters learn about how the history of Monarch directly relates to who they are as people. And after them, this is Shaw’s story, as he’s the one character
that fully links the past and present. Despite problems with story or character, I think that every actor here is putting in really great performances, but Kurt and Wyatt Russell, father and son, steal the show playing young and old versions of Shaw. Kurt is one of my favorite actors, in no small part thanks to his work with John Carpenter, and he has a charisma and star power no one here can match. But it’s Wyatt that gives the absolute best performance of the show, peeling layers off his character and creating a man almost immobilized by his need
to do the right thing. With this show so much more about how its characters change within a world of monsters instead of just being focused on those monsters, you need good performances to work. I mean, there’s a part of me that thinks that Godzilla should be in every scene. And whenever Godzilla isn’t on screen, all the other characters should be saying “where’s Godzilla,” but I think this show has much more possibility than that. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is more interested in its main characters uncovering some sort of truth about the world, whether that’s the existence
of Titans in the past or the true motivations of Monarch or Shaw in the present. It’s the type of show that devotes large portions of its episodes to characters breaking into abandoned rooms full of documents and uncovering clues that lead to more clues. And if you’re looking for a monster, they typically pop up just when our leads are about to find the answers they’ve been traveling around the world to find, throwing another wrench into their plans. Godzilla is the only Toho monster that appears here. Outside of Goji, there’s the Mother Longlegs of Skull Island, the
Mantleclaw (basically a crab), the super armored bug Endoswarmers, the Frost Vark (a heat-eating mole), the Brambleboar (it’s, like, a boar?) and the main villainous Titan, the Ion Dragon, which menaces our heroes on multiple occasions. Outside of King of the Monsters, the Monsterverse has used its own new creatures due to Toho licensing demands and creative freedom, but I wish I could have seen a Monsterverse update on a classic. Is it too hard to license Ebirah? Come on and show my lobster boy a little love! Monarch isn’t the first time that Godzilla has had his own TV
show. There’s Zone Fighter from 1973, Godzilla Island from 1997, the animated Godzilla: The Series from 1998, and Godzilla Singular Point from 2021. But these are VERY different takes on what a Godzilla TV series could be in the modern day. Monarch is very much in the vein of the modern prestige streaming limited series. Its concept and structure is more like LOST while its family drama and budget is more like Stranger Things. But the real question is, where are the Godzilla influences within all of this? There are various nods to Toho’s Godzilla history throughout – a little
monster island here, a dash of Godzilla vs Mothra there, but this is very much a Monsterverse story first. As such, Monarch is playing within the pre-existing confines of an established universe that’s giving its own spin on another established universe. We’re far enough removed from Toho’s kaiju movies that you really shouldn’t expect Hedorah or Xiliens or Maser Cannons to show up. But it would’ve been cool. Now that I think about it, having no expectations that any of these homages should show up actually makes Monarch a better show, and a lot friendlier for new viewers over diehard
fans. That’s a strange position to put your Godzilla show in after nearly a decade of Monsterverse movies, and it’s both for better and for worse. On one hand, I’m so frickin sick of every entry into an established franchise pointing at a character with a familiar name or hinting at some deep connection that only the most devoted fans would know and expecting me to mark out and say “I know what that is!” Monarch does very, very little of this besides mentioning Godzilla every so often, which, I mean, yeah that’s a pretty easy one. And given that
this is on Apple TV+, a streaming service that screams, “I just got the kids down for bed, am somewhat dissatisfied with my career, and would really like to not think about things for an hour,” making this for a broader audience makes sense. Uncle Randy doesn’t want to know what Titanosaurus’s motivation is, he just wants some light political intrigue for an evening. And I mean, hell yeah, I get it. On the other hand, we’re a decade into the Monsterverse and a new movie every 2 or 3 years isn’t going to be enough to fully define what
this world is. Getting a little more out there and a little more specific with what Monarch does or how the world is evolving would only make for a stronger take on Godzilla. But having this take place right after Godzilla 2014, the most boots on the ground, happening in your own backyard movie in the Monsterverse, is a tell that this will be more about a recognizable world disrupted by kaiju than what the mammoth King of the Monsters or hypercolored Godzilla vs Kong showed. An element that seemingly everyone, both audiences and creators, can’t seem to shut up
about when talking about Godzilla movies, is how interesting the human characters are that make up the story around the big monster battles. I think this is an issue that is almost always blown out of proportion by people that haven’t spent enough time watching kaiju movies. Yes, there’s examples of bad stories and boring or annoying characters that drag a movie down between the fights, but more often than not, I think these characters, ranging from everyday families to elite supersoldiers, are really fun pieces of their movies. Godzilla doesn’t talk. He doesn’t socialize with other monsters, well besides
Anguirus. And he affects people through his presence and destruction, not ever knowing what they’re going through. Let me watch a military recruit struggle to prove herself. I’m happy to sit with them and understand them more. The human element in a TV show, however, is a little different. This is close to 8 hours of show with a budget that limits just how often a giant monster is going to actually be on screen, so we have to spend a lot of time with our characters. Cate struggles with PTSD after Godzilla’s encounter with the military killed a school
bus full of kids she was taking care of. Kentaro is surrounded by people that have lied to him for years. Shaw is seeking to reshape the world and avenge the death of Keiko. But like I said earlier, I’m just not all that compelled by Cate, Kentaro, and May. It doesn’t help that the mystery that motivates them is way too opaque to be exciting. Despite Monarch being established in the previous films, we really don’t get a solid understanding of who they are, how they operate, and what they really want in the present day until way deep
into the season. We also don’t really know who Hiroshi Randa is or his relationship to his kids besides being a monster-obsessed bigamist. Yes, daddy issues are easy motivations to grasp, but what does that actually mean to Cate and Kentaro? How is present day Shaw enacting his plan and what are his end goals? It’s all very poorly defined and I often find myself thinking “did I miss something?” instead of “what are they hiding?” Thankfully, Monarch has a very obviously big budget, still limited compared to the $200 million spent to make Godzilla vs Kong, but big enough
to afford impressive sets, strong cinematography, great visual effects for every monster, and an overall clear mark of quality that informs everything we see. The sense of scale and weight for a TV show is consistently impressive. A lot of the best moments of the series are when the show blows it out. The Golden Gate flashback. Nuking Godzilla. The shipwreck attack. Godzilla desert awakening. The disastrous past expedition. These are great kaiju setpieces that adopt Gareth Edwards’ human POV and sense of scale to make us feel dwarfed by the titans. One of my favorite aspects of Monarch is
the glimpses we get of the everyday world in the aftermath of Godzilla’s battle in San Francisco. Not only is the bay area recovering from massive devastation (with the Golden Gate bridge still a wreck and survivors in FEMA housing), but how people simply live has changed, with kaiju warnings, emergency bunkers, and paranoia about unexpected new monsters shifting how normal life simply feels when the world you know is not what you think it is. There are a few chess pieces that get moved around the board here, linking Godzilla 2014 to the rest of the series, including Monarch
going public, the origins of Apex technology, and a larger conspiracy involving the hollow earth. These developments help wrap together the disparate elements of the Monsterverse Godzilla and Kong movies into a more fully connected package. Given that each of these movies have their own tone, are typically separated by years in the timeline of their universe, and often drop characters and plot threads established in previous movies, they often feel less connected than you might expect. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, as these essentially let audiences pick which tone and approach they like the most
as every movie provides a new lens on kaiju action. I really would have appreciated Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Serizawa showing up, though. After the majority of its episodes poke at a larger mystery but hold off on letting us fully understand the morality of its Monarch-related characters, the pieces fully drop into place when the last gaps between past and present are filled in. And this brings us to the final few episodes of Monarch, where all the secrets are revealed, all the motivations are laid bare, and our characters in both past and present fully move from the human
world into the titan one. So Spoilers Spoilers here if you haven’t finished Monarch yet. As our modern day sibling duo works with Monarch to catch up to Shaw and his forces, we learn that what Kurt Russell’s character actually wants is to completely seal off every entrance to the Hollow Earth, protecting the world from the threats that Godzilla is fighting. Not only that, but Shaw was part of the first expedition to this world within our world, motivated by the loss of Keiko, seen in the first episode, who was attacked by a titan swarm when they first
encountered a portal. But Shaw, Cate, and May are pulled into the Hollow Earth during a tunnel explosion, fighting for their lives and revealing Keiko to be unaged within this secret Axis Mundi. Yes, that’s right, this grounded, often sober show about living in the aftermath of monsters is actually deeply entrenched in the most extreme sci-fi concept of the entire Monsterverse, with The Hollow Earth being the biggest addition to lore in the entire series. In Godzilla vs Kong, the Hollow Earth is just one piece of the puzzle, as we finally learn the ancient history behind our two
lead monsters’ species. In Monarch, it’s the reason for characters like Shaw and Hiroshi to make actions that define both their lives and the lives of their children. And with the hollow earth set to be a major part of the upcoming Godzilla X Kong, I think the concept is here to stay for this iteration of the franchise as both Godzilla and Kong travel between the normal world and this insane monster-full one. Now that I think about it, Kong isn’t mentioned at all in Monarch. Poor guy, when’s he gonna get his own show? Wait, what do you
MEAN a Skull Island cartoon came out last year???? Throughout the season, the morality and conscience of Monarch is called into question but often never fully defined. Which is a little strange because in every Monsterverse film these cats are just a bunch of science-loving nerds. The larger arc of the show is that the moral compromises of Monarch must be corrected after we learn their origins with Shaw and the gang. Young Shaw’s journey into the hollow earth is a seemingly fatal disaster covered up by the government contrasted with the then-yet to happen Apollo missions, making this almost
a failed version of The Right Stuff. The Wrong Stuff if you will. The big reveal, and the reason why Kurt Russell is so spry for a hundred year old, is that his disastrous trip into the Hollow Earth froze him for 20 years, skipping ahead from his 1962 trip and into a 1982 return. What a cool twist! The next reveal, that Shaw has been essentially drugged and living in an old folk’s home for 40 years under Hiroshi Randa’s orders, is insanely dark! Essentially, Shaw lost 60 years of his life. And in the finale, Shaw is finally
reunited with Keiko in the most emotional scene of the show, with Yamamoto and Russell giving great performances. There’s a fantastic kaiju action finale here, as the group is able to summon Godzilla to open a rift back to the regular world and is swept up in a fight between the king and the Ion Dragon. It isn’t very long, probably due to budgetary reasons, but it still uses the sense of scale, weight, and perspective that has made the rest of the show feel great. If you’ve been waiting the entire show for a Godzilla fight, you’ll probably be
mad. If this is just a bonus to you, you’ll be satisfied. Shaw’s sacrifice, unfortunately, is predictable, ending his character arc for Keiko to live again and also because they probably couldn’t afford Kurt Russell for a second season. They give him the classic “maybe he’s alive” vagueness to his end to allow for him to come back, but it’s a kinda cliche end. Once they return, Monarch gives us the big hook for the second season. Our gang has jumped ahead in time to 2017 and iis now on Skull Island and Kong is here! Yeah I lied earlier,
this could be a really cool setup for what comes next and give us a true follow-up to Skull Island! Just how much stronger and more exciting these last few episodes are shows the limitations that a lot of modern streaming shows put on themselves today. Like so many prestige series, too much of Monarch is about the mystery of what’s happening to actually be about what’s happening. It’s in these last few episodes that things really do start happening, both in the past and present. So why did we wait this long? I guess I should just congratulate Matt
Fraction on not create a year long delay between the final 2 episodes like almost every comic he makes. BOOM. GOTTEM. HIT MY MUSIC. Ok cut my music. Will there be a second season? I guess that all depends on the performance of this season and the shifting Monsterverse rights behind the scenes. But if there is another entry in Monarch, there are a few things I’d hope they shift. Clearly, this is Cate and Kentaro’s story, so give them more agency and understanding. Make them active protagonists like Shaw. Clarify the world. Don’t make everything a mystery, we don’t
need that to be hooked. Bring in more established characters like Serizawa or Mason and Weaver from Skull Island, who have just vanished from this universe. And most importantly, move the season further into the future, post-King of the Monsters, with titans woken up around the world and the king fully established on the earth. That period and those new monsters have only really been explored in a few comic books and were essentially glossed over to get to Godzilla vs Kong. Having a mix of a boots on the ground little people perspective and a more unavoidable monster presence
would push the show into what I’d hope it could be without the burden of secrets and a slowly uncovered mysterious past. So what I would say about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is that it’s a solid if unnecessary addition to the Monsterverse, but proof that a big budget, complex Godzilla show is possible with today’s approach to streaming TV. The paradox of it all is that it’s really only necessary for kaiju diehards (surprise surprise that’s me) but built for very very casual fans or even those who have never seen a Godzilla movie in their life. With Monarch
sandwiched between Godzilla Minus One from Toho and Godzilla X Kong from Legendary could see this series being somewhat forgotten in a year from now, especially with streaming services often wormholing shows in people’s memories. However, if a second season happens and leans into the show’s best aspects, I could see Monarch becoming a strong tentpole of the Monsterverse and a series worthy of the King of the Monsters.
