After ten episodes spread over nine weeks, we finally arrive at the monster-sized finale for Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters with the show’s own legacy somewhat in the balance. After a ridiculously strong start that gave us some impressive, 50s world building, Kurt and Wyatt Russell playing the same character to perfection and some truly cinema worthy Godzilla walk-ons, it seemed that Monarch’s Achilles heel was that the three main, 2015-based characters simply wasn’t as exciting as anything else the show had to offer which caused some major drag in some of the later episodes. However, with the finale looming over us like Godzilla himself, there’s a real chance for the show to end as strong as it started as the past meets the future, worlds collide and we get to watch a giant, nuclear dinosaur throw scaly hands with a giant bat-thing in another dimension.
Talk about getting your money’s worth…
When we last left Cate, she had not only been stranded in the shimmery netherworld of the Hollow Earth (or, at least I think it’s the Hollow Earth) only to be saved from a giant boar by her grandmother Keiko who had been thought death decades prior. Thanks to the flippy-floppy, timey-wimey nature of gravitational… somethings, Keiko hasn’t aged a day since being stranded here back in the late-fifties and after a tearful reunion with an aged Lee (who is also stuck here along with perpetual fifth wheel May), they start formulating a plan to escape back to their world before a) too much time elapses on the surface, or b) something fucking eats them.
Meanwhile, back on the surface, Kentaro finally has it out with his old man, Hiroshi, after everything thing he’s put everything through. However, explaining that he was trying to avoid another G-Day by screwing around with Hollow Earth portals isn’t anywhere near enough for Kentaro to forgive him for having such a secret existence that contained having two whole families.
However, despite believing the Cate, May and Lee are dead, Kentaro is lured back into the monster fold by Agent Tim, who has resigned from Monarch and gives hope that those lost to the Hollow Earth can still be saved thanks to Monarch not being the only show in town when it comes to this stuff.
While all this is going on, Lee salvages tech from both Keiko and his time stranded in this godforsaken monster haven and cooks up a daring plan. Using his pod back from the sixties (which in Hollow Earth years has only been here a month) and Keiko’s Titan summoning device, Lee plans to lure a monster through the nearest portal and then piggyback home in its wake when it leaves, but when he accidentally summonds a Titan that’s already here, it looks like the group is set to be a convenient meal for a passing ION Dragon. Thankfully, that’s not all the device has summoned and as Godzilla strides through the portal looking for a scrap, Cate and co. buckle up and hope for the best.
But even if they all get home, how much time has passed, where will they land, what changes will have affected the monster-hunting status quo and what other Titans would have made themselves known?
It’s with a huge sigh of relief that I can say that, after a couple of bumpy weeks, Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters manages to bring its first season home with style as it wisely zeroes in on all the aspects that made the show so enjoyable to begin with. Taking a very refreshing Godzilla + Kurt Russell × Legacy Stuff = Awesome, tact it wisely limits the melodrama to mostly Keiko still being alive with her reunion with Lee and her discovery that it’s 2015 providing the main thrust of the emotion. It’s the merging of the 1950s and 2015 timelines that the show has been building towards since its first episode and Keiko’s grief at find out a laundry list of truths (she’s lost decades, Hiroshi’s fully grown, Bill is long dead) is palpable and genuinely moving as Lee attempts to comfort her. Elsewhere, that other, much maligned plot thread of the search for Hiroshi that sort of petered out also gets resolved, with Kentaro continuing to finally turn his incessant whining onto the right victim. While it could be said that it’s somewhat of an underplayed ending to a question that essentially kicked the entire show off, the fact that the absent father is kicked to the curb by Kentaro’s mother feels earned and a nesserary slap on the wrist to a character that’s still something of an enigma.
However, someone that certainly isn’t an enigma is the show’s poster boy, Godzilla, and those who have (rightly) claimed that Monarch’s best moments have come from the show diligently stabbing at the Gojia button (not unlike that old, Hanna Barbera cartoon) are in for a treat.
While the Big-G isn’t as directly tied into the finale as you’d think – as usual, he just kinda shows up to sort shit out like God died and made him the Kaiju police – his battle with a rampaging ION Dragon is admittedly short compared to his wars with Kong, the MUTOs or King Ghidorah (TV budget, remember) but it’s oh so sweet. Looking pretty damn good for the small screen, the scrap is nice a violent with some close quarters clawing giving way to some out right dismemberment and even though the winner is practically a foregone conclusion the second Godzilla majestically stomps out of the portal like a 300 foot Stone Cold Steve Austin, it’s still the monster mosh pit we were hoping for.
However, while Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters pretty much ticks every box a season finale requires and leaves a lot of its threads in a satisfying place, it’s the doors the show leaves open that prove to be the most tantalising to a veteran MonsterVerse nut like me.
Upon arriving home after a victorious Godzilla provides something of a Kiaju Uber service to our surviving leads (Lee is seemingly lost – but is he?), they find that they’ve lost two whole years lost down the Titan rabbit hole which now dates the show as being set two years before 2019s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters. In the time we’ve lost, it seems that Kentaro, Tim and Hiroshi have moved on from the frustratingly secretive Monarch and pitched their flag with the corporation known as APEX who subsequently go on to rise to prominence in Godzilla Vs. Kong and create MechaGodzilla. Also, we see that they’ve established a camp on none other than a storm swept Skull Island which not only connects more dots, poses more questions and connects with a throwaway refence to Kong in the second Godzilla movie, but it also means we get a cameo from the great ape himself.
While not everything was laid out particularly cleanly as I’d like (so were the gang all trapped in the Hollow Earth or some dimensional space beneath, and if that is the case, how did Godzilla bore through to the other realm in China in Godzilla Vs. Kong?), Monarch does everything it needed to to make the overall show a Titan-filled triumph and has left me thristing for a second season. However, might I suggest more established Titans like Mothra, more movie character cameos like Ken Watanabe, Joe Morton, Zhang Ziyi or even Charles Dance and maybe a little less May and Kentaro unless their backstories don’t overwhelm the episodes like they did before?
Still, proving that there’s no bigger finish that Godzilla ripping the wings off a punk-ass challenger, Monarch: Legacy Of Monster has not only left us primed for the upcoming Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, but it managed to clean up it’s own house too, pulling a victory from the radioactive jaws of defeat.
A legacy indeed.
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