With family drama comes a mix of conflicting emotions. While you (usually) find yourself bathed in unconditional love, you often also experience such counterintuitive feelings as confusion, disappointment and resentment if a loved one decides to pull some tricks that you don’t agree with. In the event of Hiroshi Randa’s death during the last episode of Monarch, the notoriously volatile Randa family start displaying all those mentioned emotions with one another as they process their grief, but as the sixth episode of the second season progressed, I found myself experiencing them myself.
As a fan of the Monsterverse, I’ve always greatly appreciated Monarch getting stuck in and connecting the dots as it tries to find the wiggle room between movies to tell a story of its own. However, I have to say the “Requiem” pulls some dirty tricks in order to add some Kaiju razzle razzle to a season that seems to be biding it’s time as the episodes tick away. But while there’s a great number of revelations that occur here (what is it with this group and secrets?), are they enough for me to forgive the show pulling it’s most egregious trick yet?
In the aftermath of Hiroshi’s death, the various members of the Randa clan work through their grief in the only ways they know how. For Kentaro, it’s obviously to act like an embittered asshole and take out his feeling on Cate, which turns out to be fairly convenient because I don’t think there’s been a disaster that’s occurred in the entire Monsterverse that she hasn’t blamed herself for at some point or another. However, while the kids point fingers, a blast from the past shows up to the funeral in the form of an aged Dr. Suzuki who originally invented the “Titan Phone” back in the 50s that was once used to summon Godzilla. Now referred to as the Suzuki Device, Shaw realises that if the inventor has another prototype (which he does) he could end the threat of Titan X by calling Godzilla back from Axis Mundi and have him take care of this new Titan much like he took care of the MUTOS. However, Keiko is horrified as Shaw’s willingness to manipulate living creatures into what’s essentially a 393 foot cock fight and instead goes off with Cate to explore the strange connection she shares with Titan X.
As various flashbacks that range as far back as 1958, to a mere two weeks ago, explain the various reactions our players are having now, they all forge ahead with their own personal projects that each have surprising outcomes. Kentaro’s attempts to drown his sorrows and smother nightmares lead to him making the acquaintance of Isabel, who turns out to be the daughter of Apex honcho Walter Simmons. Meanwhile, Keiko and Cate’s experiments into Titan X’s frequency finds that the Kaiju may not be as malevolent as it once seemed, but most shocking of all, Shaw’s attempts to bring Godzilla from Axis Mundi results in him getting a bizarre radio signal – from himself during his time trapped in the between dimension back in 1962.
So let’s rip that band aid off ASAP and target the thing that Monarch’s done that managed to legitimately piss me off – its use of its teo star Titans. It’s ironic that Keiko has a moment in the episode where she chastises Lee about his intent to willfully misuse Kaiju for his own ends, when Requiem similarly chooses to exploit both Kong and Godzilla throughout the episode with frustrating results. While I understand that the showrunners didn’t want to undercut the gravity of a major death, but also didn’t want yet another monster-less episode so soon after the Titan light third episode, the way that both of the alpha dogs of this franchise are trotted out actually made me pause the episode in frustration.
The Kong stuff isn’t quite so bad, I guess. Flashing back two weeks to the night before Cate, Shaw and Keiko are brought back from Axis Mundi, we watch Kentaro sketching a slightly belligerent Kong before having a nice moment with his father once he sneaks back into the Monarch Skull Island camp. It’s not exactly vital to the plot, but it does finally give us some insight to how much the father and son bonded in the two years between seasons and it’s nice to get the big ape back in frame. However, when it comes to Godzilla, I have some rather sizable issues – watching him suddenly arrive out of nowhere in the middle of Japan and start causing a ruckus is as spectacular as you’d expect, but revealing it as merely a nightmare of an anxious Kentaro feels like nothing more than a cheap trick just to cram some random Godzilla into the action and to be perfectly honest, both Titans (and us) deserve way better than a glib cameo and a fucking dream sequence.
Anyway, now that I’ve thrown my toys out of the pram, I suppose I’d better try and objectively review the rest of the episode and while the momentum takes another, understandable, dip after the death of Takehiro Hira’s Hiroshi, there’s enough intriguing stuff here to ensure that the last four episodes won’t gave to resort to such underhanded tactics. For a start, despite the fact that Kentaro is still the moody, hot tempered jerk he’s always been, its actually nice that he’s finally getting something approaching an arc this season. His bitterness certainly doesn’t improve as he actively blames his half-sister for his father’s death and awkward misreads May’s later signals when they head out to an old favorite bar for a drink. However, it’s also noticable for the introduction of Amber (Prey) Midthunder’s Isabel Simmons, whose existence reveals that the Apex billionaire had another daughter beyond the doomed Maia played by Eiza González in Godzilla Vs Kong. Does this mean that Simmons had a habit of sending daughters out into the world like spies to advance his interests – because if it does, it fits well with the episode’s themes of fatherly influence.
Tying even further into their thread is the flashback introduction of Lee Shaw’s dad, who shows us where his son’s stern, modern day attitude to Kaiju control may have come from as he soured with age. However, proving that it’s not all daddy issues and Kaiju fake-outs, the bonding between Cate and Keiko that should have started episodes ago has finally begun as the fresh-faced grandmother finally starts looking into Cate’s ability to connect with Titan X. On top of all this, we get the return Leo Ashizawa smothered in old age make up as Dr. Suzuki, and you have to think that in a show filled with time displaced characters who are either older than they look, or played by older characters, the actor drew the short straw being the only one in the entire cast who required prosthetics…
The fact that I’ve rated an episode so low despite the fact that it contains footage of Godzilla trashing Japan, should really clue you into how much I really didn’t appreciate the Titan-teasing at play here. However, with the cast split into teams and opening up new and varied avenues for the final four episodes to explore, hopefully we can plunge into the second half into the season without having to resort to cheap tricks (that probably were really expensive) to hook viewers during yet another quiet patch. You’re better than that Monarch.
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