Chris Connor reviews the penultimate episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 1…
Monarch’s penultimate episode opens with a 10 minute plus sequence set with the younger Lee Shaw and Bill Randa, having lost Bill’s wife Keiko into the Hollow Earth. The sequence is meant to be reminiscent of the Apollo missions goes awry with Shaw and his crew seemingly lost. We know this is ultimately not true however, and this episode helps us to reframe much of what we thought we knew about Shaw and Hiroshi Randa.
Shaw’s aging seems to have been slowed while underneath, explaining his relatively youthful appearance for his actual age. We find out he returned over 20 years later with few memories of what occurred, with Monarch worried about potential risk of disease and placing him in the retirement facility we first meet him in. These sequences blend the two timelines as we see Wyatt Russell morph into his father Kurt.
The focus on the hollow Earth and where the Titans roam freely, links of course to Godzilla vs. Kong and the upcoming instalment in the MonsterVerse, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. While there have been peripheral links to the films of the franchise, especially 2014’s Godzilla, it is surprising there have not been wider references to other events, making this series almost self-contained and it will be intriguing to see if the finale and following films tie into the events of this season.
The bulk of the modern plot sees Kentaro shaken by the presumed loss of May and Cate, stumbling across his father at long last in the process. Of course it is quickly revealed that May and Shaw fell into the hollow Earth, spending the majority of the episode avoiding traps and searching for signs of Cate. Cate herself doesn’t make an appearance until the final moments, rescued by a surprise arrival that looks set to shake things up for the finale. We get glimpses of Titans throughout both in the flashbacks and present day but should the finale be mostly set underneath it seems we are likely for our largest chunk of Kaiju action to date.
Axis Mundi is a fast moving episode that deftly weaves together some of the loose threads from across the series giving them a greater sense of purpose and shifting our perceptions on events to this point. It sets up a promising finale for an enjoyable if overlong and uneven first TV outing for the MonsterVerse.
Chris Connor
