Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - Season 2

Considering all of the flashy and grandiose nature of the theatrical MonsterVerse projects, I respect Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for having a premise that is more human and smaller scale, honing in on a collection of core characters and using the Titans as striking set pieces and less as core protagonists in a wider story. There is room for the often mediocre-to-poor box office behemoths where we get to see Godzilla and Kong fight spectacular creatures, and likewise there is also room for the more personal stories that spotlight humanity's place in a world of titanic threats. It's with this in mind that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has always been closer to 2014's Godzilla than it has to the many MonsterVerse films that follow, and this is perhaps the key reason why I was excited for the Apple TV series to return.

After seeing the entirety of Season 2, there are a few very admirable areas that stand out. For one, unlike some TV series spin-offs, Monarch doesn't try to trick you by offering a cheaper and less premium adventure, the sort of project that feels lesser when compared to the big screen films. This is, as is the case with Apple TV's line-up, as premium in style and appearance as the latest chapter, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, with this including the jaw-dropping Titan special effects, the globe-trotting nature of the series, and the strong cast headlined by Kurt and Wyatt Russell.

Plus, unlike the box office flicks that often come across like Michael Bay's latter Transformers films by prioritising style over substance, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters' second season has more than enough time to tell a compelling, somewhat confusing, story over its lengthy ten-episode run. Yep, there's no rushing to the point here, no wasteful use of emotion and setup, but you could argue that such a long runtime allows it to fall into the trap of being convoluted and overtly exposed. For the most part, it doesn't feel this way, as rather we get very meaningful explanations about the lore of the MonsterVerse, but there are moments where you wish things would hurry up a tad or be cut entirely. The dancing around time dilation and time travel is one such area that feels a step too far for this season, and likewise the inherent focus on daddy issues is a problem that leads to some characters being simply exhausting...

Yep, daddy issues seem to define this MonsterVerse project. What I mean by this is that Season 2 further explores the dynamic between Anna Sawai's Cate and Ren Watanabe's Kentaro and how the step-siblings exist in the company of their often absent father Takehiro Hira's Hiroshi. These are probably enough daddy issues for one season of a show, but then we also add father-son challenges between Wyatt Russell's Lee Shaw and his U.S. Army Commander father, and how Hiroshi adapts to a world where his long-lost mother, Mari Yamamoto's Keiko, returns after being trapped in Axis Mundi for around five decades. When all of the core cast are acting like petulant children because of their relationships with their parents over the course of the season, the very emotional basis of their reasoning starts to become frustrating to follow.

It's a shame that this season has moments that make you audibly sigh, moments that make you want to fast-forward 30 seconds to get past the tiring and snide exchanges, as beyond these we find a series that is still entertaining and is perhaps the best and most consistent MonsterVerse project to date. It's not a geeky, almost childish, opportunity for a giant ape and a radioactive lizard to fight a 50-story robot, it doesn't lean into the more outrageous parts of the MonsterVerse setup by showing how Kong has his rotten teeth removed and replaced. Some may come to MonsterVerse projects for such narrative threads, but you cannot support an entire cinematic universe on fan-service alone, and it's because of this that Monarch continues to be successful and perhaps the most important pillar of the wider universe at that.

But again, we are talking about the MonsterVerse here, and while I've come to appreciate its almost dumb action and setup, there's no denying that films in this world often leave much to be desired. So while I will stand firm and say that Monarch is perhaps the best this world has to offer at the moment, in the grand scheme of things, we're talking about a series that is simply fine entertainment. It's not unmissable television, it's not insultingly poor, it's just okay and there's nothing wrong with a show being that way.