It’s very on-brand for Godzilla that it took an atomic bomb for things to really get going. The third episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is the best one yet, as it clarifies what the narratives of both timelines will be going forward. We have stakes and clear objectives! We don’t know the answer to the mysteries yet, but at least we have some understanding of what the questions are: How did Monarch become the shady organization it currently is, and what information did Billy Randa and Hiroshi have that was so important they wanted to hide?
Also, Godzilla is actually in this one. It rules! (Even if the circumstances of his appearance continue to hammer home the fundamental metaphor failure of the MonsterVerse.)
In the Wyatt Russell timeline, it’s 1954, two years since Lee, Keiko, and Billy first encountered a giant monster in the Philippines. Since then, they’ve been studying other Titans, including the monster we all know to be Godzilla. They found and took a cast of his massive footprint in Indonesia, but Lee thinks it’s time they get more resources, though the scientists are worried about what this could mean for their independence. (Rightfully, it’ll turn out.) The recently promoted general who first assigned Lee to escort Keiko is aghast — first by the idea that a creature big enough to make that footprint could be out there and then again by the trio’s request that they need 150 pounds of uranium to lure Godzilla out (Titans absorb radiation).
The general agrees, though Billy is clearly irritated at his interference and at the idea that he has to “bite his tongue for a bunch of gun-toting Neanderthals.” Keiko reminds Lee that he’s one of the good gun-toting Neanderthals, basically, but adds that Billy has a point. “If we hide who we are and what we do, then there’s no point in doing it at all.” This is basically the future of Monarch and the outline of this plot in a nutshell. We’re going to see how Monarch went from a bunch of scrappy scientists looking to discover hidden truths to a secret, somewhat nefarious agency that keeps those truths hidden. In 2015, Shaw echoes this sentiment, saying that Billy’s notes represent “what they wanted Monarch to be before they lost their way. Chasing you guys instead of monsters.” But we’ll get back to 2015 in a minute, because it’s time to watch Oppenheimer 2.
It turns out that the general made good on his promise of 150 pounds of uranium, but in bomb form. Bikini Atoll, site of several real-life U.S. nuclear weapons tests, is meant to be Godzilla’s resting place. The general explains that all of the higher-ups agreed they should attempt to kill this giant monster when they have the chance. Lee’s disappointed, Billy is disappointed but not surprised, and Keiko is distraught, going as far as to make a last-ditch effort to stop the detonation herself when Godzilla shows up before Lee stops her.
Godzilla’s arrival to the Marshall Islands is exciting stuff, and it has the benefit of being new, although technically we saw glimpses of this effort to kill Godzilla during the opening credits of the 2014 movie. That was nothing like this, though, and the King of the Monsters imposingly saunters up to a nuke that promptly explodes in his face.
It’s a devastating and consequential moment for our heroic onlookers, but it doesn’t really matter that much for Godzilla, even as the army seems to think they destroyed him. The Monsterverse’s take on kaiju recasts them as “Titans” who were here long before mankind. Whereas Godzilla was originally conceived as a walking, fire-breathing metaphor for the horrors of nuclear war, in the Monsterverse, he’s a big semi-benevolent lizard who, to quote Lee in the premiere, thinks the “A” in “A-bomb” stands for “appetizer.” The franchise’s decision to sever Godzilla from the darkness of his atomic roots is a loaded one. Godzilla doesn’t always need to be about nuclear death (indeed, most of the movies are very stupid, in a good way), and while Monarch doesn’t come close to the nadir of King of the Monsters — which had Ken Watanabe looking at a wristwatch that survived Hiroshima as he blew up a nuke to revive Godzilla and save the day — it’s a little jarring if you know the real-life importance of Bikini Atoll to Godzilla. In 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel named the Lucky Dragon No. 5 was caught in the fallout of a test at Bikini Atoll, causing the crew to become very sick and eventually leading to the death of one sailor. This incident was the direct inspiration for the original movie. Monarch’s take on Bikini Atoll, framing it as an unsuccessful attempt to kill a monster who already exists, does away with any sense of being complicit. That’s not an unforgivable sin for this fun show, which is part of a long-running, malleable franchise about big monsters, but it’s worth taking time to note.
After the test, Keiko and Billy are wallowing. Lee, though, arrives with some good news. He made what he thought was an insane request for future funding, figuring there was nothing left to lose. Instead, the general gives him a blank check and a mandate to find more monsters. Although thrilled, Keiko and Billy know it’s something of a poisoned gift — continuing to work with the army implicitly means working toward the army’s goals. Although he’s an army man, Lee recognizes this, too, and he and the scientists make an agreement of sorts. He’s bound to report everything he knows to his superiors. But Lee trusts them, and he trusts that they will tell him everything he needs to know. As Keiko says, there’s a difference between a secret and a lie, a line that has stuck with Shaw for over six decades.
In 2015, Shaw convinces Kentaro (easily) and Cate (less easily) to join him in escaping Monarch’s retirement home/prison and trying to find their father, whom he describes as “more like a son to me than a nephew.” After an amusing little sequence where Shaw can’t figure out the button-starts on these newfangled cars, he evades Monarch’s security and drives them all away. Upon hearing that May digitized all the files, he asks her to look for anything she can find about Alaska, Hiroshi’s last known location. There’s something in the files that he didn’t want Monarch to know about, and Shaw reckons that if they find whatever that is, they’ll find Hiroshi.
Shaw gets them out of Japan and into Korea, where they meet up with an old buddy of his, Dae-Ho, who helps them escape customs in Pohang. Dae-Ho has an old bomber that will take the five of them to Alaska, and during the flight, May’s able to figure out where, exactly, they should go. One of the files had a bunch of coordinates Randa had written down, and Hiroshi had crossed off all of them except for a set that would lead them to Alaska. That’s where they’re headed, but Cate is wary. She’s mad that her dad was part of Monarch, an agency she watched do nothing helpful when Godzilla and the MUTOs attacked San Francisco the previous year. She’s mad that her dad was lying about what he really did, going off on Monarch missions, though Shaw quotes her grandmother, saying that Hisohsi wasn’t lying. He just had a secret, which is different.
After a rough landing in a sudden storm, everybody gets out into the frigid wastes and inspects the wreckage of Hiroshi’s plane. The pilot is dead, but Hiroshi is not there — nor is he inside the tent they discover nearby. Clearly, though, Hiroshi survived the crash, but before they can investigate further, Dae-Ho discovers monstrous claw marks on the destroyed fuselage. He attempts to get their plane back into the air, but a Titan that looks like some combination of a giant pangolin with the face of one of those creepy star-nosed moles and some sort of ice breath emerges from the snow. Dae-Ho becomes a Popsicle, and the creature destroys the plane as everyone else watches in horror.
Reasonable quibbles about the role that nuclear weapons should play in a franchise originally conceived as a metaphor for the horrors of the atomic bomb aside, Monarch’s third episode is a breezy, tight outing. After two somewhat fuzzy episodes, the stakes are now clear. Monarch’s legacy isn’t necessarily a good one, and we’re going to find out how that happened and what secrets remain.
Up From the Depths
• Tim, the Monarch agent who got nailed in the nose with a cell phone last episode, gets a chewing-out from a Monarch higher-up who steps out of a swanky private plane and name-drops Dr. Serizawa, Ken Wantabe’s character from the 2014 and 2019 movies whose name is an Easter egg referencing the original film. Tim’s co-agent saves his ass, and it seems the two of them will be hot on Cate, Kentaro, and Shaw’s trail.
• On the boat out of Japan, May is talking to someone on the phone, telling them that she “might be coming back soon” and that she “means it for real.” May has the potential to be an interesting character, though whether or not Monarch has the narrative space for another mystery is unclear.
• The cut to Keiko’s somber face when the general remarks that 150 pounds of uranium is “more than we dropped on Hiroshima” is indicative of the MonsterVerse’s attitude toward nuclear weapons. It knows they’re a serious subject and a major part of Godzilla’s history, but beyond that feint, there’s no engagement with the topic.
• “Monarch was founded in the late ’40s. Wouldn’t that make you, like, 90 years old?” “What can I say, good genes?”
For the record, Kurt Russell is 72 years old, but this is a cute little bit of lampshade-hanging about how the two timelines are just far enough apart that it should strain credulity. It’s fine! A show with Kurt Russell is better than a show without him.
• Maybe it’s the glowing blue lights on the ending Titan’s little tentacles, but this looks like a creature better suited to fighting Gipsy Danger than Godzilla.
• R.I.P., Dae-Ho. If an old friend called on me to help get him out of the country and had me fly them to the middle of Alaska, and then I got frozen to death by a giant monster, I’d be so pissed.
