Warning: minor SPOILERS for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters are ahead!
Naturally one goes into a MonsterVerse movie or TV show chiefly to see Titans duke it out with each other, but all these stories are anchored by humans who are on hand to witness these gigantic monsters with their own eyes. The new Apple TV+ show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is no exception, with this project is specifically delving into the scientific organization that studies these Titans. However, so far in the series’ run the only familiar human MonsterVerse face we’ve run into so far is Bill Randa, and showrunner Chris Black and executive producer Matt Fraction explained to CinemaBlend why Godzilla being a “global threat” is the main drive behind why Monarch doesn’t focus on characters we’ve already met in this franchise.
In addition to sharing the “concern” John Goodman had with reprising Randa, whom he’d previously in Kong: Skull Island, for the major Titan fight in Monarch’s first episode, Black and Fraction talked with me about the importance of highlighting new characters in these series, including Anna Sawai’s Cate Randa, Ren Watabe’s Kentaro Randa (those two being Bill’s grandchildren) and Lee Shaw, the latter of whom is played by both Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell, depending on the time period. When I asked if there were any other established MonsterVerse humans besides Bill Randa who’d been considered to appear in this show earlier in the creative process, Fraction started off by saying the following:
We talked a lot about it. The story of Kate and Kentaro learning who their father was and why is kind of learning the story of Monarch. It is as new to them as someone who's never seen any of the films… Kentaro says in the first episode, ‘What's Monarch?’ As the world is in the process of discovering who Monarch are and what they're capable of doing, so are our characters. So it's really about what makes sense. We don't want the show to feel like homework, we want it to be organic and grow from where our characters go, and what they learn as they learn it. And things get certainly more interesting and complex as we go.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters mainly takes place across two time periods: the 1950s, when the Anders Holm-played Bill Randa is searching for Titans alongside Wyatt Russell’s Lee Shaw and Mari Yamamoto’s Keiko Miura, and 2015, a year after the public learned about the existence of the Titans, as depicted in Godzilla. But as Matt Fraction noted, this is also about Cate, Kentaro and others in the Monarch cast learning about this organization’s operations, which have been going for over 60 years by the time the show’s “present day” narrative is unfolding.
Furthermore, although Monarch is the sixth MonsterVerse onscreen project to be released, it was important to Fraction and Chris Black that newcomers to this franchise wouldn’t have any difficulty with following its narrative. But with things getting “more interesting and complex” as the show continues, that will certainly appeal to folks who’ve been following the MonsterVerse for years now. Black then stated:
And we were excited too about expanding the universe, about telling a new story with new characters. Godzilla is a global threat, and it sucks in people beyond just that core group of feature characters. And so we wanted to show that there was a larger world to explore, and maybe somewhat selfishly have the freedom to do the show we want it to do, and not be kind of restrained by, ‘Well, this is this is Millie Bobby Brown's character or Kyle Chandler's character or Vera Farmiga’s character.’ We wanted to create our own cast of characters who could chart their own destiny and then wouldn't be beholden to the stories that had already been told.
Granted, there are ways that Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong are influencing this MonsterVerse prequel show, but again, the purpose of Monarch isn’t to saddle viewers with a lot of deep-cut references and Easter eggs, especially for stories that haven’t happened within the fictional timeline yet. Yes, this show is shedding light on the Monarch organization’s history, but it’s mainly intended to follow a new group of protagonists who are coping with living in a world that they now know includes giant monsters that ruled this planet long before humanity. Maybe one or two more familiar faces will pop up before Monarch is over, but the priority is showing how the Titans’ particularly Godzilla, affect people’s lives all over the world, not just characters we’ve previously seen on the big screen.
Apple TV+ subscribers can catch new episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Fridays, although the most recent episode, “Secrets and Lies,” premiered this past Wednesday. Stream the previous MonsterVerse movies with a Max subscription and the animated series Skull Island with a Netflix subscription. The next MonsterVerse movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, opens April 12 on the 2024 release schedule.
