Is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 worth your time on Apple TV Plus? Find out in our Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 review!
Monarch season 1 was a bit of a mixed bag, but it certainly appears that the showrunners paid attention to that and tried to course-correct this season.
The new season kicks off in the aftermath of season 1 with everyone trying to get Lee (Kurt Russell) back from Axis Mundi. Through this effort, however, a kaiju/Titan known simply as Titan X makes it across and sets off a cat-and-mouse game that drives the main action of this season.
Everyone is back from season 1 with Wyatt Russel (Thundebolts) playing the younger version of Lee while his dad, Kurt, handles the role in the present day. Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) and Kentaro (Ren Watabe) are also back, along with May (Kiersey Clemons), Tim (Joe Tippett), Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto), and so on.
The biggest lesson the series seems to have learned this time around is that if you are set in a world of giant monsters, they should have a bit more impact on the story. Titan X appears quite often and directly affects the story’s progression. While we do see other familiar faces such as Kong and Godzilla, they are used a bit more sparingly.
If you’ve enjoyed the movies – Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs Kong, and so on – then there is no reason for you not to jump in and watch this series. You will find a lot of small details filled in that will make for a richer overall world for what you’ve seen (two easter eggs to Kong: Skull Island toward the end of the season are nice call-backs). Just realize you will spend most of your time focused on humans.
Beyond the easter eggs, the world feels more fleshed out this time around. You begin to get a sense of what life in a world populated with giant monsters would feel like. Not everyone immediately runs for shelter when a Titan Alert sounds; some appear fairly bored with the issue from the moment it happens. Although, surprisingly, you don’t see too many people whipping out phones to record.
The season works better thanks to Titan X being so integral to the story, and in a way that should carry forward, since you learn more about how the Titans operate.
If you aren’t familiar with the films, then I would say you can easily skip over this series. The effects, at times, are not particularly impressive, and the somewhat heavy-handed family drama feels more at home on broadcast television than on a premium streaming service. If you’ve enjoyed the films, then it is a must-watch this time around.
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars
Apple TV Plus provided The Nerdy with all 10 episodes of the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for the purposes of this review. We watched all ten episodes to the conclusion before beginning this review.
