Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Recap: Godzilla on Monster Island

Because Kong is part of the MonsterVerse, it’s fitting that there’s an echo of King Kong’s famous last lines in this episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It was beauty that killed the beast — err, rather it killed the beast-studying research operation as it once existed as a scientific force for good. Episode six returns to the ’50s after two episodes without any flashbacks to Monarch’s early days, and we learn that Monarch’s downfall began when Lee tried to choose love over duty. The guilt the elder Shaw must still feel about it is motivating him to do more this time around. Godzilla is back, and unless Shaw helps him, something worse will happen.

The trouble starts at a swanky party in Washington, D.C., in 1955. Lee, Keiko, and Billy haven’t seen another Titan since the army nuked Godzilla, killing him, as far as anybody knows. But they still need military support and funding for their continued research, which tonight means that Lee and Keiko need to dress up and glad-hand General Puckett and fellow high-ranking officials. Puckett has taken a shine to Lee and Monarch, not because he genuinely liked them or believes in the mission, but because they’re his. He can get the credit and he can claim Lee as his protégé as he rises up the ranks.

Lee and Keiko have taken a shine to each other, too. They’ve grown close over the years and they’ve got serious chemistry, as seen in a very romantic dance. As the party winds down, they’re about to go up to a room in the hotel to almost certainly sleep together, but a message from Billy interrupts at the last minute. He’s detected an isotopic signature, the sort they haven’t seen since the Philippines. Billy and Keiko head to Japan to check it out, but there’s a crucial budget proposal coming up that Lee needs to stay behind for, much to his chagrin. He wants to be in the field, but more than that, he wants to be with Keiko.

A conflicted (but not that conflicted) Lee goes to visit General Puckett at his house, which is two ticks away from being a Tim Burton–esque parody of a ’50s vision of Americana. Puckett, in no uncertain terms, informs Lee that he has the ability to rise through the ranks and run Monarch the way he wants to run it if he just plays ball. If he doesn’t, well …

Lee follows his heart (or something lower) rather than his brain, joining Keiko and Billy in Japan, where they’re on Hateruma Island working with a man named Doctor Suzuki, who has created a device that can lure Titans. Billy is surprised to see Lee appear, though he seems to have some understanding of whatever’s going on between Lee and Keiko and sees himself out. This is a little bit confusing, as the episode sends mixed messages on whether Billy’s trying to box Lee out as they vie for Keiko’s affections (he doesn’t acknowledge Lee’s questions about how she’s doing while they’re talking on the phone earlier), and he clearly has a connection with his fellow scientist as well. There’s been suspicion among viewers that Lee is actually Hiroshi Randa’s dad, not Billy, and while this episode’s reveal that Lee and Keiko do indeed have the hots for each other makes that theory seem very plausible, what happens as a result of them almost getting together makes me less convinced they end up consummating.

Keiko and Lee have a conversation by the water where Suzuki’s Titan-lure is floating, and Keiko’s upset that he blew off the budget proposal. She says they have to put the greater good before their own desires. Lee claims he doesn’t care as they kiss, but she stops, telling him that he does care, actually. Just then, the lure disappears before flying out of the water, narrowly missing them. It’s Godzilla. He’s still alive, and upon getting back to Washington, Lee races to inform Puckett. But there’s a nasty surprise waiting for him. Because Lee went to Japan — and because he rebuffed Puckett — there have been some organizational changes. Project Monarch is now being run by smug military men. This is where Monarch’s fall truly accelerates, and it’s because Lee puts his own desires before the greater good.

In 2015, Shaw has a chance to make up for Lee’s mistakes, thanks to the help of someone else who has become disillusioned with Monarch. Duvall has defected, and she springs Shaw from custody so she can help him do whatever it is he thinks he can do to stop another Titan Emergence. She knows where to find Cate, Kentaro, and May because May snitched at the end of the last episode. After a quick but tense reunion, the five head to the next location on Hiroshi’s map, way in the middle of the Sahara Desert in Algeria. They hope to stop what Shaw threatens could be “G-Day times 100, maybe times 1,000.” Cate’s primary concern is still just trying to find her dad, not all this Monarch business, and May is dismayed to be in the Sahara desert. Duvall promised she could go home if she ratted on the trio, but Duvall says that circumstances have changed. Shaw and Duvall are working toward a great good, if you will.

They meet up with another Monarch defector who is “one of the good ones,” but if Du-Ho got the short end of the stick before he was killed in a Titan attack, this new guy is even more of a redshirt. He so blatantly exists almost entirely so that there’s a disposable body who can get killed while our protagonists stay safe that it’s kind of amazing. I hope the next episode of Monarch introduces another one of Shaw’s allies; one for them to get killed in the same opening shot where they’re introduced.

Anyway, this rando dude dies shortly after our heroes see Hiroshi! From afar, they’re waving and celebrating, only for Shaw to realize, with horror, that he recognizes the device Hiroshi’s working with. It’s a version of the Titan lure that summoned Godzilla back in 1955. As Hiroshi tries to wave them off before fleeing himself, the ground begins to shake. Godzilla emerges from the earth he was buried under, sending everybody flying and killing that one guy. He also knocks Tim and some other Monarch agents — who were able to figure out the Sahara was the next destination thanks to some clever detective work by Tim in Hiroshi’s San Francisco office — out of the sky in their helicopter. (Shaw later says there were no survivors, but I’m not convinced that this is the last we’ll see of Tim.)

It’s a chaotic scene, but there’s a moment of awe as Cate makes eye contact with Godzilla. It’s their second meeting. A year prior, he smashed through the Golden Gate Bridge and traumatized her. Now, though, she says that Godzilla “saw” her. She’s not ready to be friends with Godzilla just yet, though. And she’s taken aback when Shaw reveals that he’s not trying to stop Godzilla. “Jesus, Cate,” Shaw says with true incredulity. “I’m trying to help him!”

Cate and May and, somewhat more reluctantly, Kentaro don’t want to continue Shaw and Duvall’s mission. Cate just wants to find her dad, so Shaw sends the three on their merry way toward civilization — but he’s keeping the map. Shaw and Duvall go their way while the trio go theirs, only for May to come clean. She’s been on the run from some powerful people she pissed off, and she’s been operating under an assumed identity in Japan. She made a deal with Monarch to get that old life back, but that deal didn’t pan out, obviously. Cate does not have any sympathy for being sold out as they head to the nearest town.

I can’t say I have much sympathy for Cate here, though. Even without the obvious parallel echoes to the mistake Lee made in 1955, as Shaw is working toward the greater good while Cate is pursuing her own desires, what’s her deal? Not only does “stopping something that will be 100 to 1,000 times worse than G-Day, the most traumatic day of your life” seem like a worthwhile goal, but Shaw and Duvall did lead her to Hiroshi! They wouldn’t have found their dad, albeit briefly, without Shaw and Duvall’s resources. It’s worth remembering that Hiroshi is absolutely pursuing some sort of greater good compared to his duty to his, uh, two families. That might be understandably nagging at Cate. But, also, there are giant monsters that need stopping. Let’s keep our eye on the kaiju-size ball.

Up From the Depths

• Some fun allusions to old Godzilla movies: When the big guy comes out of the sand, it’s reminiscent of a similar scene where he emerges from the earth in 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla. Also cute is Suzuki calling Hateruma “Monster Island,” an overt Easter egg referencing the island home of many kaiju toward the end of the Showa-era films, beginning with 1969’s All Monsters Attack.

• It turns out Duvall is very connected to the MonsterVerse lore. She reveals that she had a sister, Sandra, who worked in the (fictional) Japanese city of Janjira and that she joined Monarch to prevent something like that from happening again. We’ve seen Sandra, actually! As played by Juliette Binoche, Sandra was the wife of Bryan Cranston’s Joe Brody and mother of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Ford, the protagonists of the 2014 Godzilla. Sandra dies in the opening scene when a MUTO attacks the power plant where she and Joe worked. Small world, huh?

• “They’ll build an even bigger weapon and try again. If that doesn’t work, a bigger one. And if that doesn’t work, maybe they’ll find someone else to use it on.” — Keiko, to Lee, but also Oppenheimer (2023).

• Can’t believe “my favorite thing about children is making them” was a line that came very, very close to working on Keiko.