Overall I liked it. There ended up being exactly as much Godzilla/monster action as I expected, given the budget and scale of the show, so on that level I wasn't disappointed. Like you say Dai, when the audience for this kind of show demands movie quality special effects, we were never going to get Ultraman levels of monster action every episode. Unless I'm remembering wrong we got at least one monster scene in each episode (even if some of them were short and fairly incidental), which was more than I feared we might get.
I agree about some of the story elements never quite feeling like they materialised though. The last few episodes had been building to some sort of potentially cataclysmic monster emergence event, but then the final scene of the show jumps forward in time (as expected) by two years, so it can't have been that big of a deal after all. Sure we know that certain things are going to be constrained by the continuity of the movies, but I was still expecting to see them actually tackle and defuse this big crazy world-ending threat in some way, and they just...didn't. Likewise the story with the dad didn't seem to have as good a resolution as I was hoping for. So the reason he had two secret families is just......he's a dick, I guess? To be fair short of introducing a surprise twist with him actually having a twin brother I don't know how else they could have explained that, but still it just kinda felt a little anti-climactic.
I much preferred the past timeline characters to the "present day" ones. The scene where Lee told Keiko what year it really was was unexpectedly heartbreaking. Ditto that final scene where she finally reunited with her son. I wasn't expecting that last episode to be as emotional as it was, so that was great. I expected we'd get a "heroic sacrifice" from Kurt Russell given that he's a big name star and would probably be really expensive to get back for season 2, but I felt like they could have gone about it a little better. At least it potentially leaves the door open for his return though, so fingers crossed that's not *really* the last we see of him, because more Kurt Russell in anything is always great.
I also liked all the worldbuilding aspects of the show. I'm a sucker for good worldbuilding, and having this show explore a bit more of Monarch's history and global presence was one of the things I was really looking forward to, and I'm happy with what we got. And hey, Kong! I figured we might end up with a Kong cameo to bring things full circle, given that it started on Skull Island. I wonder if a second season might revolve more around him than Godzilla? It could make for an interesting change, depending on how much they want to play up the importance of that apparently Apex-run facility at the end there.
So yeah, while I obviously would have been very happy with more monster action, it delivered the amount I expected given the show's requirement to have that level of SFX, and it had enough characters that I liked that I definitely enjoyed it overall. I guess while a second season hasn't been *officially* confirmed yet, it's apparently done really well for Apple and word around the campfire is that we will be getting one. And on that note, Dark Horizons posted some excerpts from one of the producers about what we might be in store for; including dropping some familiar names for potential appearances!
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“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” wrapped its run this week and showrunner Chris Black has spoken about the finale and the possibility of the series scoring a renewal.
First up, in regards to a second season Black tells TV Line: “We do not have a Season 2 order. This show has done very well, so we’re optimistic and excited. We feel we have more story to tell.”
Signs are good though as the series debuted as the top first-season drama for Apple TV+ in November, beating out the likes of “Silo,” “Slow Horses” and “The Morning Show” – all of which scored renewals.
Asked if the second season would have more of a singular timeline, as opposed to spreading things out between the 1950s and 2015, Black says:
“I don’t know. Matt Faction and I are kind of having those conversations now, like, ‘What would be a story we could tell if we’re given the opportunity to tell it?’
I think we really like the idea of running parallel timelines. I think it worked as a conceit in the first [season], and Monarch, as we said, has a long history, there are other eras to explore.
If Monarch runs from the late-1940s to the present day, what was it like in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s…? As a mechanism to tell the history of Monarch and the Randa family within it, I personally enjoyed it. I would love, if we are given the opportunity, to exploit it more. I thought it was fun.”
He also goes into a deeper bench of monsters they would be able to use should they go forward – and not just the ones we’ve seen in Legendary’s Monster-verse thus far:
“Moving into a potential second season, there are a lot of other great [monsters]. There’s Kong, there’s Rodan, Mothra…. And Toho has a deep bench, too, of lesser-known characters – Ebirah, Biollante, Hedorah…. It could be any of these characters.”
Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, Joe Tippett, Elisa Lasowski and Christopher Heyerdahl co-star in the series which is now available on the Apple TV+ service.
https://www.darkhorizons.com/monarch-producers-on-season-2-chances/
