Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Review – More Monster Mayhem But Same-Old Tedious Storytelling

The first season of Apple TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters fits into the established narrative of the MonsterVerse, while also telling personal stories about new characters, especially Cata (Anna Sawai) and Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe) as well as their family’s connection to the Monarch organization. It works for the most part, but it suffers from the same issues that Jurassic Park does at times: no one really cares about the human characters, so where are all the Titans?

Apple TV paid attention to this criticism, because Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 amps up the Titan-inspired havoc and doubles down on the rumbles. At times, this feels comparable to Adam Wingard’s CGI-heavy blockbusters Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, opening the portal to the Hollow Earth and letting the monsters loose. The series is better off because of this decision, becoming a notable improvement over the previous season, though the jumps between past and present still turn out to be a drag here. It makes even less sense when you learn there are plans for prequels featuring characters like Wyatt Russell’s young version of Lee Shaw, so what’s the point of his entire arc here?

Look, the human drama continues to be the show’s biggest anchor, since everything feels drawn out and a timefiller until the next big Titan strike. The entire second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters could be told in half the time, but it’s stretched out to 10 tedious episodes. As a viewer, you feel it several times, wondering what’s the point of the constant reinforcement of the story and various subplots that didn’t need to be emphasized because they were self-explanatory to begin with. This gives the same vibe as the Netflix series and movies having to repeat the plot over and over again, because people are too busy on their phones to pay attention to what’s happening on screen.

It also doesn’t help that the show increases the number of human characters in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. This takes away from the core established in the first season, while ensuring that someone will have less screentime consequently. May Olowe-Hewitt/Corah Mateo (Kiersey Clemons), for instance, feels lost in the shuffle here. It’s a bummer because she was one of the better human characters in the first season.

The trailer lets the cat out of the bag, so there’s no real mystery here. Look away if you don’t want to know the following. The older Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) returns to the fold; he’s not dead after the events of last season. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Cate and Co. go back for him and inadvertently unleash a dangerous new Titan on Earth. Since the humans suck at containing anything in the MonsterVerse, there’s only one solution here: convince Godzilla and Kong to help humanity. If only they did the famous Predator handshake…

From an action perspective, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 offers a lot to be excited about. Packed with a plethora of Titans and new locations to destroy, the monster clashes look fantastic and prove the action is the juice when it comes to this franchise. Now, if the series could let go of its insistence to do the formulaic structure of past-and-present storytelling, then this show would elevate from being good to great.