11.25.23

Hey there creative peeps! As I’m writing this post, I’ve been watching the second episode of Apple TV+’s latest series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and so far, I’m pretty invested in the series.

I’ve finished watching episode one, Aftermath and two, Departure. John Goodman returns as Bill Randa. You remember that character from Kong: Skull Island (2017). We start off in 2015, a year after Godzilla came to San Francisco. Bills granddaughter, Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) a former schoolteacher, who was traumatized, by the event is going to Japan to settle her father, Hiroshi, affairs, but finds out that her father had a second family, a wife and a son, Kentaro (Ren Watabe).

Col. Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell), Bill Randa (Anders Holm), and Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) are attacked by a dragon titan. Image: But Why Tho?

Both siblings’ heads to their father’s office and find files and tapes belonging to their grandfather, Bill Randa, a Monarch researcher. Kentaro knows someone who could help them, his ex-girlfriend, May Olowe-Hewitt (Kiersey Clemons), who knows how to decode what Monarch is hiding, that’s what I pick up from that.

In the series we also get flashbacks of the sibling’s grandparents, Bill (Anders Holm) and Keiko Miura, (Mari Yamamoto) who is a scientist and Monarch official Col. Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell).

The second episode goes a bit further, when Cate, Kentaro, and May are being pursued by Tim and a Monarch field operative, Duvall. By the end of the episode, the trio find an elder Shaw (Kurt Russell) who is in a living facility in Japan, but it’s really a Monarch facility that is keeping Shaw under house arrest. Shaw convinces them to escape the facility to find the last known whereabouts of Cate and Kentaro’s father, who was flying to Alaska.

We also go back to 1952, when Shaw meets Keiko as he is assigned as her escort to an expedition to track radiation in the Philippines. They bump into Randa in the jungle, who is looking for what the locals call a dragon. Randa and Keiko find the wreckage of a ship, but the ship is the navy ship the USS Lawton, which sank in 1943. Randa was the sole survivor. Shaw, who comes back when he sees a radiation-based fire and rescues both Randa and Keiko as they are attacked by the Ion Dragon.

Due to studying for the finals, I haven’t watched the third episode yet, but I will be explaining it further in the podcast for tomorrow. I’m really enjoying the series as a whole and can’t wait to see more. You want to see Godzilla, which we do, and some new and frightening titans or kaiju, but also, you’re interested in these characters too.

Until then, if you guys have been watching, leave me your comments and tell me what you like about the series so far.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, be safe, happy, healthy, and blessed.

Featured image: Apple