The Ending Of Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Explained

the finale of Monarch Legacy of monsters brings human scale drama to a Titanic monster story and succeeds way more than you may have expected here's how this chapter of the Monarch story wraps up Monarch covers a lot of ground in its first season but the story starts with a focus on Kate Randa and canaro Randa searching for their father Hiroshi after discovering that he had two separate families in Tokyo and San Francisco the newly discovered half siblings set out with former Monarch member Lee Shaw and love interest May to find him in the past we see how a young Lee Bill Randa and kir founded Monarch and how KO vanished in a tragic Hollow Earth portal investigation that tragedy informs everything that follows Bill and Lee's respective obsessions hiroshi's orphaned upbringing and the modern state of Monarch in the next to last episode of the Season May K and leer pulled down into a Midway point between the Surface in the hollow Earth known as axis Mundy there Kate discovers Koo still alive and well believing that she had been in the wilderness for about 2 months due to the time dilation effects of the portals she's oblivious that more than 50 years have passed and that she's missed what would have been most of her life the reunion between KO and Lee and the Monarch season 1 finale is heartbreaking Kate refrains from telling her grandmother her true identity or how much time is passed but it all comes out when they run into May and Lee hid him behind a tree to conceal his aged face Lee explains through tears the tragedy they've both fallen into Koo breaks down as well but she quickly accepts the truth fortunately the group is able to devise a plan of Escape Koo was already using Lee's old Titan signal device to send a message to the surface together they carry it to the old pod he used in 1962 to travel to axis Mundy himself they hook the device up and get it going hoping that a Titan will open up the portal above them and carry them home but when the nearest Titan ends up being both much closer and more aggressive than anticipated things start to go South Lee leaves the Pod to fix the signal by hand only to be caught in the crossfire when Godzilla appears amidst the Titan duel he activates the device again the pot is pulled into the portal and Lee chases after it but he isn't fast enough in a tragic mirror of koo's 1959 disappearance he lets go of her hand happy in a sacrifice after finally being able to keep his promise and and bring her home while May Kate Lee and KO fight to escape from axis Mundy canaro is left on the surface to pick up the pieces he gets kicked out of Monarch after his leg heals and is told to go back to his old life accepting that his friends and family are dead but after returning to Tokyo he bumps into his father the man he's been searching for since the beginning of the show your reunion doesn't exactly go great Garo berates Hiroshi for being a liar and an absent father but it isn't that tell he says that Kate is dead that his father truly hears him roshi breaks down devastated that his efforts to keep his children out of his business only led to their endangerment when Tim shows up with evidence of Kate's survival though Father and Son agree to work together to bring her home we learn in the final moments of season 1 that they end up working with Apex the same Shady Tech corporation that will later create meca Godzilla and endanger the planet Kate KO and may emerged two years after the incident in Kazakhstan only to find themselves in an apex facility on Skull Island as Kong Roars in the distance May's old boss Brenda Holland emerges from the Shadows it seems that Monarch's repeated inaction prompted some incling including Tim to leave the organization and join Apex this sets up the company's immense Global power at the beginning of Godzilla versus Kong at the core of Monarch Legacy of monsters are a couple of different love stories and they come to the surface in the season 1 finale down in axis Monday Lee reunites with his belov Koo but it's 50 years too late ko ko is that really you of course it is he's so grieved by the time he's lost and ashamed of his old face said he's scared to even look at her when they meet at the same time May and Kate find each other brought Closer by yet another wild adventure their feelings for each other have grown mutual and strong back on the surface Hoshi faces the consequences of his lies and infidelity karo's mother emo makes it clear that she no longer wants anything to do with him but she emphasizes that he must maintain a relationship with her son we also learn that Hiroshi is finalizing a divorce with Kate's Mother Caroline in San Francisco were scientific discoveries worth all the betrayals he made along the way looking at his face it's hard to imagine he answer yes like his parents and Lee before him Hiroshi fell into the Trap of obsession always assuming he'd have more time at least for him he still has a chance to make things right with his children and show how much he's always loved them Monarch seems to say that it's easy to put off the things that matter in life our work our trauma and at times our own self-loathing all work to keep us away from the relationships that make life worth living Lee returns from his first axis Monday Venture and Vines the world has passed him by out of guilt for losing KO and shame for missing Bill's death he believes he deserves the imprisonment Monarch sentences into meanwhile Hoshi has every opportunity to be present for his families and tell them the truth but he avoids doing so perhaps he thinks himself Unworthy of forgiveness or happy life as we're told in one of the flashback scenes of episode 9 it's a fact that's shown repeatedly throughout season 1 when K realizes that she too has lost so much time she Grieves the life she might have lived she Grieves her son's childhood and youngest adulthood the death of Bill and the many others she knew who lived and died in the 57 days she's been in axis mondy for her the choice would have been easy she would have given up all her scientific Adventures if it meant being there with Hoshi as he grew up as Lee tells her the world has changed but not so dramatically people are still the same and it's the people who matter family secrets can do more than cause divisions in some cases unresolved issues can cause generational trauma leaving people decades down the line to pick up the pieces koob Bill and Lee's obsession with their investigations left Hoshi without a family when it came time for him to build a family of his own he was scared the same thing would happen again you can read his double life as a kind of desperate safety net if anything were to happen to one family at least he wouldn't lose everything or maybe it's the opposite maybe he stayed distant from everyone because he feared the pain of losing them which is why he was never around for long the final scene of Monarch season 1 brings all of this complicated history to Bear after escaping axis Munday Kate finally reunites with her father whom she's been searching for the entire show he finally uses his brilliant mind to help his family rather than distance himself from them when he sees his mother alive and well looking exactly as she did when he was a boy he collapses into her arms KO had no control over the harm she indirectly brought on her son but it's still enlightening to see how her return washes away Decades of pain it's as if all of the baggage her Roi has been carrying around with him suddenly fell from his shoulders in that moment life doesn't have to be painful anymore healing can finally begin in addition to the human themes of family grief and regret Monarch Legacy of Monsters has a larger message about the natural world on our relationship to it the Titans may be fictional but they still represent the planet it's a world that humans have assumed dominion over but which is far stranger and more awe inspiring than most can accept Kaiju have always been metaphors for the environment in cinema they show what happens when we destroy it or pollute it with war they embody the response of Nature's self-preservation instinct to heal and rebuild that metaphor has been present in the monsterverse since the starts but it feels more impactful in Monarch when Kate Lee KO and may are stranded on axis Munday they can't help but acknowledge their powerlessness they feel out of place knowing that this isn't a world built for them the world isn't the thing humans can ever truly control Monarch seems to say we are a piece of it to no more the Power hungry maneuvers of Apex cybernetics stand in opposition to this idea the company represents Mankind's urge to subdue and assimilate nature and its robotic advancements eventually challenged the natural order itself in Godzilla versus Kong leading to widespread destruction and death Lea gets a pretty complete Arc and Monarch he begins as a cocky sexist American Soldier meets KO and overcomes his biases he starts to believe in the mission of protecting the innocent but experiences great loss in the process he lives decades in shame and guilt and then finally has a chance to make some of his mistakes right when he forces KO to let him go so she can escape back to the surface at the end of season 1 he's almost laughing what are you doing my job what are you doing back even 60 years later he hasn't forgotten his promise to keep her safe Le is happy to make the sacrifice but that doesn't mean he's dead if KO could survive in Access Mundy for so long he might still be alive we know that years of surface time are just a matter of days in Access Munday so we wouldn't need to hold out long before rescue might come maybe by the time he gets back Koo will have grown old and the story will give them a long awaited happily ever after the other big question at the end of Monarch season 1 is about axis Monday itself we're told by KO that it isn't truly the hollow Earth but rather a middle point between the realm of the Titans and the surface but how does that work exactly in Godzilla versus Kong a team of Monarch and Apex operatives follow Kong down a portal into the hollow Earth but they don't get a chance to linger in the strange lightning Forest the natural answer is simply that the portal Network beneath the earth's crust is far more complicated than we previously thought it's not just a subway line between the Surface and the hollow Earth but a confusing web of everchanging tunnels with multiple exit points Kiko notes that the ecosystem of axis Mundy is a blend of surface flora and Hollow Earth life since it seems easier to access from both places that makes sense I don't think this is a realm of the Titans at all it's a place between places it's also worth noting that axis Mundy has some key characteristics that separate it from the hollow Earth as far as we know there's no temporal Distortion in the hollow Earth as the humans in Godzilla versus Kong Journey between the two Realms in one to one time also the gravity inversion of the hollow Earth the aspect of the realm that prohibits humans from reaching it for so long doesn't exist in axis Mundy for now there are still a lot of questions about how these different places connect and relate to one another with luck Monarch will get a season 2 to explore those ideas further forok Creator Matt fraction the complex theme of inheritance was a guiding principle from the start fraction told Men's Health there's a recurring theme in the work I do that I like stories about people deciding to accept their inheritance or reject it children being the parents of adults and all that kind of stuff director Matt shakman echoed the sentiment in an interview with the Verge saying the project appealed to him because it was a multigenerational family story because monsterverse fans know what happens later in the movies the story of Monarch had to stay grounded in the human characters in the end that's what makes the emotional payoffs of season 1 so so satisfying thematically the show's creators were also tuned into the historical significance of Kaiju Cinema co-creator Chris black told movie web Godzilla and the Kaiju of the monster verse have always been sort of existential allegories for whatever the threat is and then if you're looking at our Modern Age I think you could pick obviously climate change and global warming is a very real and current issue Kurt Russell was also interested in the project because of its larger thematic implications revealing to Entertainment Tonight I was probably I don't know maybe 8 years old when I first saw Godzilla and that was an image that I never forgot what I love about sci-fi is great sci-fi as an opportunity to examine some huge philosophical [Music] questions

Channel: Looper

Views: 47,820

Keywords: looper, monarch: legacy of monsters, godzilla, ending, explained

Id: FGww9nnad2Q

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024