Commentary — ‘Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters’ Has A Plausible Kaiju
by Frank Martin
Sea monsters have existed in the human consciousness for as long as people have ventured out into the ocean. Human imagination created enormous creatures that live in the bottomless depths, and yet evidence of these monstrosities living in today’s world has been scarce. As a show about Kaiju — the Japanese term for giant monsters — Monarch: Legacy of Monsters would inevitably touch upon this subject. For land-based creatures like Godzilla or King Kong, their existence is regarded as pure fantasy. But this season has proven the plausibility of a sea-based Kaiju.
The new year begins with Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) trapped in the Kaiju world at the center of the Earth. Having formed a bond with him, Cait Randa (Anna Sawai) goes against everyone’s wishes and tries to save him by opening a portal to that realm. She succeeds, but she also releases a creature called Titan X in the process. This new Titan — the Monarch term for Kaiju — is an unknown variable and causes great concern all around the world as Monarch is unsure if it will make landfall and destroy a major metropolitan area.
This isn’t the first time Titan X has come to Earth. In fact, it returns on a regular cycle. Cait merely triggered it prematurely. There are cultures aware of the creature’s existence and even worship it, just like a classic sea monster. And even given all the technology Monarch has at its disposal, it still struggles to predict the cycle and find Titan X when it gets lost. The ocean is an extremely vast place and unfathomably deep; it’s so huge that one of the most sophisticated governmental agencies on Earth can’t find a massive creature. With the ability to eventually return to its world and hide out for years before making an appearance, this sea monster’s existence in the real world is far more plausible than any Kaiju that has come before it.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is now streaming on AppleTV.
