Does Godzilla X Kong's Hollow Earth Provide A Future For Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters?
This article contains mild spoilers for "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire."
Earth, the planet we all live on and must share with each other, is an amazing place full of wonders. Even now in 2024, it's wild to realize that humanity has yet to explore every inch of the planet, with a staggering percentage of the Earth's oceans having only been mapped by satellites. Although it feels like we've reached an age where there's little mystery left in the terrestrial, there still exists so much possibility on our planet before we even begin to consider other planets or galaxies beyond.
Although the theory of a hollow Earth in real life holds about as much veracity as a flat Earth, the concept has become a delightful metaphor in the MonsterVerse series of films for the exploration of new realms, continuing a tradition from classic monster movies like the original "King Kong" of adventure and discovery. Even though the MonsterVerse's Hollow Earth has been featured in two films — "Godzilla Vs. Kong" and "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" — and a spin-off series — Legendary Television's "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" — there still exists quite a lot about it that we haven't seen and aren't yet aware of. After all, discovering new depths to Hollow Earth is a huge part of the plot of "The New Empire."
However, one aspect of Hollow Earth that "Godzilla x Kong" doesn't address is that, in "Legacy of Monsters," there is apparently an offshoot realm, one that distorts time for human travelers. Could the fact that both the films and the show attempt to remain in continuity with each other speak to potential future developments in "Legacy of Monsters?"
'Legacy of Monsters' ventures to an in-between realm
In the first season of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," it's revealed that Lee Shaw (played in the past by Wyatt Russell and in the present of 2015 by Kurt Russell), Bill Randa (Anders Holm), and Keiko Randa (Mari Yamamoto) first conducted the Monarch organization's investigation into the existence of Hollow Earth, with the trio discovering a rift in Kazakhstan in 1959 that Keiko unfortunately fell into. When Shaw made his own excursion into Hollow Earth in 1962 as part of a recon mission, he found himself stuck in that realm for what he perceived as only a week, though when he made his way back to the surface, he found himself emerging in 1982. Later, in the season finale, Shaw went back through the rift and found a still alive, still young Keiko surviving despite the dangerous indigenous creatures and climate.
As it turns out, this realm that Shaw, Keiko, and others visit in the series is not Hollow Earth per se, but a particular offshoot realm that Keiko dubs Axis Mundi (a term that means "between Heaven and Earth") in which time operates relative to the surface world in a very "Interstellar"-esque fashion. At a reception for an early screening of "Godzilla x Kong" that I attended a few weeks ago, director Adam Wingard essentially confirmed as much, stating during general conversation on the topic that the films' Hollow Earth and Axis Mundi were not quite the same place. That said, the two realms are certainly related to each other, and the method of traveling to each realm requires the presence of a titan for humans to access.
Will 'Legacy of Monsters' discover more realms, as in 'The New Empire'?
The season finale of "Legacy of Monsters" sees Shaw sacrificing himself in Axis Mundi to allow Keiko, her grandchild Cate (Anna Sawai), and the other heroes to escape. They emerge in 2017 Skull Island, where Apex Cybernetics (the creators of Mechagodzilla in "Godzilla Vs. Kong") have a research base. While this cliffhanger seems to indicate that the second season of "Monarch" will be focused on Kong and how Skull Island changed from a verdant home in 1973 to "GvK's" unstable habitat in 2021, there exists the possibility that Keiko and others could mount a possible rescue mission for Shaw back to Axis Mundi.
Additionally, so far the MonsterVerse films have yet to mention Axis Mundi or any other offshoot realms of Hollow Earth, yet the existence of the uncharted area that Kong finds the Scar King in during the events of "The New Empire" certainly paves the way for such a discovery. Given that "Monarch" has established a distinction between the films' Hollow Earth (referring to it as the ancestral home of all the titans) and Axis Mundi, perhaps the show means to venture into other adjacent realms in future episodes.
After all, both the films and the series have now established the MonsterVerse as something unique: an interplanetary saga that technically involves only one planet, Earth. Since Hollow Earth is intended to be a mirror to the surface Earth in terms of containing various climates, flora and fauna, why couldn't there be a cadre of different realms accessed by different rifts? Just like we haven't discovered everything within the real Earth yet, it's clear we have a lot more to learn about the MonsterVerse's Earth, too.