Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Season 2 Just Flipped The Script With A Genre-Jumping Twist

Warning: This article contains spoilers for episode 7 of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" season 2, "String Theory."

Say it with me, folks: Finally. It's no secret that we here at /Film haven't been overly impressed with the sophomore season of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," but that's not for a lack of trying on the creative team's part. It's harder than it looks to come up with a storyline set in between the ongoing movies that's interesting enough to keep viewers hooked, but not quite significant enough to step on the toes of the larger MonsterVerse. Season 1 solved this little puzzle by essentially telling the origin story for the monster-hunting Monarch organization and the generational saga of the Randa family. Season 2 has struggled somewhat to find a worthy narrative replacement, switching gears to the troublesome threat of Titan X and how its appearance in decades past dovetails with its rampage in the present.

That struggle is officially no more, thankfully, as of episode 7. Titled "String Theory," this week's installment of "Monarch" suddenly enters brand new territory with a genre-jumping twist. It's one thing for this sci-fi series to focus on kaiju like Godzilla and Kong. It's quite another to start laying the foundation for actual time travel.

It all starts when the elder Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) opens a rift and inadvertently comes into contact with his younger self (Wyatt Russell) from the early 1960s, trapped in Axis Mundi during a reconnaissance mission gone wrong. This is both a shock and a "meeting" that's been a long time coming, considering the show's emphasis on split timelines from the jump. But it also adds a much-needed jolt to the system, shaking up the usual status quo while hinting at even bigger twists to come. Let's unpack it all below.

Now that's how you do stunt casting properly. Ever since its premiere in 2023, "Monarch" has taken full advantage of Kurt Russell's star power. But the obvious-but-inspired hiring of Kurt and his son Wyatt Russell as the same character of Lee Shaw, separated by decades, finally pays off here. That separation falls away rather abruptly and the results are instantly compelling. As the elder Lee attempts to keep his identity a secret for as long as he can, we can see him silently wrestling with this freaky turn of events every step of the way. All the while, the younger Lee plays the good soldier and follows his older version's orders ... up to a point.

Here's where the episode takes off and reaches the next level entirely. It isn't long before "Monarch" flirts with the idea of going full "Lost" and confronts the question of whether these characters might actually be able to change the past. As we know from the first season, Lee was actually stuck in Axis Mundi at the same time as his lost love Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) — he just didn't know it at the time. The more he talks with that mysterious voice on the other end of his radio, however, the more he begins to suspect that something is off here. When he stumbles upon Keiko's campsite, the younger Lee comes this close to rushing headlong into her arms and changing the future forever. Instead, the older Lee has to reveal the truth, urge him to let her go, and confirm that things happened exactly the way they were supposed to.

This surprising turn of events is tense, emotional, and thrillingly weird as only "Monarch" can be.

But that's not the full extent of what "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" appears to be holding up its sleeve. As wild as this storyline is, it might only be the tip of the iceberg. While the two Lee Shaws try to come to terms with this quirk of quantum mechanics, another subplot in episode 7 suggests that there might be even bigger time-travel twists to come.

What if the events that put this MonsterVerse in motion in the first place — Godzilla's destruction of San Francisco, known as G-Day, as seen in the 2014 "Godzilla" film — could be undone? After last week's episode introduced us to Amber Midthunder's mysterious Isabel Simmons, the daughter of Apex Cybernetics CEO Walter Simmons (played by Demián Bichir in 2021's "Godzilla vs. Kong"), we find out much more about her plan and her intentions for main character Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe). After whisking Kentaro away to her island hideout, Isabel finally comes clean and admits that she has a grander scheme in mind. Although she keeps the specifics hidden for now, her proposal involves living in a world where G-Day simply never happened.

How is that even possible? We're meant to assume that it has something to do with Axis Mundi and its unusual temporal properties, but the rest remains unclear. Either way, this development blows the doors wide open and turns "Monarch" into a show where literally anything could happen. This almost seems like too much material to cover in what remains of season 2, but that might be precisely the point. The future is suddenly looking both brighter and murkier than ever before. Consider us back on board for whatever "Monarch" has in store for us in the weeks ahead.