Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Episode 1.10: Beyond Logic

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Beyond Logic

“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” finally fulfils some of its promises in the final episode. “Beyond Logic” has Lee and May finding Cate, in the company of her grandmother, within the Hollow Earth. Shaw has a tearful reunion with Keiko, who is dismayed to learn that sixty years have passed while she's stayed the same age. She refers to this realm as Axis Mundi, calling it a half-way point between the surface world and the deeper inner Earth. Keiko fashioned a distress signal out of the device that came down with her. With Lee's help, they are able to increase the strength. This catches the attention of Kentaro and Hiroshi on the surface. The quartet find the Project Hourglass shuttle, still in working condition because of the time dilation. Just as they are about to use it to blast out of there, the Ion Dragon attacks. The cavalry comes in the form of the King of the Monsters.

All throughout “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” I've characterized the show as an extended tease for giant monster fans. Every time a Titan appeared on-screen, it rarely did anything truly noteworthy. You know something is amiss when an ice-spewing giant rat-thing has more screen time than Godzilla himself. “Monarch” has continuously done nothing to dissuade this notion. Whenever the Big G did bother to show up, he didn't do a damn thing beside glare at the human characters. In the final episode of the season, “Legacy of Monster” finally gives kaiju fans something to chew on. This is exactly by design, of course. The show gave us just enough monster action to get us to stick around, never actually satisfying us until Apple TV+ producers could be certain we're going to watch all of it. 

I'm extremely reluctant to say it was all worth the wait. However, the kaiju battle in “Beyond Logic” is pretty damn cool. Godzilla's arrival is given the proper amount of respect, the King of the Monsters stomping into Axis Mundi like a pissed-off stepfather. The camera swirl around the massive beasts as the Ion Dragon takes flight. As far as CGI kaiju duels go, this is a good one. We find out that the Ion Dragon even has a projectile weapon, spraying noxious slime into Godzilla's face. The MonsterVerse version of Godzilla is all but unstoppable, as far as strength and superpowers go. It's not a long battle. Yet, as a life long fan of this particular radioactive dinosaur, watching him beat the shit out of an opponent is always a good time.

As entertaining as this monster brawl is, I can't help but feel like it is too little, too late. Even in its final hour, “Monarch” still drags its feet at times. Whenever “Beyond Logic” cuts away from Shaw, Cate, and Keiko in the underground realm, I felt exhausted again. Kentaro and Hiroshi have the heart-to-heart you'd expect from a son confronting a cheating father. It's resolved when Kentaro's mom forgives him. This meeting is, ostensibly, something we've been waiting to see all season. Ideally, this family reunion should be just as hotly anticipated as Godzilla fighting another monster. That is undeniably not true though. Ten hours into this show and Hiroshi is still a character we're more informed about than we actually know. It robs this meeting of any emotional impact. 

Still, at the very least, “Monarch” does live up to its subtitle in this final episode. The multigenerational element comes full circle. Three generation of Randas are reunited. Even if the characters have never been as resonant as the showrunners clearly hoped, Hiroshi finding a mother he assumed was gone forever is still a good moment. John Goodman is even given a little cameo. “Legacy of Monsters” never truly succeeded in making us care about every generation of this family. Yet it's still a cool idea, to show the history of a monster-hunting organization through the clan that molded it. 

“Beyond Logic” ends with another predictable time leap, seemingly bringing the TV show up to date with the events of the MonsterVerse. The final moments include a cameo from another A-list monster, continuing the formula of insuring viewers stay hooked by dangling the possibility of future kaiju appearances in front of us. Simply because it actually delivers on Godzilla dueling it out with another enormous beastie, “Beyond Logic” almost has to rank higher than every other episode of “Monarch.” Any other issue I have with this particular program, I can't give an all-together negative review to any hour that features Godzilla ripping a dragon's wings off. [7/10]

Ultimately though, I came away from “Monarch: Legacy of Monster” extremely frustrated. The show follows every trademark of modern, serialized television that I absolutely despise. Over the course of ten hours, there's maybe sixty or so minutes of shit I actually cared about. Legendary's MosnterVerse films have struggled to make viewers care about its human cast members. Devoting an entire TV show to this only made those weaknesses more apparent. After watching all ten episodes, I still don't entirely know why the show wasted as much time as it did with May's entire subplot. Most frustratingly of all, when “Monarch” was good, it proved that the show didn't need to be as much of a waste of time as it was. It's unknown if Legendary plans on producing more of “Monarch.” I suspect that depends on how many eyeballs it attracted to Apple TV+ and how well “Godzilla x Kong” does at the box office. Truthfully, I sincerely hope another season isn't produced, so I don't have to suffer through so much nonsense just to get a few minutes of Godzilla being cool. At least it was less annoying than “Singular Point,” so that's something, I guess. [Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: 6/10]