The television series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters takes place on two timelines: one in 2015 that takes place between 2014’s Godzilla and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and one in the 1950s, which shows the origins of the titular Monarch organization, the institution in Legendary’s MonsterVerse responsible for researching the Titans and protecting humanity against them.
The show, which just had its third episode released on Apple TV+, is centered around a family whose lives are intertwined in various ways with Monarch. The 1950s timeline focuses on three of those characters—Keiko (Mari Yamamoto), a young Bill Randa (Anders Holm), and a young Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell)—who also happen to be the founders of Monarch.
The first three episodes of the series have given us details as to how the organization came to be, including its relationship with the U.S. military. The third episode, however, gives us a different view on a significant scene we’ve seen before in the MonsterVerse. That scene also becomes a pivotal moment for Keiko, Bill, and Lee.
I had the chance to talk to the show’s co-creators, Chris Black and Matt Fraction, about this scene. Read on to get their takes on how they approached it. And be warned: We do, obviously, spoil what happens in said sequence, but not anything else from the episode.
The scene in question takes place on Bikini Atoll, where the U.S. military attempts to kill Godzilla with a nuclear bomb. If you’ve seen Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, you saw snippets of this in the form of old-fashioned film footage at the very beginning of the movie. In Monarch, we get details on how this moment came about and also see Keiko, Bill, and Lee’s varying reactions to the U.S. military trying to kill Godzilla.
Incorporating this event into Monarch as a way to shed light on the differences between these three characters was no accident. Fraction explained that not having the Bikini Atoll incident—the largest nuclear test the U.S. military has ever conducted in our world that, in the canon of the MonsterVerse, was crafted by Monarch to try to kill Godzilla—would be like “doing the history of NASA without showing a rocket launch.”
He added, “We knew it was this pinnacle crowning achievement for [Monarch]. But what those characters don’t know but we do—is that it failed, right? And it was a chance to have the holy trinity of Monarch [Keiko, Bill, and Lee] see Godzilla up close and personal for the first time, and each of them come out of the experience with a different opinion of what Godzilla represents.”
The scene, of course, also gives us another chance to see Godzilla in the show, although we have gotten flashbacks of him destroying San Francisco in earlier episodes. But along with the tension around seeing Godzilla swim up to the bomb, we also see that the conflict within Monarch between curiosity and defense was there from the beginning.
“In the canon, whether it’s official or unofficial, the Monarch motto is ‘discovery and defense in a time of monsters,’” said Black. “That scene crystallizes discovery versus defense. It’s the choice that we’re going to make—is our mission to try and destroy these things, or is our mission to try and learn everything we can about these things? And you have guys like General Puckett—who is played by this wonderful actor, Christopher Heyerdahl, who’s so great—he’s saying, ‘No, I swore an oath to protect my country.’ And he’s not wrong. He’s not crazy. And you have Keiko saying, ‘We’re not allowed to do this. What right do we have to do this?”
Whether you’re Team Puckett or Team Keiko, the scene is a memorable one. You can catch more memorable moments when new episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters become available on Apple TV+ on Fridays, with the season finale dropping on January 12, 2024.
