Monarch Finale Sets Up New Story in Pivotal Monsterverse Location

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has proven to be exactly what its creators promised: a tie-in story to the Monsterverse film series (Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, the upcoming Godzilla x Kong) that deepens our understanding of the universe and its lore. The Monarch Season 1 finale takes things a step further by setting up Season 2 of the show to fill in another key side story focused on a pivotal franchise location. 

MAJOR SPOILERS for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 10 Follow! 

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In the Monarch Finale episode "Beyond Logic" Shaw (Kurt Russell) must rescue himself, Cate (Anna Sawai), May (Kiersey Clemons), and an un-aged Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) out of the Hollow Earth portal dimension, and back to their realm. 

Thanks to some ingenuity, luck, and a helping hand (and Atomic Breath) from Godzilla, the group ultimately makes the jump back up the portal – except for Shaw, who seemingly sacrifices himself to save the ladies. As we learned in the pivotal penultimate episode of Monarch, being in the gateway station between worlds causes a time-dilation effect in which hours in the other dimension equate to years on Earth. So, even though Cate and May are only gone for what they think are mere hours, they return to find two years have passed, and it is now 2017. 

Monarch Episode 10 Ending Explained

Cate and May return with Keiko to the year 2017 and find that there is a greeting party waiting for them – that their arrival was predicted and expected. Greeting them are former Monarch agent Tim (Joe Tippett), Cate's father (Keiko's son) Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), and Cate's half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe), who worked for the last two years developing a system of charting portal openings, as well as the network of paths between Earth and Hollow Earth, to bring Cate back. 

The episode ends with the reveal that Hiroshi and Kentaro's corporate benefactors are Monarch's rival APEX Cybernetics, led by May's former boss, Brenda Holland (Dominique Tipper). Not only that, but the site where APEX is operating is revealed to be none other than Skull Island – as we learn when alarm sirens go off, and APEX personnel go scrambling for their Anti-Titan shelters because a furious "King" Kong has arrived on the scene to investigate what came through the portal. 

How Monarch Season 1 Ending Sets up Season 2 & Godzilla vs. Kong

The events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters play out in 2019 before we leap to 2024 for the events of Godzilla vs. Kong. That Monsterverse crossover event finally took us back to Skull Island for the first time since Kong: Skull Island, only to find it a very changed place: The storm that had shielded the island from the outside world instead consumed it, killing off most of the native Iwi people in the process. Monarch had built "Outpost 33" on Skull Island – a domed preserve for keeping Kong alive and protected. 

Godzilla: King of Monsters only made an offhand reference to Monarch's Skull Island outpost, as having gone offline when Ghidorah caused the cataclysmic Titant awakening across the world. The end credits of KoM mentioned the phenomenon that Titans across the world were converging on Skull Island, while Godzilla vs. Kong established its importance as a preserve for Kong to live in. 

That all said: the early days of how Outpost 33 wave established on Skull Island – and the fight between Monarch and APEX to claim it, sounds exactly like what season 2 of Legacy of Monsters could explore, thereby helping to deepen the events of Godzilla vs. Kong. 

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV+.