Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 9 Recap With Spoilers

There’s only one episode left in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ first season and Apple TV+ is setting the stage to end things with a bang. Following the disastrous events of the Monarch “Civil War”, Lee, May, and Cate are presumed deceased as they find themselves dropped into the Hollow Earth. In the past, the latest episode finally brings Monarch’s story to an end while uniting the timelines to create the biggest cliffhanger in the show’s first season to date.

Warning. If you have yet to watch episode 8 of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, be forewarned that we’ll be diving into spoiler territory. 

Past

The episode begins with Billy Randa and Lee Shaw bidding farewell to Keiko’s son, Hiroshi, as we witness the time period following the death of Keiko. Taking place in Kansas, 1962, Monarch is attempting to send a team of explorers, led by Lee, into the Hollow Earth itself. Wondering if he will lose his uncle and father, Hiroshi is given Lee’s pocket knife and is assured that while the mission is dangerous, the “best people” are doing everything they can to make sure the mysterious trek is as safe as possible.

The new mission, dubbed “Operation Hourglass”, will use a capsule to drop Lee and his crew into Hollow Earth, with Monarch needing to attract a kaiju in order to sneak their way into the underground world. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite as planned as the opening of the portal turns disastrous, sucking in both the capsule and nearly every government rep in attendance. Believing that Lee and his group are now deceased, Randa is the only founding member of Monarch to survive.

More bad news arrives for Billy as he is informed that Monarch’s funding will be pulled, and is informed by General Puckett that Randa needs to stop hunting kaiju and be a father to Hiroshi. With Monarch now closed for business, the scene shifts to Lee Shaw, who is found alive and placed inside of a Japanese hospital. As the missing soldier is scanned for radiation, he attempts to escape custody from the hospital by taking a nurse hostage, but comes to the realization that things have changed a great deal since he initially entered the Hollow Earth.

Lee’s Adventures in The Hollow Earth

Twenty years had passed since Lee dropped into the underground world, meaning that Lee had awoken in 1982. While not shown in this time period, Billy Randa died during the events of Kong: Skull Island during the time that Lee was missing in the Hollow Earth. In an effort to calm Lee down, an adult Hiroshi confronts his uncle and hears the story of what had happened to Shaw and his crew in the kaiju-filled world. Little time had passed for Lee while he was in the Hollow Earth, but his crew was eliminated by a combination of kaiju and the terrain itself. Being pulled into a portal, Lee arrives in 1982.

Hiroshi informs Lee that he’ll be placed in the “retirement home” that Cate, Kentaro, and May had found him in during the present, with Shaw imploring his nephew to continue Monarch’s mission. In a dark turn, we witness Lee being effectively drugged into a coma during his time at the Monarch locale, only waking up decades after the fact when Godzilla had first emerged in the 2014 film. Thus, the flashbacks into Monarch’s past come to an end.

Present

Back to the present, Kentaro wakes up in a hospital following the explosions that had detonated during the Monarch in-fighting. Told that Shaw, May, and Cate are considered dead thanks to the blast, Kentaro tries to come to grips with what comes next in his life now that his sister and ex-girlfriend are dead. Luckily, the three had in fact survived, with the episode showing us that Lee and May have arrived in the Hollow Earth side-by-side, far from where Cate is.

Aside from the world being filled with dangerously large and twisted creatures, Lee informs May that they also need to beware of the electricity that emerges as a result of the portals they traveled through. Nearly being fried by the charges, May is told that Shaw has been there before and that she’ll need to follow his orders to survive and find Cate. 

Monarch’s Biggest Cliffhanger

In a sad scene, Kentaro returns to his father’s office only to run into Hiroshi while he is there. This, of course, isn’t a happy reunion as Kentaro blames Hiroshi for what had happened to Cate, informing his father that Cate had died as a result of the explosions. Breaking down, Hiroshi begs for it not to be true before we return once again to the Hollow Earth.

The episode ends with its most shocking scene as Cate awakens in the Hollow Earth. Stalked by what can only be described as a giant boar who is mixed with plant life, Cate finds herself nearly eaten by the mid-sized kaiju. At the last minute, she is saved by an arrow that strikes the boar and was shot by none other than Keiko. Keiko had apparently not only survived her perceived demise in the first episode of the series, but also hadn’t aged a day, which will throw a giant curveball into the proceedings as Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has one episode left before it comes to an end.