Forget the MCU, Hollywood’s Best Cinematic Universe Returns in 10 Days

February 17, 2026, 10:00am

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is once again going to own the pop-culture zeitgeist, thanks to big 2026 films like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, and TV shows like Daredevil: Born Again and VisionQuest. However, while Marvel Studios has been trying to get its brand back to the heights of Avengers: Endgame, another cinematic universe has quietly slipped in and taken a bite out of the market share. And that franchise is also about to turn up in a major way this year, starting just 10 days from now (at the time of writing this).

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Warner Bros. has turned its “Monsterverse” franchise into a multimedia hit. Starting over a decade ago with the Godzilla (2014) reboot, the franchise has successfully taken the MCU route to building up both Godzilla and King Kong as individual franchises before bringing them together in the 2021 crossover film Godzilla vs. Kong. Since the crossover, the worlds of Godzilla and Kong have been extended to television, via shows like the Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is about drop its Season 2 premiere.

What Is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 About?

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1 was a game-changing expansion of the movie franchise. The show tracked the Randa family across multiple generations, starting from when Bill Randa (Anders Holm) first met his colleague and future wife, Dr. Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto), to the mid-2010s when Bill’s granddaughter Cate (Anna Sawai) takes up Monarch’s mission following Godzilla’s emergence “G-Day” (in the reboot film). The big twist came when it was revealed that Bill and Keiko’s best friend, Col. Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell), experiences a time dilation effect when attempting travel to the Hollow Earth, wherein hours passing for Lee turn out to be 20 years of time passing on Earth. During that time, Keiko also goes missing, trying to find Lee.

Season 1 ended with Keiko finally escaping the Hollow Earth passageway with Cate and her allies also getting stuck in the Hollow Earth passageway, and experiencing the same time dialiation effect. They returned in 2017 (two years before the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters) to find the Apex corporation (from Godzilla vs. Kong) having set up their own facility on Skull Island, to learn more about Titans like Kong.

Season 2 of Legacy of Monsters will be set within the five years between Godzilla (2014) and King of the Monsters – specifically, three years after Godzilla battles MUTOs along the Pacific shoreline. By the time King of the Monsters takes place, Monarch has basically become SHIELD of the Monsterverse: a global organization with a military-sized budget and resources, tasked with studying, containing, and if need be, eliminating Titan threats to humanity. The longform TV series will be able to better explain how the Randas and their associates finally convince the powers that be of Monarch’s worth, and then structure and grow the organization into what we see in later Monsterverse films.

At the same time, Season 2 will presumably show the interconnected ties between Monarch and Apex, which will become much more relevant years later, when Apex Cybernetics tries to create its own mechanized Titan, using cybernetic integration of real Titan DNA and body parts. Godzilla vs. Kong‘s third act showed just how wrong that can go…

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Cast (& A New Monster!)

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 will feature returning stars Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell, who share the role of Lee Shaw. Also returning are Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, and Anders Holm. Season 2 will also feature guest stars including Takehiro Hira (Shōgun), Amber Midthunder (Prey), Curtiss Cook (The Chi), Cliff Curtis (Avatar: Fire and Ash), Dominique Tipper (The Expanse), and Camilo Jiménez Varón (Griselda).

It’s been teased that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 will feature both Godzilla and Kong, and the debut of “the new Titan X.” There are many theories that “Titan X” could be code for another Monsterverse makeover of a classic Toho Kaiju, as we’ve seen in virtually every project within the series. It would be the kind of event that would make Legacy of Monsters Season 2 appointment viewing for fans, and even more of an incentive for new viewers to jump in.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 will premiere on Apple TV+ on February 27th, the next film, Godzilla x Kong: Supernova will arrive in 2027. Discuss your feelings about the show – and drop some Season 2 theories – over on the ComicBook Forum!