Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 opens with its heroes once again opening a portal to the Axis Mundi. Introduced in the show’s first season, at first glance this appears to be the home of the Titans, the place where the kaiju dwell. But anyone who’s familiar with the movies knows that isn’t the case; the Axis Mundi is simply a gateway to somewhere else, a “world between worlds.”
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We only know a little about the Axis Mundi, and even less about the place the Titans really come from – the Hollow Earth. These two locations are absolutely key to Monsterverse lore, and it’s important viewers understand them if they’re to follow the plot of Monarch Season 2. So here’s all you need to know about the Hollow Earth and the Axis Mundi.
The Hollow Earth is the Home of the Titans
The Monsterverse’s Titans hail from an underground realm known as the Hollow Earth. It was first mentioned in Kong: Skull Island, when scientists theorized that the Titans lived underground, but it wasn’t seen until Godzilla vs. Kong. There, viewers learned it is a massive subterranean world with an “ecosystem vast as any ocean.” Surface life gets energy from the sun, but the Hollow Earth is sustained by a “lifeforce” – a mysterious blue energy, presumably atomic in nature.
The history of the Hollow Earth is shrouded in mystery. It’s unclear why the Titans left the Hollow Earth, but it may be tied to a forgotten war between the ancestors of Godzilla and Kong, as those two races vied for supremacy. In-universe, some scientists have theorized that Kong’s home of Skull Island was once a part of the Hollow Earth, and that it has somehow been transported through to the surface world – perhaps a way of preserving the Kong race, which was in danger of being rendered extinct by Godzilla’s ancestors.
The Hollow Earth is derived from many mythological ideas of underground worlds, and it can be accessed by so-called “vile vortices” – wormholes that can be used or possibly created by Titans, allowing travel between the surface and the Hollow Earth. In the real world, “vile vortices” are the brainchild of Ivan T. Sanderson and the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, 12 locations where unusual anomalies are said to occur. It’s quite entertaining to see all these ideas absorbed into the Monsterverse’s lore.
The Axis Mundi is a World Between Worlds
That brings us to the Axis Mundi, introduced in Monarch Season 1. The show’s co-creator, Chris Black, explained that this was created because Monarch didn’t want to tread on the movies’ toes; the Hollow Earth is too big a part of Monsterverse lore, ultimately appearing on the big screen rather than the small. As he explained to ScreenRant:
“I wouldn’t say we came into conflict, but the only place where we definitely had some discussions was about the Hollow Earth of it all, because it is such an important storytelling arena in the feature films. We had to be careful what we were doing that we weren’t stepping on anything they want to do or giving any spoilers, because our show will have aired in its entirety before the new movie comes out. They wanted to make sure that we communicated with that.
We made some adjustments in what the world was going to be and what the world was going to look like. We created this specific realm that we’re calling Axis Mundi—Matt Fraction came up with that—that is a part of, but distinct from, the Hollow Earth. That was kind of our playground to play in that we felt separated us from the feature storytelling. But I think Hollow Earth, when you see the feature films, is a big enough [place]. If you look at, say, Middle Earth as an example, there’s the Shire, there’s Mordor. There are tons of different places within that world. So, I felt, and I think our partners on the feature side feel that, Hollow Earth is a big enough playground for everybody.”
The Axis Mundi is best understood as a sort of “inbetween place,” the realm that vile vortices travel through to access the Hollow Earth. It’s likely this explains the strange temporal mechanics, the fact time passes at a very different rate. It’s possible gravity, too, is in flux in the Axis Mundi, which would fit with Lee surviving a hundred foot drop with no evidence of injury. We’re sure to see more of the Axis Mundi as Monarch Season 2 continues, but Black’s comments raise the possibility we could eventually visit the Hollow Earth itself.
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