We’ve Finally Figured Out Godzilla’s New Monsterverse Rival

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has introduced a terrifying new Titan that’s a clear Godzilla rival. As powerful as the Monsterverse’s Titans may be, Monarch‘s newest – a creature currently known only as “Titan X” – may be the most terrifying of them all. Although Titan X is amphibious, able to move on land as well as in the sea, it clearly prefers an oceanic environment. Unleashed at the end of Monarch Season 2, episode 1, Titan X is now coming perilously close to major shipping lanes.

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We’re gradually learning more about Titan X, both in the present day and the 1957 flashbacks. Visually, aspects of the design are clearly a deliberate callback to Biollante, a genetically-engineered monster from the 1989 movie Godzilla vs. Biollante, but that’s where the similarity ends; it’s more that the established Monsterverse designs have influenced Monarch‘s monster designers, rather than that this is in fact the Monsterverse’s Biollante. But we think we’ve figured out what Godzilla’s new rival really is.

We Think Titan X Is Based on the Legends of the Kraken

All the signs suggest Titan X is the Monsterverse’s version of the Kraken, a legendary sea monster first described in a Norwegian glossary by Christen Jensøn in 1646. The Monsterverse has often tossed the designation “Kraken” at other Titans, simply because they’ve been seen in the waters, so it makes sense for Monarch to reference sea monsters. What’s striking about Titan X, though, is that everything seems to correspond perfectly to legends of the Kraken. Even the water it’s associated with are cooler, fitting with the Scandanavian origin of the Kraken mythology, and it presumably migrates according to shifting ocean temperatures.

Monarch Season 2 has strongly suggested Titan X has been spotted for around 200 years, matching up with abundant references to the Kraken in the 1700s and 1800s. It appears to hunt using those great, sweeping tentacles, which have razor edges to help it grip its prey and drag it into the ocean depths. This fits perfectly with trailers for Monarch Season 2, which have shown Titan X doing the same with modern ships.

The title sequence for Monarch Season 2 offers another important Kraken clue. It includes a newspaper entry hinting at a mysterious island in the Pacific Ocean that one day simply vanished beneath the waves; we’d initially assumed that was a strange reference to Kong’s home of Skull Island, but there are indeed legends of the Kraken staying in place long enough to be mistaken for an island – and then sinking beneath the waters in a whirlpool that could easily be a vile vortex used to access the Hollow Earth or the Axis Mundi.

According to legend, the Kraken’s presence had an influence on the water it swam in. That’s why you often find imagery of the Kraken surrounded by great shoals of fish, signs of water that was unusually rich in nutrients, and that too matches perfectly with the 1957 flashbacks to the area around Santa Soledad. Modern iterations of the Kraken have often riffed on this by suggested a symbiotic relationship with swarms of parasitic creatures, another idea that matches up perfectly with Monarch. That would certainly explain the scarabs, the smaller monsters it seems to protect.

What Exactly are the Scarabs?

But that brings us neatly to the scarabs themselves. These appear to be loosely tied to Egyptian legends of blood scarabs, creatures drawn to blood; they awaken after a blood sacrifice in 1957, and clearly hunt human beings on the Monarch ship. In Egyptian mythology, blood scarabs reproduced inside dead bodies, which makes it very concerning that Monarch has yet to discover the doctor who was killed by the scarab before it crossed Cate’s path.

The scarabs and Titan X clearly exist in some sort of mutually beneficial relationship. Titan X releases nutrients into the seawater, encouraging shoals of fish that the scarabs can prey upon. But these scarabs must also benefit Titan X in some way, because it is extremely protective of them, going out of its way to defend the scarab Cate stunned. These creatures all communicate through sound waves propagated through the water, explaining the vibrations Keiko felt back in 1957, as well as the summons the scarab Cate attacked sent.

Why Did Titan X Leave the Earth?

This leaves only one simple question; if Titan X was still active in the 1950s, what happened to it? The most likely explanation is that its migrations across the sea came to an end, and it became dormant – explaining why it was mistaken for an actual island, according to that newspaper article in Monarch‘s title sequence. Disturbed somehow, it then opened a vile vortex and traveled to the Axis Mundi, where it has slumbered for decades until it has now been awoken by Cate.

There’s one likely explanation for Titan X’s going dormant. The creature prefers cooler waters, but ocean temperatures have increased worldwide due to climate change. This would certainly have disrupted Titan X’s migration route, and the world’s oceans could well have ultimately become inhospitable to it. If all these theories are right, Titan X will now travel the globe seeking waters that are cool enough for it, which means it could cause an awful lot of chaos along the way.

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