My Review of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Season One)"

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Season One) premiered back in 2023. That's 2 years after the movie Godzilla vs. Kong came out. I was sold as a TV show that does a deep dive into the franchise. Though the franchise is quite entertaining, I'm not that big a fan that I thought I had to see this right away. It's too bad I didn't though because this show does indeed help build the backstory of this franchise.

The show starts off decades ago. Its timeline is purposely ambiguous because there's going to be a ton of time jumping throughout this season. There's a woman by the name of Keiko who is trying to find the truth about mysterious monsters that are being reported. Along her quest she's joined by Lee and Bill. The three are an unlikely trio but they eventually get on the same page.

The show then jumps to 2015, a year after the terrible events of the first Godzilla movie. A woman by the name of Cate is grieving the loss of her father. As she's cleaning up his belongings she soon discovers that her father had led a double life in Japan. More starting, she finds out that she has an equally shocked step-brother named Ren.

As they're uncovering more mysteries behind her father they soon discover their father had worked for Monarch which is the big company behind giant monster research. They soon get into trouble and team up with Ren's ex girlfriend to get themselves out of their sticky situation.

This soon becomes a cat and mouse game of uncovering secrets of Monarch and their family while escaping Monarch authorities. This is all made more confusing as the show jumps back and forth into Keiko's story and Cate's story. It's not terribly confusing but your mind can get a bit of whiplash trying to keep up with what's going on at times.

I do like Keiko's storyline but Cate's storyline is a bit of an annoyance. Cate, Ren and their love triangle character May can get quite irritating. It's a lucky thing they're uncovering interesting information about Monarch and how the giant monsters work. Their love triangle feels very tacked on and forced. I guess that's how they like it in Hollywood though.

Unfortunately, the acting can be quite wooden as well. There were times when I thought it was being acted by some child actors or something. Though I guess I haven't seen these actors before it could have been their first time but I'm sure there could have been better candidates...

It's really weird because you'd think you'd be interested in the characters but a lot of the characters aren't really likeable. What I was really liked was the backstory of the company and the world building they created with the monster world. The mythology is really cool and had me keeping up with the series. I also liked the fact that they changed the tone of the TV show versus the present movie franchise. The tone harkens back to the original Godzilla movie from 2014.

A lot of the story building they do will make sense to the current state of the movie franchise now. This is also really weird because now the tone is quite wacky and comical. It's really hard to tell if they're going to keep going with this series because they actually finished this show up in a nice and tidy. It does bring up some interesting ideas that they could play up with in their next movie though. Though I didn't see any of those elements in the latest movie.

Overall, there are a few interesting elements to this show but there are a lot of unlikeable things about it too. One of the things that could have really been built up a little more was the characters. If you want to watch this watch it for the lore and world building. Don't expect to like any of the characters. I have to give this season a 6 out of 10.