When the average viewer turns on the latest episode of Apple’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a series whose second season has featured marketing explicitly showcasing both Godzilla and King Kong, and finds that those titanic characters are basically nowhere to be found in this hour of television, they might be a bit sad. But as strange as it may sound, I actually preferred the approach employed throughout this second episode of season 2, titled “Resonance.”
Where the first episode of the season felt like a potent and frustrating encapsulation of the ways in which this series has suffered from a split-focus over the course of its run, this second episode demonstrates a great deal of promise by homing in on the most dynamic and compelling human characters, and not feeling the need to trot out a monster-centric sequence to cater to audiences every few minutes. There’s still plenty of action and large-scale spectacle to be had here, but it all feels far more entrenched in the actual story being told, rather than merely tacked on to it.
Monarch is a kind of unique and bizarre show, in that the thing that audiences are most likely to tune in for is also the thing it is explicitly kind of attempting to avoid. From the outset, the entire mission statement behind this series was to really dig into the nitty-gritty of what its like to be a tiny, minuscule human being in the MonsterVerse, a world where creatures like Kong and Godzilla regularly level entire cities. But the thing is, once you actually show audiences a monster like that, they are inevitably going to want more; it’s a genie that you can’t really put back in the lamp. Which is to say nothing of the advertising for the series as a whole, which is keen as can be to slap Godzilla on every poster, despite the show itself desperately attempting to temper those expectations.
For me, the show really works when it is able to relegate the monstrous creatures to the periphery; a threat on the horizon that is looming and actively contributing to the human drama and escalating stakes that the characters find themselves in. Fortunately, “Resonance” is almost exclusively this, as its script articulately interweaves storylines from across its two primary timelines (the ‘50s and the modern day) and delivers a fairly taut little tale, as the gang tries to follow and stop the monster they accidentally released into the world last week.
"Resonance" focuses on human drama and is better for it
The other real plus to this episode from a narrative perspective is the distinct leg-up it gets on the first episode of the season, which is to say, it actually feels like it has forward momentum. The debut episode of the season felt far more like it was merely coasting on fumes from the first season’s finale and biding its time long enough to remind viewers who everyone was and what their respective deals were. Fortunately, “Resonance” is able to hit the ground running and really get the momentum rolling in a palpable way. Because of this, many of the interactions and ideas that felt incredibly stilted in the first episode are able to really thrive here, and the episode is all the better for it.
Another element of “Resonance” that showcases Monarch at its best is the way in which the episode acutely hones in on the relationship that really makes this show tick: that of Keiko (as played by Mari Yamamoto) and Lee Shaw (as played by Wyatt and Kurt Russell). While there are other characters in the show who have interesting moments, many of them feel incredibly underdeveloped. These central two, however, have the benefit of now being present-tense players both in the flashback portion of the show and in the modern portion of it. “Resonance” makes a meal out of these morsels, intercutting Yamamoto interacting with Wyatt’s younger version of Shaw with scenes of her interacting with Kurt’s older version. On top of this, it uses this relationship to really draw attention to her ‘woman out of time’ arc, and juxtaposes that with the ways in which Shaw has become increasingly disillusioned by living through all the time that she didn’t. It’s a fascinating dynamic that is well-written and incredibly well performed, with all three actors involved doing tremendous work.
Director Lawrence Trilling, who also helmed the first episode of the season, goes a long way toward redeeming the limper elements of that previous episode with some standout moments in “Resonance.” For starters, the emotional grounding really works here, something that couldn’t be said about the first episode. But beyond that, even the setpieces feel far more impactful and affecting here, with Trilling and his team really doing a stellar job of creating tension and suspense in the central seafaring chase that drives the whole episode. Similarly, the flashback-set ritual sequence is a smart and cunning reinterpretation of the summoning of Kong in King Kong, but for drastically different purposes, and it works incredibly well.
Also, it must be mentioned that Trilling manages to make the culminating moment of the modern-set action play like one giant homage to the surfing scene in John Carpenter’s Escape From LA, and that is, quite frankly, deserving of all the praise in the world.
All in all, “Resonance” sees the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters really beginning to find its footing in an interesting way. I remain highly skeptical of whether or not the show will be able to preserve this kind of beneficial balance between the human-scaled pathos and the monster-sized spectacle, but this episode more than proves that it’s possible.