This week’s new episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, "Secrets," is a real monkey’s paw situation for me, personally. If you’ve been keeping up with this publication’s coverage of Apple’s MonsterVerse TV series, then you might recall that I have been espousing the value of the series’ intimate, character-based work over its monster-sized action for the past several weeks.
To me, by far the most interesting stuff that Monarch has been able to accomplish so far over its run relates to the ways in which it explores this grounded perspective within a Titan-filled world and the pathos-laden familial drama that stems from it. The monster stuff is all very impressive and often good fun, but anytime it leans too heavily that way and loses focus on the actual human characters, it can feel like the show loses a bit of its footing.
Having said all of that, “Secrets,” as directed by Hiromi Kamata, seems on the surface to be the exact kind of thing I was hoping for; it is a character-based episode that features practically no monster-based action whatsoever and hones in on some fascinating new character developments for its ensemble cast.
Unfortunately, however, despite how solid some of those actual developments, performances, and individual scenes can be here, the episode as a whole feels like a deck of cards ready to tumble over from a slight breeze at any moment. In attempting to fit all of these various character beats in and keep the pace up, the episode feels like the equivalent of dangling keys in front of a baby, hoping that the constant noise and movement will distract them from the fact that they’re being fed all vegetables this week.
Here’s the thing though; vegetables kind of rule. Especially in a show like Monarch, I don’t think having a week that is all vegetables is a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s kind of essential, as it provides some much needed nutritional substance to the series and allows the zany candy-coated sugar rushes of the monster-centered stuff to pop that much more in contrast.
Before we inevitably get too in the weeds with this metaphor, let's dig into what “Secrets” actually is about.
In the present-set timeline, after stopping the new aquatic Titan from destroying a bunch of passenger-carrying ships last week, the Monarch ship that all of the main characters are on docks. Everyone argues about what to do about the Titan now as Apex Industries comes in to try and take over the operation, and the main characters formulate a plan to create a Titan-calling “dog whistle” in an effort to stop this new Titan from making landfall. To accomplish this, most of the gang embarks on a mission through Tokyo to get the equipment needed from Hiroshi’s lab.
Meanwhile, Cate (Anna Sawai) leaves to go home to San Francisco and has an existential crisis of sorts. All of this is intercut with the past-set timeline, which sees Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) and Keiko Randa (Mari Yamamoto) trying to survive the pursuit of the seaside village they royally pissed off last week, all while growing romantically closer together, despite the fact that she is married to his best friend and partner.
On paper, all of that sounds like solid, fundamental, character-building stuff that I would have really loved to see an episode of Monarch directed by Kamata really focus and hone in on. Unfortunately, in execution, so much is left to be desired.
There are absolutely moments that shine through here, such as Sawai’s performance as a whole. She has been left a bit short-changed by this season thus far, with a lot of her emotional resonance being cut short in favor of preserving the momentum of the story, but here, things are allowed to slow down, and the performer is really given the spotlight in a way that highlights her adept and emotive skills. Similarly, the past-set scenes of the Wyatt and Yamamoto's characters bonding, bickering, and ultimately giving in to their romantic feelings really work. The performances are strong, the direction is assured, and the writing crackles with the kind of will-they-won’t-they double-entendre-laced tension you would want from a beat like this.
However, the connective tissue that ties all of this stuff together is nonsensical at best and flat-out ridiculous at worst. So much of this episode is just people running around various deserted back-alley streets, having non sequitur-filled conversations with one another that go nowhere and contribute nothing. In this way, not only does the visual language of much of the episode feel stagnant and stale in a strange way, but the actual writing and dialogue also come with a distinct sense of dissonance. So much of the audio here has clearly been redubbed through ADR, with characters having entire conversations with one another off-screen or with the edit deliberately cutting away from whoever is supposed to be speaking at a given moment. The results are bizarre, to say the least, and never fail to call attention to themselves. This makes the whole thing feel like the episode was dramatically reworked in post-production, preserving the emotional beats but changing all of the context around them post-hoc.
There’s also just the simplicity and sterilized nature of some of the narrative beats that can make it difficult to buy into some of the human drama the episode is looking to mine. For example, Apex Industries is a whole lore-based MonsterVerse thing in and of itself, but we are even told in this episode multiple times that they are this gargantuan corporation that has obscenely deep pockets and is incredibly powerful. So when the episode then turns around and decides that getting a spy on the inside of Apex is literally as simple as someone asking May (Kiersey Clemons) to ask an old connection for a job at Apex, and then in the next scene she just is a spy for them, it kind of takes all the air out of that part of the story.
Overall, I’m still eager to see where this season goes, but I’d be lying if I said this episode wasn’t a disappointment. I really like Kamata as a director; I like a lot of the character moments here, and I straight up guffawed laughing (complimentary) at the scene where Kurt Russell rocks up as an in-disguise modern-day Lee Shaw with a little beret and circular sunglasses. But sadly, the majority of the episode’s runtime feels like it is filled up with nonsense for the sake of nonsense, giving the other characters perfunctory things to run around and do rather than actual meaningful scenes or interactions.
I am hoping that come the end of the season, I’ll be able to at least look back and more meaningfully appreciate this episode and its contribution to the larger story in hindsight. But as it currently stands, this is kind of a mess.