With the second season of Apple’s MonsterVerse series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, now well and truly wrapped, you may find yourself jonesing for a new weekly hit of monster madness. After all, while a third season is likely and a spinoff show starring Wyatt Russell is in full development, it will probably be years before either of those make it to your television screen.
So in the absence of regularly scheduled programming that features the likes of Godzilla, Kong, Rodan, and Titan X, what other shows can you turn to? Here are some other television projects to watch if you enjoyed Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and are hoping to find other shows like it.
- Godzilla: The Series
- Creature Commandos
- Stranger Things
- Ash vs Evil Dead
- Powerless
- Midnight Mass
- Secret Invasion
- Andor
Godzilla: The Series
Perhaps the most obvious and direct entry on this list, the animated show, Godzilla: The Series was a literal Saturday morning cartoon that was produced in the late ‘90s. The series was a continuation of the much hated Roland Emmerich-directed American Godzilla film from 1998, but was far better than the film which it sprung from.
In fact, this animated series saw the protagonists of the film (who could possibly forget such iconic characters!?) teaming up with one of Godzilla’s freshly hatched babies from the end of the movie and hunting monsters around the world.
Like pretty much every Godzilla-related project since 1998, Godzilla: The Series took measures to attempt to avoid the mistakes of the Emmerich film and even atone for its sins in more ways than one, introducing a heaping helping of classic Toho monsters and steering into far more traditional Godzilla territory. It’s goofy and kitschy, but it’s also a blast
Creature Commandos
If the tackling and incorporation of iconic monsters alongside new creations within a government-framed setting was what really got your pulse racing about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ second season, then boy, do I have good news for you. Creature Commandos is an animated DCU series created by James Gunn, and was actually the first officially canon entry into his new DC universe when it premiered in 2024.
The show features the likes of classic monsters like Frankenstein’s Monster, The Bride, and a Gillman-esque woman, while also spotlighting great original DC creations like Weasel and G.I. Robot. Gunn’s trademark off-kilter energy is pervasive throughout the series, as it features a bunch of initially unlikable motor-mouths all being paired together and growing more compassionate over the season.
All in all, like Monarch, it’s a fascinating look into its respective larger-than-life interconnected universe from a (mostly) grounded perspective.
Stranger Things
Maybe an obvious one, but still worth an inclusion. There are several elements at play in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that feel… well, let’s say “gently cribbed” from the Duffer Brothers’ monumental sci-fi horror series: the expansive cast, monsters galore, another universe just beneath our own where all the monsters live whose existence causes time dilation shenanigans.
Its final season may have been the stuff clickbait headlines and divisive opinions are made of, but by and large Stranger Things remains a pretty impressive accomplishment that has more than its fair share of monster thrills.
Ash vs Evil Dead
If you love a series that takes big-screen cinematic monsters and unleashes them on the small screen against a group of unlikely heroes, Ash vs Evil Dead is the perfect fit for you. Nowadays, audiences are getting a new Evil Dead movie every few years it seems like. But there was a time where that was very much not the case, and Ash vs Evil Dead was all the Deadite fanatics had to hold them over.
And it was more than worthy of that cause. Starring Bruce Campbell in his iconic role of Ash Williams from the films and introducing a young Samara Weaving to audiences as proto-scream queen, all while featuring the creative involvement of franchise creator Sam Raimi himself, Ash vs Evil Dead was a miraculous little horror-comedy-action hybrid that more people should check out.
Powerless
From the outset, the primary appeal of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters promised to be its ability to bring a much more grounded, street-level perspective to the MonsterVerse. If that is what you are looking for in your tie-in television shows, then Powerless is probably the most straight-up-the-middle version of that possible.
Before James Gunn took over at DC and unified their media output moving forward, things were kind of in shambles over there, with anyone and everyone just kind of doing whatever they felt like. Powerless was a byproduct of this era; an office-set sitcom that took place in the DCEU.
So it centered on just a bunch of normal, average joes who happened to live in a superhero universe. It starred the likes of Alan Tudyk and Vanessa Hudgens, and was kind of delightful in just how oddball it was. It only lasted a season, but it’s worth a look-in.
Midnight Mass
Another key element of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is the interpersonal emotional intensity with which it aims to tackle its characters and genre-infused subject matter. Perhaps the pinnacle example of a series swinging for this ambitious goal and hitting a home run with it within the last several years is none other than Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass.
The Netflix-released horror series got substantially less attention than some of Flanagan’s other hits for the streamer, but it is far and away his greatest work to-date. The series is full of remarkably well-crafted scares, tremendous performances, and all around incredibly emotionally affecting stuff. If you’re looking for a monster-filled series that will both make you jump out of your skin and pull at your heart strings, this is the one for you.
Secret Invasion
An awful show, but I have good reason for including it here! What Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is attempting (the blending of big franchise fare with a more grounded perspective) works for the most part within the series, but it very well can go horribly wrong, and there’s no better example of that than this dreadful Marvel Disney+ misfire.
Even if you are not a fan of Marvel media, Secret Invasion is a very notable downgrade in just about every way. It’s contrived, nonsensical, and constantly swinging for a completely unearned sense of gravitas and prestige. The result is lunacy-inducing; a truly horrendous work that keeps looking you dead in the face and attempting to convince you it should be taken completely seriously.
Andor
Which brings us to the best recent example of a TV series taking a big franchise and exploring it with a humanistic eye; Tony Gilroy’s Andor. This Star Wars manages to blend elements from across the larger Star Wars canon into something that feels wholly new: a political intrigue, wartime thriller set in a galaxy far, far away.
From the Bourne films to Michael Clayton, Gilroy has long had a gift for exploring complicated worlds and troubled characters within them, but Andor is his magnum opus. In taking George Lucas’s own penchant for paralleling real-world politics in his present-tense Star Wars films, Gilroy and co. delivered a prescient and altogether jaw-dropping work that made Star Wars feel real.
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