When I reviewed the first season of Monarch back in November of 2023, I was pretty mixed on the series as a whole. And wouldn’t you know it, coming back for a second season, I’m just as mixed this time around as well. Because the problems that I hoped might be a bug in season one – the uneven storytelling, wooden dialogue that can turn the best actors in the cast into dull, emotionless performers, and a story that can’t quite seem to decide what it wants to do when it comes to the Titans and their threat to humanity – have turned into features. This is a story that could crackle with energy, could make us sit on the edge of our seat as we watch these characters work together – or apart – and try to stop the Titans from taking out major world cities. Instead, the story moves in fits and starts, occasionally offering cool action set pieces, interesting character beats, and cool special effects. But more often than not, it’s a slog to get through.
When we last left the show, Cate, May, and a still young Keiko (who is Cate’s grandmother, despite only looking a handful of years older than her granddaughter) made it back from Axis Mundi. Unfortunately, Shaw (Kurt Russell, still swaggering) wasn’t able to hitch a ride and is stranded there. But time works differently in the pocket dimension, so while only a few days passed for Cate and May, three years passed on Earth. So the world they have returned to is a bit different – and Kentaro and Hiroshi thought the gang was long dead. Much of the initial set of episodes in season two is working through just how much the world order has changed when it comes to Titans and the corporations vying to come up with the tech to control them. And then there’s the personal strain between Kentaro and Cate – both over how Kentaro has bonded with their father in her absence, and, although it remains largely unsaid, how Cate has bonded with May (yes, the writers do actually acknowledge the incredible chemistry between the duo this season). Monarch has also lost some of its sheen as a power in the control and capture of Titans, leading to Apex becoming a much larger player in the game.
That’s all well and good, but the main issue with season two is the story’s pacing. Once again, we get flashbacks to the Randas and Young Shaw on their investigative work – which always dovetails into the threat the team is facing in the modern half of the storyline. However, this time around, the flashbacks feel mostly hollow because we know exactly what is going to happen to each of these characters. When they are threatened by anything in their half of the story, there aren’t any stakes since you know they are going to make it out relatively unscathed. Sure, there are some interpersonal stakes, but once again, we know more or less what it to come in that piece of their story as well. So, while it’s nice to have Wyatt Russell and Anders Holm back – and poor Mari Yamamoto now has to do double-duty, appearing in both parts of the story – these jaunts to the past don’t add much to the overall arc.
And over in the present-day arc, the writing can’t seem to decide if it wants to go all-in on the Titans – how to track them, how to summon them, how to possibly tame them – or if it’s more interested in the emotional toll taken by everything that these characters have experienced in season one. So, it tries to do both, which in turn, means it accomplishes nothing. Anna Sawai is left trying to make sense of a character who is strong and focused in one episode, an emotional wreck in the next, angry and defiant in another, and then lost and confused. Which is a bummer to see, since Cate could be a truly complex character if she was given the chance to actually start working through her trauma rather than burying it until an inopportune moment for it to emerge and then ignoring it again. And Kentaro is on a similar path – never talking about what is bothering him. May, on the other hand, does get to try to work through some things with both Kentaro and Cate (Kiersey Clemmons is at her best when she’s allowed to show May’s empathy under her gruff exterior), but then, suddenly, the rug gets pulled out from the character and she’s back to being standoffish without any real indication as to why. When Shaw is the most put together character in your show, well, something is pretty wrong with how the rest of the lot are being written. Because there’s no forward momentum in their growth, nor building (or ever really breaking) of relationships. Everyone is just kind of there, until the story decides they need to move away to another arc. Motivations are shaky or not present at all. It just . . . feels empty.
And the kicker is, Monarch has a heck of a talented cast (Amber Midthunder shows up midseason in a mysterious role and Joe Tippet is given even less to do this time around, which is a total shame). Sawai and the Russells alone could easily anchor this series if they were given the quality of writing they deserve. And the concept: Rival companies trying to make money off of the potential Titan threats to the world? That’s a great concept. But everything here just feels so flat. It could and should be so much better.
Season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premieres on February 28 on AppleTV+. Nine of the ten episodes were provided for review.
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