Is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters About to Go There? A Brief History of the Monsterverse’s Hollow Earth
The following contains spoilers from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 8, now streaming on Apple TV+.
With its antepenultimate Season 1 episode, Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters brushed up against a major piece of Monsterverse movie mythology, as in the Hollow Earth theory — and may have even sent a few heroes down to that topsy-turvy realm!
Episode 8 (of 10), titled “Birthright,” revealed to Cate that Colonel Lee Shaw, by dropping big-time explosives on rifts such as the one in Alaska, aims to “seal off” our world from the subterranean realm that Godzilla and friends call home.
“Theres a world down there, Cate,” Shaw attested, after he and Duvall bumped into Cate, May, Kentaro and Tim at the same Kazakhstan location where Keiko decades ago plummeted into a chasm filled with giant bugs. “I know, because I’ve been to it.”
Godzilla, Lee also posited, means humankind no harm per se; rather, the OG kaiju has been out to mediate things between us and the Titans, by policing the rifts/portals that connects our and their worlds.
Meanwhile in the past timeline, Bill, Keiko and Lee circa 1955 were charged with producing for the U.S. government a detailed, mapped-out report on possible Titan activity/threats — or else lose all funding. Along the way, a random ant crawling through a hole in said map planted inside Bill’s bean the notion that the Titans are traveling around the world, unseen, via a rabbit-like network of underground tunnels. Later, Lee met up with Colonel Puckett to hand over a thick folder detailing the Monarch team’s comprehensive findings — including the bombshell that Godzilla is alive, and wasn’t destroyed years ago off Bikini Atoll.
Back in 2015, Lee launched a countdown timer for a series of explosive charges meant to seal off the rift/portal that claimed Keiko in 1959. But the quaking earth signaling a Titan’s imminent emergence caused a panic, during with May toppled down into the rift. A toothy Titan then briefly popped up, causing Cate to nearly plummet as well. Lee grabbed Cate’s hand, but soon enough, the two of them also fell into the chasm, as Kentaro looked on in horror.
WHAT IS THE ‘HOLLOW EARTH’ REALM?
The Monsterverse’s take on the Hollow Earth theory was first touched on in the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island, though at the time — the film is set in 1973 — it was said to be the brainchild of Yale-schooled geologist Dr. Houston Brooks (played by Corey Hawkins). But Bill Randa (played by John Goodman) supported the theory, and aimed to prove it once and for all by planting explosives around Skull Island.
It was 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, though, that really went “all in” on Hollow Earth. Set in the year 2024, that film saw Apex Cybernetics CEO Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) enlist former Monarch scientist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) to use specialized HEAVs (Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles) to brave the subterranean realm’s reverse-gravitational effects and search it for a massive power source.
Godzilla vs. Kong made much ado about this being humankind’s first-ever journey to Hollow Earth, though the events of Monarch‘s latest episode suggest that someone did not quite have all the facts.
Do you think Monarch: Legacy of Monsters‘ Lee Shaw just took an unplanned return trip to Hollow Earth, alongside first-time visitors Cate and May? If so, what might the magnificent and improbable realm look like on a TV — even a famously XL Apple TV+ — budget? Episode 9, titled “Axis Mundi,” drops this coming Friday.
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