Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Renewed for Season 2 — Plus Spinoffs!
Apple TV+ is supersizing its already titanic Monsterverse.
The streamer announced on Thursday that it has renewed Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for a second season; the news comes three months after the Season 1 finale dropped on Jan. 12.
What’s more, Apple TV+’s new deal with Legendary Entertainment includes multiple spinoff series based on the Monsterverse franchise.
Set in the same Monsterverse as movies such as Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Monarch in Season 1 has followed two timelines. In the “present” day (2015), we followed young Cate (a survivor of Godzilla’s San Francisco rampage, played by Shōgun standout Anna Sawai), Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and May (Kiersey Clemons) as they sought out Cate and half-brother Kentaro’s presumed-dead father Hiroshi, who had been involved with the mysterious Monarch agency. That journey led the trio to Colonel Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell), who back in the day used to hunt MUTOs/Titans with Hiroshi’s mom, Dr. Keiko Miura.
The other timeline skipped around the late 1940s/early 1950s, where a younger Lee (Wyatt “Son of Kurt” Russell), Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) and Bill Randa (Anders Holm) first founded Monarch as a well-funded scientific arm of a very curious U.S. Army. But as Monarch oversight got passed around to increasingly disenfranchised military leaders, Lee, Keiko and Bill saw their contributions and power diminish.
In the 2015 timeline, Monarch itself — populated by Tim (Joe Tippett), Duvall (Elisa Lasowski) and boss lady Natalia (Mirelly Taylor) — loomed as a threat, one that was either harassing Cate & Co. or appealing to the young’uns for help. (Showrunner Chris Black broke down the timey-wimey season finale for TVLine here.)
Black (Severance, Star Trek: Enterprise) and Matt Fraction (whose Hawkeye comics influenced the Disney+ series of the same name) developed Monarch and serve as showrunners. Matt Shakman (WandaVision) directed the first two episodes of Season 1 and executive-produced with Black, Fraction Joby Harold, Tory Tunnell, Andrew Colville and Jen Roskind.
“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has left an indelible imprint on the hearts, minds and imaginations of audiences around the world, led by the brilliance of Chris, Matt, Kurt, Wyatt and the incredibly gifted talented cast and creative team,” Morgan Wandell, head of international development for Apple TV+, said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited for viewers to not only have the chance to experience even more thrills in Season 2, but to embark on epic, new journeys in the franchise, as we expand Legendary’s Monsterverse.”
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