Looking for a three-word summary of the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 finale? You can’t go wrong with “Watch the skies.” The closing moments of “Where We Belong” teases the arrival of a Titan who will be central to the yet-to-be-announced third season of Apple TV‘s branch of Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse franchise: that winged kaiju Rodan.
Originally introduced in a self-titled 1956 creature feature, the super-sized pteranodon first tussled with Godzilla eight years later in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, and the duo have been fast frenemies ever since. Rodan officially arrived in Legendary’s Godzilla series — which is separate from the movies overseen by Japan’s famed Toho Studios, the makers of the upcoming Godzilla Minus Zero — in 2019’s King of the Monsters, and is now making his American television debut.
“We are excited about the possibilities of Rodan,” Monarch executive producer Tory Tunnell tells Gold Derby. “And we don’t oversell his story in the finale; we just give you the mystery. That gives us the opportunity in the writers’ room to really build something that’s going to be magnificent.”
Rodan’s current residence is on a volcanic mountaintop in the jungles of Southeast Asia. That’s where our hardy hero Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) has ventured after parting ways with his longtime friend and one-time love Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) and her granddaughter, Cate (Shōgun Emmy winner Anna Sawai). Even as his guides abandon him out of fear of Rodan’s might, Lee presses forward and finally spies the large winged lizard of prey. “I’ll see you soon,” he vows.
Of course, it remains to be seen how soon is “soon.” Neither Apple nor Legendary has tipped its hand about the likelihood of a Season 3 renewal, but Tunnell promises that the storyline the writers have in mind will be keeping in the Godzilla spirit — with an added dash of another larger-than-life hero. “There’s a little bit of a flavor of Indiana Jones in Shaw going off on his mission,” she teases. “There’s something really delicious about that.”
Tunnell credits Monarch‘s visual effects supervisor Sean Konrad with putting the Monsterverse stamp on the show’s version of Rodan. “He and his team really make the characters come alive” she raves. “The detail is so amazing. We don’t really see the final effects until around the time that audiences are seeing it. It’s always fun for us to be able to look at them and be like, ‘You can pet all of Kong’s hairs!'”
Speaking of Kong, that furry king returns in a big, bad way during the Season 2 finale after sitting out much of the season. But Godzilla notably doesn’t put in an appearance, which Tunnell says was intentional. “We had our great Godzilla moment earlier in the season,” she notes, referring to the the creatures appearance in the eighth episode. “We wanted to tease Rodan, and also honor each of our Titans and give them their own weight.”
Besides introducing Rodan, “Where We Belong” lays another key piece of story track for Season 3. Kentaro (Ren Watabe) — Keiko’s son and Cate’s half-brother — has officially gone to the dark side following his father Hiroshi’s shocking midseason death. Splitting with his family, the angry young man has allied himself with Isabel Simmons (Amber Midthunder), who has convinced him there’s a way of getting his dad back courtesy of Axis Mundi, the purgatory-like realm that stands between our Earth and Hollow Earth where time collapses on itself. That’s how Keiko returned to the 21st century still looking as youthful as she did when she vanished into Axis Mundy in 1959.
In fact, Lee is on the trail of Kentaro and Isabel when he arrives in Southeast Asia for his Rodan-finding mission, which means their paths will almost certainly cross in Season 3. “Bringing his father back is definitely something that Isabel has dangled in front of him to engage him emotionally,” observes Tunnell. “We’ll have to find out together if it’s something that comes to fruition.”
Just in case Monarch doesn’t return, though, the creative team made sure to give Russell a parting gift — the chance to share the screen with his son, Wyatt Russell, who plays Shaw in the show’s ’50s-era storyline. While the pair acted opposite each other in Season 2’s seventh episode, it was through a Frequency-style narrative device where they communicated exclusively via walkie-talkie. But “Where We Belong” actually gives father and son the ability to interact through a rift in space-time. In an emotional moment, the two versions of Shaw take stock of each other, exchanging meaningful glances instead of words.
“We were winging that,” the younger Russell says about how he played that scene with his dad. “It felt unplanned to me at least! It was a little like a fever dream.”
“They’re still the same guy,” the elder Russell adds. “It’s like you’re looking at yourself in the mirror only 60 years older! Looking at Wyatt, I kept thinking, ‘I was 60 years younger, then.”
Tunnell says that moment had been literally years in the making — but only three years, not 60. “From the first day we meet them, one of their wish list items was, ‘It would be so great to be in the same frame together,'” she remembers with a laugh. “Thinking about how to crack that nut was always in the back of our minds. And we had to constantly refine how much was too much and how much was too title in the exchange between them. Is it a look? Is it a conversation? We’re lucky we had this quality of actors to pull it off.”
Monarch‘s first season was overlooked by Emmy voters, but Apple must be hoping that the addition of Kong and Rodan will propel the sophomore year into select races — particularly visual effects. But Tunnell says that she and her collaborators “haven’t really thought about awards” as Season 2 unfolded. “We’re just so proud of what we do,” she says. “Everyone and every department on our show has such an incredible depth of talent, and they deserve every award that’s out there. But we also didn’t make the show to stand at a podium — we made it to entertain people with some of the greatest characters of all time.”
Rodan’s ears must be burning with that kind of praise.
