Last week's episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters gave us a peek into the "Hollow Earth" theory coming to pass. First theorized in the 1950s by Keiko and William Randa, our main players Cate, May, and Kentaro learned firsthand how true it is. While pursuing Shaw to Kazakhstan, they learn he and his team are using their stolen Monarch gear to seal the entryways from the Hollow Earth into our realm. They succeeded in closing the portal in Kazakhstan, but not before Cate, May, and Shaw himself fell into the Hollow Earth and were sealed inside, putting them in the realm of monsters.
Godzilla vs. Kong showed us our first taste of the Hollow Earth, but that movie is set about fifteen years later, and Monarch had already explored the area somewhat. What happens in 2015 when the operatives dive into truly uncharted territory (despite Shaw casually dropping that he's already been inside)? Well, this week, we have our answers!
The Present:
The present storyline opens up with Kentaro in a Tokyo hospital where Deputy Director Verdugo and Tim inform him that Shaw collapsed the portal to the Hollow Earth. Verdugo and Tim are convinced that the explosion has killed Shaw, Cate, and May. Kentaro initially refuses to believe that they all died until Verdugo insists that he lives and reunites him with his mother…
Meanwhile, Shaw wakes up in the Hollow Earth (taking the form of a forest ripped straight out of Annihilation) and starts yelling for Cate and May. Finding May, he insists they move through the forest fast due to the electrified floor, which he explains is caused by a rift closing and leaving electrical fields behind. Shaken, May starts demanding answers, and Shaw explains he knows so much about the Hollow Earth because he's been down there before. Realizing there's no other chance for safety, she joins him in searching for Cate.
Kentaro returns to his home in Tokyo, where he vents to his mother about his guilt for what happened to Cate. At the beginning of the series, they didn't even want to acknowledge the existence of one another, but their adventures together helped them form a strong sibling bond. Realizing he now sees her as his sister, his mother encourages him to follow his instinct and have hope of finding out what happened to Cate. Kentaro heads to his father's Tokyo office, where he has a face-to-face confrontation with him about the events that have transpired. He informs him of Cate's death and blasts him for not being a good father despite whatever his intentions were. Hiroshi breaks down and cries.
Back in the Hollow Earth, Cate finally wakes up but finds herself targeted by an unknown creature. All seems lost when an arrow suddenly hits the creature's eye, and the shooter is none other than her grandmother Keiko (who hasn't aged a day since she fell in all those years ago).
The Past:
The episode opens in 1962 with Billy Randa and Lt. Shaw in a trailer on a Monarch test site with a young Hiroshi. They're preparing to leave on an expedition, and "Uncle" Shaw comforts the young boy by promising they'll return and gifting him his pocket knife. Since the death of Keiko on the Kazakhstan expedition, Billy has adopted Hiroshi and is raising him as his own child. As they navigate the site, we quickly learn that it's a portal into the Hollow Earth, where the government sends a group of explorers inside, including Shaw. Monarch's research has also discovered that the portals only open when a Titan travels through them and are inaccessible otherwise.
Shaw and his squad make it inside, but the expedition soon turns into a catastrophe as it makes the site on our end unstable, and the portal begins to collapse. When the chaos clears, the portal is gone, and Billy is left to deliver the news to Hiroshi that Uncle Shaw didn't make it.
General Puckett later informs Billy that the Department of Defense is pulling funding from Monarch due to the disastrous expedition. Billy insists that Shaw and the rest of the crew must be alive, but Puckett implores him not to try searching for him and to be there for Hiroshi.
Sometime later, Shaw wakes up in a quarantine tent back on Earth, where he's questioned about his name, status, and mission. Refusing to answer most questions and failing to cooperate, he takes a nurse hostage and demands to see Bill Randa. While demanding answers, he encounters an adult, Hiroshi, who informs him that they're inside a Monarch medical facility in 1982. Shaw was inside the Hollow Earth for twenty years and didn't age a single day, which explains why he looks so good despite being nearly 100 years old.
Hiroshi visits Shaw in his holding room and starts asking him about what happened inside the Hollow Earth and how he survived. Shaw explains that he and his crew began recon on their landing site until they encountered numerous Titans. During this encounter, a portal opens up and transports him back to Earth in a different time and place than he was before. Keiko and Billy's theory involving portals and teleportation was correct. Hiroshi refuses to buy into the theory and explore the Hollow Earth more, claiming that it drove his parents to madness and that some ways of nature should be left undisturbed. Monarch decides to put Shaw into a monitored group home where he stays until 2015, when Cate and Kentaro break him out.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters went straight up sci-fi this week, presenting the Hollow Earth as a place where time and space act differently from our own realm. We got answers about Shaw's true age and how Monarch held him captive, and we learned the true fate of Keiko. With so many revelations, the stage is set for what's sure to be a gigantic finale. What threat is Monarch monitoring? How will our protagonists escape the Hollow Earth? What are Hiroshi's true intentions? How does Godzilla play into all of this? Looks like we'll find out next week once and for all.
Recommended Film of the Week: Annihilation (2018)
This week's recommended viewing isn't a Kaiju film. That's because this week's episode of Monarch reminded me a lot of Annihilation with its use of alien-like forests and doomed expeditions. Annihilation follows scientist Lena (Natalie Portman) as she joins an all-woman expedition into "the shimmer," a terraformed area of land that's constantly shifting and changing due to the presence of an alien comet. Without going into spoilers, much like the Hollow Earth in Monarch, time and space operate differently in the shimmer than what we're used to. A terrifying sci-fi film that's also a proper exploration of grief and the human nature/desire to be self-destructive, Annihilation is easily one of the best films I've seen in recent memory and is wildly underrated. Go watch it when you're done reading this.
