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DC might have a bigger and better coterie of memorable simian characters, but Marvel has one-upped them by bringing their most notorious ape anti-hero to lead an animated series, with Hit-Monkey back in 2021, arguably their best animation work in recent years as well. Don’t get us wrong, we loved X-Men’97, but it lacked the raw style and unadulterated fun that a gun-katana-wielding macaque assassin dressed to the nines can bring to the screen. With a deadly swagger and a kill streak long enough to impress even Baba Yaga and Agent 47, Hulu’s Hit-Monkey is returning with a second season later this week. To get up to speed with the story so far, let us dive into the monkey business.

Spoilers Ahead

The Origin of Hit-Monkey

The story begins with wisecracking, irritably talkative hitman Bryce Fowler, who arrives in Japan to take down a young, promising presidential candidate, Ken Takahara,...

Admixing professional and personal life might result in disastrous consequences, and in the sixth episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, it is most apparent from the mistakes of the titular organization’s former chief, Lieutenant Lee Shaw. After steering clear of the past timeline for two consecutive episodes, “Monarch” turns back the clock to pinpoint the one event that changed the course of the human-titan correlation.

In the previous episode, after getting released from Monarch’s Alaska outpost, Cate suggests May and Kentaro head to her home, San Francisco, which was nearly destroyed during the battle between Godzilla and M.U.T.O., to possibly learn about Hiroshi’s whereabouts. After revisiting her traumatic past by venturing inside the dilapidated area of the city, Cate learns about her father’s presumed waypoint towards Africa with the help of May and Kentaro and reconciles with her mother, Caroline. May, on the other hand,...

Apple TV+ on Friday unleashed Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a live-action drama set in the same big-screen Monsterverse that Godzilla, Kong et al call home. After sampling the first of two episodes now streaming, will you keep watching?

Monarch: LoM (let’s make that shorthand happen, people!) opened with a “flashback” to Skull Island circa 1973, where we saw John Goodman’s Bill Randa film a message to an unnamed “buddy,” cryptically saying, “You may never forgive me for what I took from you,” but in the end, “you will realize it was all worth it.” Later, after being chased through...

In the studio-wide franchise business, episodic live-action TV series have taken center stage, replacing movies, and reasonably so, as not only does it provide the makers with more area to explore in the narrative and greater scope for characterization through a longer runtime, but it has also become a fan favorite medium in no time. Taking a cue from that, Legendary’s Monsterverse is the latest franchise to expand their arena through series, and the first step in that direction is Apple TV+’s latest release Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Revolving around Godzilla and other primordial behemoths known as Titans, their impact on the world populated by humans, and the role of secretive Titans tracking titular organizations in all this, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters spans generations worth of storytelling to uncover secrets about the world unknown. Monsterverse as a franchise was initiated with Gareth Edward’s much-acclaimed Godzilla (2014), which left its mark through a grounded,...

Anna Sawai in ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ episode 1 (Photo Credit: Apple TV+)

Apple TV+’s incredibly entertaining Monarch: Legacy of Monsters takes a deep dive into Legendary’s Monsterverse and reveals the roots of the mysterious Monarch organization. Told over multiple timelines, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season one serves up ample helpings of the “monster” portion of Monsterverse while also doing a considerably better job of incorporating the human drama (with a sprinkling of humor) than the feature films have managed to pull off.

Episode one, streaming on November 17, 2023, opens with a flashback to Skull Island 1973. John Goodman’s Bill Randa from 2017’s Kong: Skull Island apologizes to the camera and reveals he’s leaving a legacy so that people will realize it’s all worth it.

Bill drops his camera as he flees a massive Mother Longlegs to the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. He removes a...

Godzilla may appear in the background of all the posters for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, but there’s very much a reason that his name doesn’t appear in the title. Rather than featuring wall-to-wall creature action, the Apple TV+ series—pointedly named for the kaiju-tracking organization that appears throughout the MonsterVerse films—mainly tells what is very much a human story. Focusing on people who must live in a world that now knows giant monsters lurk in its darkest corners, Monarch is a strong reminder of the human element that so many of the MonsterVerse films sorely lack.

Monarch’s story unfolds across two main timelines: one set in the 1950s that explores the founding of Monarch, and the other in 2015, where the world is still reeling from the first appearance of Godzilla in San Francisco, which has been termed “G-day.” The 2015 timeline opens on Cate (Anna Sawai), a schoolteacher and G-day survivor,...

As suggested by its name, Legendary’s Monsterverse has, historically, been first and foremost about the monsters. Sure, the films have always had human casts to fight the creatures or flee from them or deliver reams of exposition about them. But Godzilla is the point of Godzilla, not Bryan Cranston or Aaron Taylor-Johnson; the Godzilla vs. Kong battle is the centerpiece of Godzilla vs. Kong, not whatever Millie Bobby Brown or Alexander Skarsgård’s characters were trying to accomplish.

What makes for a delicious two-hour spectacle on a 70-foot IMAX screen doesn’t necessarily make for an engaging 10-episode drama on a 40-inch TV, though, and therein lies the challenge of Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The bad news for monster nerds is that the Titans (Godzilla and Kong, among others) are less the star of the show this time around. The good news is that perhaps for...