Please aware of spoilers!

Characters:

My favorite character is Officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt & Wyatt Russell) in both timelines. His character is the one that attracts me to the most to this show. I also really like Dr. Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto). She and her husband Bill Randa (Anders Holm, John Goodman) are the ones who discover the possibility of these Titans. Keiko is stopping for nothing, a tough woman, who seems she could also have fallen in love with Shaw, but ultimately she does marry Bill Randa. The brother and sister are Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe) and Cate Randa (Anna Sawai). They come from different families, Keiko’s and Bill Randa’s son Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira), was keeping busy with two women. In the present day we mainly see the story unfold by Cate’s actions, she thinks her father is dead, thinks she needs to arrange things but learns she has a brother and also learns their father is still alive. May Olowe-Hewitt (Kiersey Clemons) also lives in Japan, we later learn this is not really by choice. She did have something with the brother, Kentana, but apparently he f*cked that up. May is along for the ride and at one point even gives up the whereabouts of them so Monarch can catch up with them so she can go home. Tim (Joe Tippett) works for Monarch, who is very interested in these creatures and acts with the original, noble intent of the Monarch’s founders. He is also convinced that Cate and Kentaro should play a part in this. Michelle Duvall (Elisa Lasowski) is also an operative of Monarch, at first she is partnered with Tim, later she joins teams with (old) Shaw. Natalia Verdugo (Mirelly Taylor) is Tim and Michelle’s boss. Puckett (Christopher Heyerdahl) is Young Shaw’s commander in the early years when Monarch has been set up.

Season One:

Monarch: The Legacy of Monsters is mainly set in two timelines but other timelines are also interwoven. In the ‘present day’ it is 2015, but at least half of it is set in the 1950’s. It follows a brother and sister who uncover their father secret ties to an organization called Monarch, the monster-hunting agency from the Monster Verse films, bridging events between movies by exploring Monarch's origins in the 1950s and its continued legacy in the present day, featuring characters like Army officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt & Wyatt Russell) amidst giant monsters (Titans). Our world connects with the world of these creatures, there is an ‘in-between’ world that Keiko, who was there for a long time, or just a while, depends from which side you see it, calls this Axis Mundi. In the 1950’s Keiko is presumed dead when she was pulled down by thousands of an insectoid called endoswarmers. Keiko, instead of dying, gets to this ‘in between place’ she calls Axis Mundi. She thinks she is there for 57 days, when Shaw and the others arrive there and find her, 56 years had passed. Lee Shaw from the present day, looks very young for his age because he is 90+!

When he went on a mission to find Keiko, in 1962, he too briefly gets into Axis Mundi, he doesn’t find Keiko but a monster warzone, he gets back quickly but loses 20 years! He returns in 1982. Shaw begins to have more radical ideas about these creatures, about Monarch, so Monarch puts him in a facility, which looks like a retirement home. He tried to escape various times, but he always got caught, but when Kentaro, Cate and May come looking for him, he gets to escape, to go find their father and the creatures. Shaw looks at these creatures differently, he believes Godzilla has a mind, is sort of (or perhaps completely) sentient. Shaw wants to severe the passage way to either world so that humans and creatures can only remain in their own world.

The season finale is quite epic, when Shaw finds Keiko after, for him, 56 years had passed, he has a way to bring them all back, but because of massive fight between Godzilla and a dragon-like creature, Shaw misses the trip back home, he stays behind, making sure, Keiko and the girls Cate and May get to go home. There, Keiko is reunited with her son Hiroshi and her grandson Kentaro. Tim is vital in getting them out of there because he quit Monarch because he no longer felt his ideals were the same as Monarch’s.

Sidenote:

Just a little thing that bothers me, perhaps I get named things because I say this, but why oh why does every lead character has to be gay in nowadays TV shows? I mean, Cate is gay and it is obvious that May is in love with her, a girl who before had a relationship with Cate’s brother! Check out shows like latest Doctor Who, The Last of us, Pluribus for instance. Look, I have nothing against gay people, not in the slightest, but it seems it’s been purposely shoved in our faces last few years. Hell, I hear/read that in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy almost everybody is, or at least seems gay. What stands out to me, is that it often is done in genre shows for some reason.

Last Word:

So, this is it, as I said, I really enjoyed the first season, saw a few season two trailers in the past few weeks and they really look interesting and exciting, looking forward to how the story further unfolds. I really don’t mind the way the story is told, not just action, not seeing these Titans every episode, I like that there is a story that leads to these creatures. Hopefully in the near future this will get a Blu-ray release, but truthfully, I don’t count on that. Last thing, on Rotten Tomatoes, on the day of this blog release, Monarch is appreciated by critics (82%) and audiences (75%).

I've added the word document with the episode ratings with descriptions and comments for the ones who are interested in this. Just be aware, it is a draft document, sometimes also can be confusing because of grammar errors and some sloppiness.