We are coming up to the finale of the show and for this week's episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, I feel like we are just now getting into the nitty-gritty of what is really going on. We begin learning why Monarch is so eager to contain Shaw and why the Randa family has a disdain for the organization despite Monarch being a part of their family legacy.
Story A: While Cate, May, and Shaw find themselves inside the Hollow Earth, Kentaro confronts his father, Hiroshi, about his disappearance.
Story B: After a mission to the Hollow Earth was thought to be a failure, Lee arrives back to the surface 20 years later learning about Bill's fate and seeing Hiroshi all grown up.
In the last episode, Cate confronts Shaw in an abandoned facility or factory where he and Bill lost Keiko. We got to understand more about why he wants to seal up these portals to the Hollow Earth and we last saw them falling into one of these portals while the building was falling apart. In this episode, we don't get a whole lot of Shaw, May, and Cate. We see what happened to them, but this episode focused more on Kentaro believing Cate and May have died and confronting his father about it as well as revealing new details on the effects of being inside the Hollow Earth or Hollow Earth adjacent, I should say.
This episode was a better episode because a lot of the episode took place in the past. Those characters in Story B, in my opinion, are the better characters over the characters in Story A. Honestly, I think Lee Shaw is the best character in this show by far. He has lost a lot more than any character in this show has. He had lost the girl he was infatuated with (Keiko Muira), he lost his best friend (Bill Randa), he lost 20 years of his life because of the effects in the Hollow Earth, he was locked away in a retiring home because everyone thought he was a crackpot. Even Bill's adopted son, Hiroshi, thought he was crazy despite the fact that Shaw reappeared not having aged a single day. He literally had nobody left until Cate, Kentaro, and May came into his life and this was a sad revelation for this character.
The other half of this episode focused on Kentaro, who believes Cate and May had died at the abandoned facility. He is really torn up by it and feels as though there is really nothing he can do about it. He is taken home by his mother from the hospital after recovering and he feels there is nothing else he can do. He doesn't even know how to tell his mother that his father is still alive after everything that has happened. When he runs into his father in his office, Kentaro scolds his father for not only abandoning his family, but if he hadn't ran off the way he did then Cate would still be alive and Cate would never had to have come to Japan in the first place. Kentaro and his mother would never have to have learned about his second family if only Hiroshi was around more often. I feel for Kentaro, but I wish he was more developed for me to care more about him. The whole season, he has mainly a third wheel and whenever he does say something he just complains about his father and not wanting to be wherever Cate and May are even though nobody twisted his arm to stay anyways. He was simply around for the ride. If he had been developed more in the show, then this episode of Kentaro would have more impact.
However, we did learn that Hiroshi did not believe in the idea of monsters and the Hollow Earth at the beginning. When Shaw returned, Hiroshi was all grown up and when Shaw explained to Hiroshi what happened to him Hiroshi thought Shaw was just as crazy as Bill and wanted nothing to do with him afterwards. I guess after G-Day he became just like Bill and Shaw becoming the same crazy person chasing monsters.
Cate and May did not appear all that much this episode. May was seen at the beginning of the episode waking up to Shaw saving her from the electric surges that was erupting from the ground and Cate appeared at the end of the episode being chased by a giant hog monster called the Brambleboar. They didn't add anything to the episode other than May and Shaw went out looking for Cate and Cate coming across her grandmother, Keiko Miura. The Brambleboar had a really cool design, but it was only around for Keiko to save Cate from. As to how Keiko is still alive, this is where logic gets really confusing because it has to do with how time works in the Hollow Earth.
In the episode, we learn that time in the Hollow Earth is vastly different from how time works on the surface. For the amount of time Shaw was in the Hollow Earth (which was apparently an hour), he arrived back to Earth 20 years later. For the amount of time Dr. Miura has been in the Hollow Earth was 57 days, which equates to 56 years on Earth. There are fan theories as to how this could be possible, but none of them are official, as of yet. So the real reason for how any logic for the time skip can be summed up with "Hollow Earth magic," for now. Yet, that is not all we learn about the Hollow Earth.
When it came to how the portal's mechanism works, it sounds like the Monsterverse is taking another page from Pacific Rim and saying that only a monster can enter in and out of these portals. I really don't understand why a Titan is needed to enter when Godzilla vs Kong explained that humans could have originated from the Hollow Earth. If the human race originated in the Hollow Earth, then how did the ancient humans get to the surface from the Hollow Earth if a Titan is needed to enter one of these portals? Did they get assistance from Kong's ancestors or Godzilla's ancestors to cross over? It is all just confusing to me and I don't think the show did as good of a job explaining what is exactly going on with the Hollow Earth.
Overall, this was a pretty good episode for the most part. I really liked that this episode focused on Story B more than Story A. Lee Shaw has become my favorite character through out this entire show. Kentaro's confrontation with his father could have been better if Kentaro played a more active role in this show. I am ready to see how the finale will play out. I hope the final episode ends just as strongly as the first three episodes.
What were your thoughts on the ninth episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters? Was this one of your favorite episodes? What did you like or dislike about the episode? Leave a comment in the comments section of your thoughts on this episode of Monarch. Make sure you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Minds, MeWe, Gab, and TRUTH Social to stay up to date for more news, reviews, and discussions.