Summary

• Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters is a new Apple TV+ series that expands the MonsterVerse franchise, exploring humanity's battle against ancient monsters possibly unleashed by the shady Monarch organization.
• The show ties closely with the existing Godzilla movies and deepens the lore of the MonsterVerse in ways that previous films haven't.
• The story focuses on the history of the Monarch organization and how it connects to the mysterious monsters, with secrets and earth-shattering events spanning multiple generations.

Legendary’s MonsterVerse franchise continues onto the small screen with the Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters. The destructive, prehistoric, Kaiju-sized Godzilla first appeared in Ishirō Honda's eponymous 1954 film and has gone on to become the most marketable name in creature features across the last six decades. Now, it seems, Gojira will get his own streaming series after Apple TV+ unveiled plans to bring Godzilla (and the MonsterVerse menagerie) to their own platform with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters offering an idea of how the show will tie into the greater cinematic universe.

Legendary’s MonsterVerse is an expansive, still-unfurling narrative that centers around humanity’s battle to survive in a world where the monsters and myths of old have resurfaced after several millennia. The current MonsterVerse canon began with the 2014 Godzilla reboot and has since been fleshed out by Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, and the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. What's been revealed of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters so far sets it up to be one of the most intriguing entries yet to the franchise, and it will deepen the lore of the MonsterVerse in ways none of Legendary's movies have been able to so far.

The Latest Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters News

The most recent news on the Apple TV+ Godzilla TV show arrived on October 14, 2023, when Apple finally released the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The full length trailer revealed much more than the previous teaser, including that Godzilla will be helping humanity as an ally in the show, working alongside Kurt and Wyatt Russell's Lee Shaw against Monarch and their unleashed titans.

The trailer establishes that in the world of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that Godzilla and his ilk are an "inescapable reality". For the central characters there'll be no shock moment where they discover monsters like Godzilla exist, and the story seems to be jumping in with the world already aware that humanity is far from the dominant species on Earth. It's also clear from the footage that the show will heavily tie into Legendary's existing Godzilla movies (rather than simply being a spinoff set in the same universe with minimal connections to the parent franchise, as some TV show tie-ins to movie properties have been).

Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Release Date

The Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters release date is November 17, 2023. The Godzilla TV show will premiere on Apple TV+ with a 10-episode first season and no further seasons confirmed at this point. The show will be the first MonsterVerse live-action story since Godzilla vs. Kong and will fill the gap before the sequel, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, planned for release in 2024.

Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Cast

The Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters cast includes many known names from across both the big and small screens. Kurt Russell s Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters along with his real-life son Wyatt Russell. Kurt Russell is a longstanding presence of both the big and small screen with a career going back to when he was a child actor. He rose to fame with roles in Escape From New York, The Thing, and Tombstone. Viewers might also know him as Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Kurt Russell will be playing army officer Lee Shaw, whose investigation into Monarch leads him down a rabbit hole spanning decades.

ing Kurt Russell in the cast of Apple's Godzilla TV show is son Wyatt Russell, also playing Lee Shaw. Wyatt Russell is a former hockey player who made the leap to acting in movies like 22 Jump Street and Everybody Wants Some!! Like his father, he ed the MCU is a standout role as John Walker aka US Agent which he will reprise in The Thunderbolts. Both of the Russell family will play the same character in Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters as Lee Shaw, with Kurt playing him later in life and Wyatt playing him in the 1950s.

The cast of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters also features Anna Sawai as Cate Randa, Kiersey Clemons as May, Ren Watabe as Kentaro, Mari Yamamoto as Keiko, Anders Holm as young Bill Randa, Joe Tippett as Tim, and Elisa Lasowski as Duvall. John Goodman will also be reprising his role as Bill Randa. Bill Randa was last seen in 2017's Kong: Skull Island, so his place in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is one of the best ways to showcase how it will tie in multiple movies in Legendary's MonsterVerse franchise.

Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Story

The Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters story may feature Godzilla, but it sounds as if it will really be focusing on the history of the mysterious Monarch organization which has been monitoring monsters in the world like Godzilla and Kong. The official plot synopsis for Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters is as follows:

Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch. Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell), taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows. The dramatic saga — spanning three generations — reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.

Little has been revealed about Monarch in the movies of the MonsterVerse thus far, but their history goes back to the events of Kong: Skull Island which was set in the 1970s. The show could detail the first founding of Monarch following the first discovery of monsters on Earth, which could very well be Godzilla. The mythology of Godzilla is that he was created from experimentation with atomic bombs which would make the 1950s a perfect era for him to emerge.

The tease that there will be plenty of secrets to be revealed in the Godzilla TV show hints that Monarch has been keeping secrets beyond the monsters that audiences have already been introduced to. It will be interesting to see how Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters impacts the overall MonsterVerse and, presumably, sets up Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Trailer

The full length trailer for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters arrived in October 2023, around a month after Apple's first teaser of the new Godzilla show. While only just over a minute long, the first teaser for Legacy of Monsters still revealed a great deal about the plot and set the stage for the overall tone. The first Monarch: Legacy of Monsters teaser gave most attention to its human characters, especially Kurt Russell's Lee Shaw and — most surprisingly — John Goodman, reprising his role of Bill Randa.

The clips seen in the first teaser had some shots of Godzilla and various Titans as would be expected, but the more human-based story elements were the main focus. It was when the first full trailer for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters arrived in October that viewers got their first look at the various Kaijus in Apple's Godzilla TV, including the King of Monsters himself. The full length trailer contained multiple shots of all manner of Titans, from what appears to be a giant spider chasing John Goodman's Bill Randa through to a colossal sea monster exploding through a sheet of ice.

There was also of course plenty of teases around the mystery of the Monarch organization, which will be central to the plot of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters when the release date for the Apple TV+ Godzilla TV show arrives in November.