Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The Monsterverse includes four movies (and counting), an animated series, and an upcoming live-action series. Though not initially intended as a cinematic universe, Legendary’s take on the classic monsters of Toho Co. is more than a remake, it’s a different world of its own with the Monarch Organization focused on the not-so-secret giant monster phenomena worldwide.

The newest series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters takes us across three generations of a family tied to the secret and ominous Monarch Organization. But before we tackle that, there are even more levels to the overarching Monsterverse story woven through history for us to unravel. We’re going to break down the entire Monsterverse timeline in chronological order to get you caught up on the entire story so far.

Kong: Skull Island – WWII Flashback

Kong: Skull Island opens in 1944 during World War II as an American and a Japanese pilot fight after emergency-parachuting onto an island in the South Pacific where they’re interrupted by a familiar gigantic ape. Neither man can do anything about it, seeing as they’re stranded on Skull Island, but this is the first canonical appearance of Kong, resident of Skull Island, though Kong and all the other monsters likely have a very long precedence on earth. And in the earth, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Godzilla (2014) – 1950s Flashback

In 1954, a deep-sea expedition awakened a creature named, you guessed it, Godzilla.

This is the first recorded time humans became aware of monsters, and their response was decidedly violent. That same year, Godzilla was lured to the Bikini Atoll in an attempt to kill him with a nuclear bomb. Sidenote: this lines up with the timing of Operation: Castle, a real-world series of nuclear bombing tests actually conducted by the US military at Bikini Atoll between March and April 1954. But in the Monsterverse, these bombings were a failure and were unable to kill Godzilla. As a response, Project Monarch was established to study Godzilla and any other monster-like organisms in secrecy.

Kong: Skull Island – Main Story

The next major action in the timeline takes us to Kong: Skull Island in 1973 in the South Pacific at the height of the Vietnam War and US military involvement in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

A group of both Monarch researchers and soldiers take an expedition to the ominous Skull Island to search for alleged primeval creatures. After some ill-advised explosive charges, the group is attacked by Kong, and split into two groups on the island. Unsurprisingly, the researchers want to learn and the soldiers want to kill, and these counte- operating missions cause trouble all along the way.

Ace tracker James Conrad and photojournalist Mason Weaver find the island’s indigenous people and the aged American WWII pilot from before. We learn he had made friends with the Japanese pilot he crash-landed with, but he was killed by a predatory “skull crawler” monster. Conrad and Weaver learn that Kong is the last of his kind and the only thing protecting them and the other island inhabitants from the deadly skull crawlers. The squad mobilizes to stop Lieutenant Colonel Packard from achieving his mission of killing Kong.

Packard nearly achieves his goal, but Kong crushes him and the biggest Skullcrawler, as the surviving humans come to see Kong in a new light. Both Conrad and Weaver are recruited by Monarch and get clued in on the existence of Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. It seems Monarch has done some good work in locating more of the mysterious monsters.

Netflix’s Skull Island – Main Story

Our next chronological move is to the sequel series to Kong: Skull Island, Netflix’s Skull Island.

In this anime-influenced series a group of cryptid ocean explorers get attacked by a kraken Titan and find themselves shipwrecked on Skull Island. The story revolves around two teenage boys, Mike and Charlie, who go exploring with their dads who were actually on the hunt for Skull Island and creatures that we know as Titans. They run into Annie, a feral teenager who’s survived for years in the area, her monster dog, named Dog, and her mother Irene, who is a straight-up menace.

They suffer hardships, betrayals, and showdowns with both humankind and monsters. The series is largely focused on the humans of the story attempting to get off Skull Island, but we do pick up various tidbits about the world at large, like that Skull Island has a connection to the hollow earth, that there are several kinds of deadly monsters on Skull Island, that Kong is very lonely, and that Kong has limits to how well he can protect the people of Skull Island. The series caps off with Kong defeating the Kraken and we walk away with the reinforced knowledge that Kong is not an evil monster, he definitely has a heart.

Godzilla 2014 – 1990s Flashback

While most of Godzilla the film takes place in the time it was made, 2014, it actually kicks off in 1999. Monarch scientists investigate the skeleton of a creature bearing resemblance to Godzilla in a collapsed mine in the Philippines, noting two large spore-like objects, one closed and one empty, with a trail leading off to the sea. They take the unopened spore-like object away and store it in a nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Soon later, a catastrophic nuclear meltdown in Janjira, Japan occurs, killing many. Plant supervisor Joe Brody sends his wife Sandra, a nuclear regulations consultant, and her team into the reactor in an attempt to mitigate damage, but they fail and are killed in an explosion and radiation leak. The surrounding area is absolutely destroyed and is quarantined off after everyone in Janjira can be evacuated.

Godzilla (2014) – Main Story

Naval Officer Ford Brody, son of Sandra and Joe Brody, enters the old nuclear quarantine zone in Janjira at the behest of his father. There they discover the area is not actually radioactive and is instead home to a testing facility where the Monarch scientists from the Philippines in 1999 are studying monster-related phenomena.

We also learn the nuclear meltdown in Japan was triggered by the emergence of “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms,” aka MUTOs, which is what they call the monsters at this point. We learn the MUTOS have some kind of communication going on between them and feed off of nuclear energy, which explains why bombing the hell out of Godzilla in 1954 didn’t work. A MUTO they saw earlier, Godzilla, and another newly emerged creature cause havoc in Honolulu and Las Vegas and Monarch devises a plan to lure out and kill all three monsters safely in the open ocean. This plan fails, with the MUTOs finding the bait early, so it all goes down in the extremely populated city of San Francisco. The strike team gets the nuclear weapon to sea, Godzilla defeats the other MUTOs and returns to the sea while humans wonder whether the so-called monster is actually a hero.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Godzilla: King of the Monsters follows Godzilla and the awakening of other MUTOs in the world. Except we’re not saying “MUTO” anymore, now they’re called “Titans” and they’re being released by eco-terrorists who argue they have to free all the giant monsters to heal the earth. After both King Ghidorah and Rodan get released, Monarch lures them together where they fight, Rodan loses, and then Godzilla shows up and bites off one of Ghidorah’s three heads, which doesn’t bother him much because he grows it back and then awakens all the Titans worldwide under his leadership.

Monarch researchers reveal King Ghidorah is a prehistoric alien with designs to terraform the planet. Meanwhile Mothra, who is seemingly unaffected by Ghidorah, helps point the way to Godzilla, who was badly hurt in the fight and won’t be able to help push back Ghidorah again. Remembering that Titans feed on nuclear energy, Monarch launches a warhead at Godzilla to charge him up somehow, so he can defend earth.

Following a beacon, all the Titans descend on Boston for a showdown and to destroy Fenway park. Monarch and Mothra team up on Godzilla’s side, with Mothra sacrificing herself to boost Godzilla to the win, capping off with the other Titans bowing to Godzilla in victory.

We learn in the post credits the Titans are helping to heal the planet from humankind’s pollution and destruction, another Mothra egg has been found, some Titans are flocking to Skull Island (where Kong currently is), and ancient depictions of Godzilla and Kong fighting are shown.

Godzilla vs. Kong

This next Monsterverse film follows up both Kong and Godzilla. Years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Kong is under surveillance on a now-sealed-off Skull Island and is visited by Jia, the last surviving indigenous person of Skull Island who has been adopted by a Kong expert, Ilene Andrews. We can deduce that in the past few decades all the other people who lived on Skull Island died, after all.

A big part of this movie is conspiracy theorists and a Hollow Earth theory, which is just a great and timely element for when this was released. The theory states that the center of the earth is in fact hollow and that’s where all the Titans come from. The theory also says the center of the earth is an energy source, and you know that always gets evil corporate characters’ motors running.

Eventually Ilene is convinced to let Kong lead a Hollow Earth expedition team to a center-of-the-earth entrypoint in Antarctica so they can dig down, but on the boat ride over Godzilla appears and attacks them. They eventually get Kong to the entrypoint and head down.

Meanwhile, mega corporation Apex has built a Mechagodzilla in Hong Kong that’s neurologically controlled through King Ghidorah’s severed head from the end of the last movie and Aprex wants to harness the energy from the center of the earth to power up the Mechagodzilla.

The expedition team makes it to the center of the earth where they discover a lush environment and a light source that appears to be a miniature sun. Just how a sun can exist inside the planet is never explained, and that’s probably for the best.

The humans find ancient evidence of a long-gone monarchal Kong society that warred with Godzilla’s kind and also find a massive glowing ax made of the dorsal plate of a Godzilla creature. This shows the titans, or at least Godzilla and Kong’s species, have inhabited Earth for much, much longer than anyone knew, but it’s still currently unknown just how far back their histories go. Back to the action, they find the energy source in the temple and there’s a fight over it. Then Godzilla, who was drawn to Mechaagodzilla in Hong Kong, makes a hole from there to the center of the earth with his breath and everyone who didn’t die in the center of the earth goes to Hong Kong, and then Godzilla defeats Kong in a fight.

Mechagodzilla becomes possessed with King Ghidorah’s consciousness by means of the severed head neural link, and as you’ll recall Ghidorah’s a jerk. Mecha-Godzilla-Ghidorah overwhelms Regular-Godzilla as the humans revive Kong and Jia convinces him to team up with Godzilla to fight it. They team up with the mega ax and destroy their enemy, and Kong returns to live in the center of the earth, where Monarch establishes an observation post.

And that’s the end of the timeline as we currently know it, though the addition of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will undoubtedly add a Titan-sized heap of lore to the mix. While part of the timeline of this show is set at some point after Godzilla’s 2014 battle in San Francisco, it will also explore Monarch’s history across three family generations, meaning it will likely be inserted all over the current timeline.

The show will follow the Randa family, which includes a repeat performance of John Goodman as longtime Monarch researcher, Bill Randa from Kong: Skull Island. The show will feature him in a younger lifestage played by Anders Holm, and Anna Sawai will be playing a younger family member, Cate Randa. A key part of this Monarch puzzle seems to be Army officer Lee Shaw, played in the modern timeline by Kurt Russell and played in the past era by Wyatt Russell. It’s still unclear where this show will go, but it seems likely some light will finally be shed on the mysterious Monarch organization and how humankind has reacted and continues to react to the emergence of monsters.

Following the planned January 2024 conclusion of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, there will be a new movie out in April, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. A few returning characters from Godzilla vs Kong will reappear, including Brian Tyree Henry as conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes and Kaylee Hottle as Jia, the last survivor of Skull Island’s indigenous people. They’ll be joining new lead characters played by Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall as Godzilla and Kong face off with a new threat hiding within the planet. According to the official synopsis, this undiscovered threat will challenge the existence of humans and monsters as it digs into the histories of the Titans, Skull Island, and how humankind is woven into it.

We’ll find out more after Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premieres November 17th on Apple TV+ and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire drops April 12, 2024.