‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap – Things Are Getting Spooky

Monsters are supposed to be scary, which is something that, in large part, hasn’t really been considered by the MonsterVerse. Giant and awesome? Sure. But properly scary? Not quite. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters hasn’t taken this horror-adjacent route either, granted, but it’s beginning to characterise Season 2 in a way that I wasn’t expecting, especially in the flashback sequences. Episode 2,”Resonance”, has a couple of legitimate stretches of fun folk-horror suspense that work quite well alongside the more traditional ticking-clock “monster on the loose” fare.

This is also a neat way of dividing the hour. Sure, it’s split into the past and present, as usual, but there are big tonal lurches between each timeline, enough that it’s almost like watching two different shows at the same time. You’d think that’d be discordant, but both halves remain complementary, thanks to the semi-shared cast and the fact that the past keeps informing the present. Indeed, “Resonance” opens with Shaw, newly rescued from the Axis Mundi, asking Keiko outright if she remembers the Titan X from their time in Santa Soledad, making the connections very explicit.

Even in the present day, there’s a note of creature-feature styling to the chitinous little water bug skulking around the ship; it’s like a maritime Alien in some respects, enough that a part of me wishes that Monarch leaned into this angle a bit more. I suppose it can’t go totally off-piste, but it’s a nice idea, and it’s helping to give this season a bit of novelty to differentiate it from the first (and indeed the feature films).

We might as well start with the flashbacks, since I think they’re probably the most compelling half of the episode. There’s a bit of a division in the core trio, since Bill wants to follow the map he found in the cave that he believes shows the Titan X’s migratory route, but Keiko wants to remain behind in the village to do some more objective science work. Shaw is a little undecided, leaning more towards Bill’s plan since the locals have made it pretty clear already that they’re not welcome, but the divide and conquer approach seems most viable, with Bill leaving to follow the map while Shaw and Keiko remain behind.

Alarm bells should have begun ringing the instant that Lucia and a few of the other villagers seemed more accommodating. Dismissing the local customs as mere “superstition” – the villagers believe that the fish won’t come to the island if there are outsiders there, which is later revealed to have a double meaning – is a red flag. But Shaw and Keiko both fall for it and decide to attend an evening festival to soak in the local culture, which reveals itself to be a slightly hallucinatory ritual in which one of the little critters is opened up to attract Titan X.

This is the best scene of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2, Episode 2. It has the creepiest production and raises the most interesting questions, such as what triggered Keiko’s hallucinatory blackout, the fact that she and Shaw share a kiss, and the big matter of what exactly this little village’s relationship with Titan X really is.

In the present day, things are less eerie but still solidly effective. Following Verdugo’s death, Tim is now in charge of Outpost 18 but isn’t well-suited to the task, so he keeps deferring to Shaw. He wants to keep pursuing Titan X, which is rocketing through the ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and find a way to divert it from the civilian sea traffic it’s going to collide with. The best way to do this is by modifying the onboard drone’s sonar to emit an infrasonic signal, since Keiko reveals that the Titan X responds to sound, albeit at a frequency outside the range of human hearing (if you were wondering why this episode is titled “Resonance”, wonder no longer.)

While this is going on, Cate is juggling a lot of guilt about having partially facilitated Titan X’s arrival, leading to some nice bonding between her and Hiroshi. To be fair, I think Cate is generally pitched a bit too young in terms of her demeanour (Anna Sawai is 33), but the character drama is still solid and relatable enough to buy into. More enjoyable is Cate and Kentaro teaming up to smoke one of the baby Titans that sneaked aboard, but its presence turns out to be a bigger problem, since it emits its own signal that sends Titan X veering away from the Strait of Malacca and straight towards Outpost 18.

This crisis is averted by releasing the mini-Titan into the water, buying some time, but that’s a short-term solution to a pretty big, scaly problem. Its true motivations are still mysterious, as are its provenance, both of which should be revealed as the season continues to progress across both timelines. I, for one, am looking forward to finding out more.