“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” shows us plenty of monsters, but it’s the relationships between the characters that keep us coming back from episode to episode. Cate and Kentaro are uneasy but determined allies; they both know that they’re not responsible for their father’s actions. Eventually, their alliance even leads to reminiscing about their father, like his penchant for using a knife to sharpen his pencil and leaving shavings on everything.
Then there’s Lee Shaw, who in the ’50s was the losing corner of a love triangle with him, Keiko, and Bill. Lee still loves them both, and Keiko, Bill, and Lee all form a tight bond that seems to juxtapose what happened to Monarch years later when Keiko and Bill’s kid, Hiroshi (Cate and Kentaro’s father), became part of the organization. Seeing the three of them search for monsters is very different from seeing Cate, Kentaro, and May do so. Keiko, Bill, and Lee are pumped full of the spirit of discovery, whereas Cate, Kentaro, and May are mostly full of dread. The older Lee no longer has his youthful optimism either. In fact, by the time Cate, Kentaro, and May find him, he no longer agrees with the way Monarch does things. Still, he tells the trio that he cared for Keiko’s son like he was his own, so he’s willing to accompany them to find out what happened to him.
These relationships move each plotline along and create different dynamics that work for the story. Each one tells us something about the people involved while organically filling in information about Monarch and the Monsterverse. You never wonder what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, but the information is never spread so thick that it takes away from the characters’ personal stories.
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