In Review: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (S1 – EP3) Secrets and Lies

Synopsis: In Secrets and Lies, Shaw leads the team on a dangerous mission to Alaska in search of Hiroshi. Keiko, Lee, and Billy present their findings to General Puckett.

The Story

Picking the story up from where last week left off. Cate, Kentaro, and May have met up with retired General Lee Shaw and have broken out of the Monarch facility where he was under house arrest. Shaw helps the group by tracking down Hiroshi’s last known coordinates, which lead them all to Alaska.

Meanwhile, back in 1955, the younger version of Lee Shaw takes Dr. Keiko Miura and Bill Randa’s discovery of the Godzilla monster to General Pucket, who immediately sets about attempting to destroy the monster with a nuclear bomb. After it seems that the monster has been destroyed. Shaw manages to get Dr. Miura and Rand a blank cheque worth of funding from the US military, which secures the future of Monarch, which was founded with a view to discovering and studying these monsters. Not wanting a repeat of another monster being hurt or killed by Pucket. Keilko and Bill make a pact with Shaw to keep any future discoveries a secret and only tell the general what he needs to know. 

The Acting

Kurt Russell is fantastic as the older version of Lee Shaw and the chemistry between him and the younger actors on the show feels very truthful and honest. We get a rather fun scene where the older Shaw, who is probably about 90 years old does some seat-of-the-pants flying in order to land the plane in Alaska despite some serious magnetic interference. The scene of Shaw and Cate (Anna Sawai) laughing out of sheer relief at surviving is brilliant fun.

We also get a strong performance from Wyatt Russell as the younger version of Shaw in the scenes set in the 1950s.

Overall

As far as this show’s pacing goes. Things pick up a little this week as we learn more about the mythology of Monarch and how and why it was set up. As well as how it ties back to Cate and Kentaro. I quite enjoyed the scenes where Lee tries to fill in some of the blanks about Hiroshi for Cate and Kentaro, who are obviously very much out of their depth.

We get some great CG work in this episode as we see Godzilla seemingly get destroyed by an A-bomb. But we also get a fun monster at the close of the story, which seems to spit out pure liquid nitrogen.