In Review: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (S2 – EP3) Secrets

Synopsis: In ‘Secrets’, Shaw, Keiko, Hiroshi, and Kentaro go rogue in an attempt to find Titan X. Cate struggles with feelings of guilt. A buried secret is exposed.

The Story

Picking up from where we left things last week, Keiko and Lee just about manage to escape the sea monster, which has only surfaced to retrieve its young. As the creature submerges and leaves, Keiko manages to capture a few photos of it for their records.

As they head out of the village, the locals give chase, wanting to get hold of the film so that their connection to the sea serpent remains a secret. While running, Lee and Keiko remove the film from the camera and ditch the camera itself in the hope that it buys them some time. The ploy works, and the villagers abandon the chase, believing they have recovered the film.

In order to get dry and rest up, Lee and Keiko hide out in a shack where they tend to each other’s injuries, but also have to confront their feelings for one another as they finally give in to the attraction that has been building between them. The following day they are reunited with Bill, who has returned from his trip. With the secret of the creature preserved, the trio move on with their mission, until both Lee and Keiko later become lost in Axis Mundi.

In 2017, more secrets begin to surface as Shaw, Keiko, Hiroshi, and Kentaro go rogue in an attempt to locate Titan X. It turns out that Hiroshi has built a device capable of tracking Titans, but it also has the side effect of being able to call Godzilla. While on a mission to source additional parts for the device, the group splits into two teams, with Lee going with Keiko, while Kentaro heads off with Hiroshi.

While at Hiroshi’s office, Keiko learns that Cate and Kentaro have different mothers, which naturally leads her to ask questions about her son’s life. Lee tells her that it is not his story to tell and suggests that she should speak to Kentaro herself. Later, when the two groups reconnect, they discover that Hiroshi’s device has been stolen. Naturally, Hiroshi is furious, as it took him six years to build it. Keiko suggests that they can build another one together, but also says they should return to Monarch, at which point Hiroshi has a meltdown and reveals that Bill abandoned him in Miami when he was 11 years old, back in 1962, after Keiko and Lee disappeared in Axis Mundi.

This leads to a flashback to 1962, where we see Bill and the young Hiroshi going through Lee’s belongings. After Hiroshi leaves the room, Bill searches through the items himself and finds a letter addressed to Lee in Keiko’s handwriting. The letter was written after their night together, and reveals that Keiko had fallen in love with him.

Back in 2017, Tim, who is still running the operation, finds himself in trouble with Monarch’s higher-ups, who are angry that he lost track of the sea serpent while rescuing Lee and Keiko. On top of this, Tim learns that a deal has been made between Monarch and Apex Technologies, with Apex now upgrading Monarch’s systems. Feeling increasingly sidelined, Tim approaches May and asks her to take a job at Apex so she can act as a mole and keep him informed about what is really going on.

Almost immediately after starting the job, May discovers that Apex has been tracking all of them, which explains how they knew about Hiroshi’s device and several other classified details. Meanwhile, Cate, who is still struggling with her place in everything, returns home to San Francisco to see her mother and reconnect with her girlfriend, but finds it difficult to readjust to her old life.

Acting

Mari Yamamoto and Wyatt Russell both deliver fantastic performances in this episode, as the romantic tension between their characters finally comes to the surface after they narrowly escape several encounters with death. Both actors fully commit to the material, and while the scenes are not particularly explicit, the subtext is more than strong enough to carry the moment, as well as the later implications that are revealed as the episode progresses.

Anna Sawai also puts in a powerful performance as we see Cate struggling to deal with the emotional fallout of everything that has happened in her life because of Monarch, Godzilla, and the secrets surrounding her family. Her breakdown later in the episode feels completely earned, as the story shows her trying to reconnect with the life she once had, only to realise that too much has changed for things to ever go back to the way they were.

Overall

While this was not a particularly action-packed episode, it does a solid job of setting the table for the plot developments still to come. In particular, the fallout from Hiroshi’s feelings of abandonment adds an important emotional layer to the story, especially after the reveal that Bill left him to cope on his own when he was a child.

However, the bigger storyline going forward is likely to be the implications of the deal between Monarch and Apex, and how that partnership will affect the balance of power moving ahead. With Apex now involved behind the scenes, it feels as though the series is beginning to move toward something much larger, both in terms of the human drama and the MonsterVerse mythology.