The Legendary Monsterverse is set to take its next step forward by taking a step back in time with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2, and it’s headed down a path that would resurrect a classic Godzilla plot device from the Heisei Era. While the Monsterverse movies have progressed forward in time, the first season of Monarch examined the time directly after Godzilla’s battle with the MUTOs in San Francisco.
As the first season progressed, another plot about the original founders of the secretive Monarch organization was unfolding, set in the 1950s. Eventually the two storylines merge, as characters from both time periods meet in a mysterious region of the planet referred to as the Axis Mundi, and the baffling physics of the realm that is neither part of Hollow Earth nor the surface world opened up a world of possibilities for the entire Monsterverse.
Monarch’s Use Of Axis Mundi Makes Time Travel Feasible
Aside from the eye-popping visual aesthetic of the Axis Mundi, the most intriguing characteristic of the lost world is the fact that time doesn’t seem to operate the same as it does in either Hollow Earth or on the surface. Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) meets her grandmother Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) there, who appears the same as she did when she fell through a rift into the Axis Mundi in 1959, justifiably leading to questions about how time works there.
While 56 years had passed on the surface, Keiko had only been in Axis Mundi for a total of 57 days thanks to the time dilation of that realm. The tunnel system between the surface and the Hollow Earth, referred to as the Vile Vortex or Vile Vortices, stabilizes gravity on both sides of the tunnel. Axis Mundi exists within the tunnel system itself, almost like air pockets, and is subjected to extreme gravitational distortion, which impacts space-time within the realm.
While Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 1 (thankfully) doesn’t delve into the real science behind gravity and time distortion, the fact that characters can enter at one point in time on the surface and exit at another makes time travel possible, as was the case with Keiko. She entered Axis Mundi in 1959 and exited in 2015 relatively unchanged, so from the surface’s perspective she managed to jump through time.
That opens the door to all sorts of time-jumping shenanigans from both human characters and Titans in the Monsterverse. The connected cinematic universe has already shown a penchant for Kong and Godzilla taking on “ancient rivals”, and the time dilation in Axis Mundi could make for some interesting origin stories of future baddies. Accelerated growth, mutation, and moving back and forth across time are all on the table with the gravitational distorition of the Axis Mundi.
Time Travel Was At The Heart Of 1991’s Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah won’t make many Best Of franchise lists, but it did give us one of the more inventive plots to ever come out of the Heisei Era. A team of humans from the future hilariously named the Futurians travel back in time to Japan seeking to stop the creation of Godzilla, who in that timeline was an irradiated version of a Godzillasaurus, and save Japan from his wrath in the future.
In reality, they were plotting to go back in time to replace Godzilla with three miniature dragons called Dorats, who would be irradiated instead and become King Ghidorah, who would destroy Japan. The entire plot is a train wreck of non-science and poor writing, but it is wholly original in the annals of Godzilla lore.
Seeing Monarch: Legacy of Monsters open up the door for time travel again is intriguing because I have relative faith that they can do something smarter with the concept than the 1991 battle between Godzilla and his arch-nemesis. Season 2 will likely delve deeper into the science and rules of Axis Mundi, and it likely won’t be quite so convoluted and difficult to understand.
- Release Date
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November 16, 2023
- Network
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Apple TV
- Showrunner
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Chris Black, Matt Fraction
- Directors
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Julian Holmes, Matt Shakman, Mairzee Almas, Andy Goddard, Hiromi Kamata
- Writers
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Al Letson, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Chris Black, Mariko Tamaki, Amanda Overton, Andrew Colville, Matt Fraction, Milla Bell-Hart
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Kiersey Clemons
May Hewitt
