Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 10 SPOILER Recap: “Where We Belong”

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 comes to a close with the tenth episode, “Where We Belong.” Will our heroes successfully guide Titan X home? Or will Kong and Titan X destroy each other before they can? And will this plotline ultimately descend into time travel shenanigans? Find out the answers to all these questions and more in our full spoiler breakdown of “Where We Belong.” This is your final warning if you haven’t watched the Season 2 finale for yourself yet, so let’s begin.

What happens in Monarch Season 2 Episode 10 “Where We Belong”?

As the episode opens, Shaw and Keiko try and fail to inform Tim of the central rift due to radio interference. They make their way to a nearby vehicle, only to be suddenly ambushed by a stampede of rolling spiked creatures, barely managing to get out of the way in time. The pair soon realizes that these creatures were running away from something and quickly start moving to avoid being caught by whatever that something is.

After the title sequence, Cate once again tries to implore Kentaro to understand that their father is dead and his time travel plan is insane, to no avail, with Kentaro calling one of Isabel’s agents to lock Cate in an abandoned office. Luckily, thanks to some basic science teacher know-how, she manages to create a handheld chemical fire in a washcloth that loosens the holdings of an air vent cover just enough to let her remove it and escape through the airducts, eventually emerging out of an underground tunnel.

Meanwhile, the Monarch team makes their way to the abandoned base Isabel’s been using. Tim explains that it was decommissioned due to an “incident” in the 1990s (referring to the events of the Skull Island animated series), and our heroes manage to steal one of her team’s Jeeps due to the driver “not being paid enough to take bullets for her.” Back with Shaw and Keiko, Shaw finally explains all the “communication with his younger self” business from “String Theory,” and Keiko is not happy to hear that he could’ve gone back for her and chose not to.

She snaps at Shaw, angrily telling him that he had no right to make that kind of decision about her life for her and that if he didn’t stand idly by, she could’ve had years with Hiroshi and he might even still be alive. But Shaw simply responds, “That’s a lot of couldas” and walks off. The Monarch team then picks the pair up and they head inside the Simmons base, which leads Isabel herself to panic.

See, while all this has been happening, Isabel’s team has successfully goaded Kong and Titan X into fighting each other. But their plan requires Titan X to win that fight and open the rift, and right now, Kong is handily winning while Titan X’s synaptic link is being pushed to the brink of overload. Isabel and Kentaro make their escape as the rest of the team is left to deal with Monarch. May tries to shut down the synaptic link, but it’s too late. The only way to stop Titan X’s increased aggression is to somehow “unplug” her.

Our heroes make their way outside and spot the ongoing Kong vs. Titan X fight, as well as the escaped Cate, in the distance. A dazed Cate is nearly crushed amidst the carnage, but is pulled back to reality by the sound of Keiko’s voice. She rejoins the others as Titan X reclaims her egg and her maternal instincts kick in, effectively “unplugging” her from the aggression caused by the synaptic link. Kong, recognizing that Titan X means no harm, falls back and allows her to peacefully return home.

There’s just one problem: Titan X is moving away from the rift due to her brain still being slightly scrambled from the synaptic link. The Monarch team quickly makes a plan to use Cate’s recording of Titan X’s song, the first major indication that Titans can communicate with each other, according to both Shaw and Tim, to lure her in the right direction. But before Cate joins them, she makes one last plea to Kentaro to return to the good side.

At this point, Kentaro reveals to Cate that Hiroshi went into Axis Mundi after G-Day, meaning a version of him could still be alive down there, and they could rescue him. Cate pauses for a moment and considers this before reasserting that saving their father is impossible. She joins Shaw, Tim, Keiko, and May on a Monarch helicopter while Kentaro and Isabel escape in their own helicopter. Our heroes successfully get Titan X’s attention using the song, but blow out the onboard sound system before they can guide her back on course.

Flying in closer, Cate is able to communicate with Titan X directly, leading her back to the rift. They land and watch in awe as the mighty Titan approaches the portal. Cate takes a step forward as Titan X extends one of her tentacles outward to touch Cate’s hand in a final farewell before returning home. As the rift closes, an Aurora Borealis-esque glow begins emitting from it as Shaw and Keiko see the Wyatt Russell version of Shaw projected in the light. The young Shaw says something to Keiko that she can’t hear, to which the older Shaw explains, “I’m saying goodbye,” as both the light and the young Shaw fade away.

Kong climbs to the top of a mountain to perform his contractually obligated aura farming before we cut to six weeks later. Shaw has gone no-contact, Kentaro and Isabel are off doing who knows what, and Cate and Keiko are standing outside a memorial to deceased members of Monarch, which now includes Hiroshi. Director Barris ushers them into an office in the basement, the very same office in the basement in which Shaw, Keiko, and Bill Randa first founded Monarch.

Said office is currently being refurnished by Tim and May, who are to become Cate and Keiko’s teammates in a back-to-basics version of Monarch assigned by Director Barris to handle the Kentaro case. Following that, we cut to Shaw meeting up with an old accomplice in a small village in Mexico. Shaw throws him a wad of cash, and he and his team agree to guide Shaw on an expedition into the jungle to find…. something that Kentaro and Isabel apparently believe is key to their plans.

As they get further into the jungle, the other crew members start to refuse to go any further. When Shaw asks how bad this thing could possibly be, one of the crew lifts up his sleeve to reveal a huge scar. But Shaw decides to forge ahead on his own anyways, reaching the foot of a volcano and spotting none other than Rodan at the top, ending the season by saying he and the fire bird will be seeing each other soon.

Is Monarch Season 2 Episode 10 worth watching?

This ending is far closer to perfect than I expected going in. Both the Keiko/Shaw arc and Cate/Titan X arc have satisfying emotional payoffs, the Kong vs. Titan X fight is extremely fun to watch (even if it’s no Godzilla vs. Ion Dragon), and they very wisely did not resurrect Hiroshi. They honored his sacrifice while allowing the character to stay dead and made it abundantly clear that Kentaro’s obsession with rescuing him with time travel is a negative trait that’s massively contributing to his downward spiral.

Moreover, Season 2’s story is allowed to reach a satisfying conclusion in its own right while offering some tantalizing teases for Season 3. Tim, May, Cate, and Keiko as the new Monarch team is a solid set-up and I will fully admit to freaking out upon seeing Rodan at the end. My wonderful fiery bird boy has been missing in action since the ending of his debut MonsterVerse film, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and given the franchise’s recent tendency to rely on original Titans, seeing any classic Toho kaiju pop up, let alone an underrated personal favorite of mine, is immensely satisfying.

With that said, I don’t love that Kentaro and Isabel’s entire subplot throughout the back half of the season turned out to just be Season 3 setup. Do I like their dynamic? Yes. Am I looking forward to what the show could do with them in Season 3? Also, yes. But if you’re going to spend so much time establishing these characters and their goals in Season 2, it feels like there should be at least some amount of payoff in Season 2 and there really isn’t. That aside, this is still a very strong finale to the second season, and I am eagerly awaiting the third.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 10 SPOILER Recap: “Where We Belong”