Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 9 SPOILER Recap: “Ends of the Earth”

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 reaches its penultimate point with the ninth episode, “Ends of the Earth.” What is Isabel Simmons’ true plan for Titan X? Will Cate be able to pull her brother back from the dark side? And will Kong actually get to do something before the season wraps up? Find out all this and more in our full spoiler breakdown of “Ends of the Earth.” This is your last warning if you haven’t seen the episode yet, so let’s get cracking.

What happens in Monarch Season 2 Episode 9 “Ends of the Earth”?

Godzilla in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2

As the episode opens, Godzilla has followed Titan X to just outside the storm wall separating Skull Island from the rest of the surrounding area. The King of the Monsters chooses to let Titan X follow Isabel Simmons’ rogue team to Skull Island to retrieve her egg, while he returns to Axis Mundi having returned Titan X to her migratory route and therefore fulfilled his duty to keep order within the Titan ecosystem. Tim, May, Shaw, and Keiko follow her to the island in order to rescue Cate and Kentaro.

After the title sequence, Cate, Kentaro, and Isabel land on Skull Island in a helicopter. Cate asks Kentaro why he trusts these people and what Isabel plans to do with Titan X, but the only answer she provides is that they aren’t going to kill the creature. Meanwhile, the Monarch team lands on the island, pursuing Titan X via the tracker planted by Young Shaw during “String Theory,” though Keiko and Old Shaw have their own plan to find the central rift Titan X could use to get home via a map Bill Randa made of potential rift locations on the island.

Following a brief but cute flashback to Bill and Keiko’s impromptu wedding on October 21, 1958, we see Isabel guiding Cate and Kentaro through the abandoned Monarch base in which she and her team have set up shop. Here, she finally reveals her plan to use Titan X to open a stable rift into Axis Mundi indefinitely so as to use the realm as a time machine. Cate urges Kentaro to come to his senses and realize how insane this plan is, but Kentaro stays by Isabel’s side as Cate is forcefully escorted to a helicopter by two of Isabel’s agents.

As the Monarch team makes its way through the deep jungles of Skull Island, they are attacked by a tree-dwelling creature with a Venus flytrap-like maw and several slithering tentacles that blend in with the surrounding tree branches. The creature kills four Monarch agents while separating our main characters into two separate teams: Shaw and Keiko head towards the valleys of the island following Bill’s map, while Tim and May continue through the jungle with the surviving agents following the tracker.

Meanwhile, Isabel’s team successfully lures Titan X using the egg, spraying her with anesthetic to temporarily knock her unconscious. While she’s out, they embed neural implants similar to the ones Apex used in “Furusato” into her body, but they boost her aggression instead of dampening it. As it turns out, Isabel doesn’t just want to use Titan X to open a rift, but also to kill Kong, who has been lured towards the area with a pre-recorded Skullcrawler roar. This gives Kentaro reservations about the plan, but not enough of them to make him switch back to the good side.

While Isabel’s team is installing the implants, they find and remove Shaw’s tracker, leaving Tim, May, and the Monarch agents lost in the jungle. Luckily, Cate, who escaped the helicopter and snuck back into the Monarch base, manages to contact them over walkie-talkie, urging them to get off the island and “find the valley.” Speaking of valleys, Shaw and Keiko find the valley of dinosaur and Kong ancestor bones in which Bill Randa died during Kong: Skull Island. Keiko has an understandable emotional breakdown upon finding Bill’s camera before we flash back to a train station in 1959 Kazakhstan, right after Keiko fell into Axis Mundi.

Bill and Young Shaw both blame themselves for what happened, but while Shaw is fully convinced that she’s gone, Bill throws himself into his work in an effort to get her back. Then, in 1968, Reading, Pennsylvania, a now fully bearded Bill is giving a college lecture about his Titan Network theories when Dr. Suzuki walks into and out of the lecture hall without a word. He catches Suzuki on his way out, carrying a briefcase containing the last of several probes Bill has been launching into Axis Mundi over the years.

Suzuki doesn’t want to give the probe to Bill, imploring him to go back to Hiroshi, but Bill takes it by force, insisting that he can’t return to his family until his work is done. Back in the present, Shaw and Keiko reach the final rift point on Bill’s map, realizing that this must be the central rift because it’s surrounded by all the probes Bill sent through Axis Mundi, all of which contain the same note to Keiko in which he promises to love her “to the ends of the earth, and beyond.”

But since this is a kaiju show, we can’t end the episode on the poignant resolution to the romance subplot, and we instead cut back to Isabel’s team and a newly awakened Titan X. They successfully use the implants to increase Titan X’s aggression as she lets out a mighty roar, ready to face down Kong in battle. Cate reminds Kentaro that their father wouldn’t want to see them like this, but Kentaro insists that’s why he’s doing this in the first place. Because they can use Axis Mundi to prevent Hiroshi’s death from happening at all.

Is Monarch Season 2 Episode 9 worth watching?

Given how little he’s appeared in this season so far, I was not expecting Anders Holm as Bill Randa to be the MVP of the penultimate episode, but here we are. His performance is impeccable throughout the flashback sequences. The wedding scene with him and Keiko is sweet and heartwarming; his instant regret at the train station is utterly palpable; and seeing him fully given in to the obsessive spiral at the college was truly heartbreaking. Though admittedly, that scene did make me question if it was believable for Anders Holm to age into John Goodman just five years after this point in the timeline.

As for the rest of the episode, the Shaw and Keiko subplot was generally well-handled, especially the ending where they find Bill’s love letter, and it tied into the flashback storyline very effectively. The forest monster set piece was a lot of fun, but otherwise the Monarch team’s storyline doesn’t really add much here. Moreover, the extra bits of characterization for Titan X, Godzilla, and Kong are appreciated, but it definitely feels like they’re holding back the good stuff for next week’s finale.

That just leaves the Cate, Kentaro, and Isabel plot, and while what’s presented here is solid and all the actors do a great job, I really hope it doesn’t end the way I think it’s going to. The MonsterVerse may be wacky, and I love it for that, but “we can just undo death with time travel” feels like a step too far. I sincerely hope the resolution to this story is “Isabel was wrong and we can’t change the past” rather than “Hiroshi is back now and everything’s fine” as that would severely cheapen his sacrifice in “Furusato” and inherently reduce the stakes for future entries in the franchise.

Granted, even if Hiroshi is resurrected, they’ll probably cut off time travel as a plot device afterwards to avoid that aforementioned “reduced stakes” issue. Even still, I don’t think Hiroshi should come back. His sacrifice meant something to the narrative, and it should stay that way. Speculation aside, this was a solid episode, and I hope the finale brings it all together in a satisfying way.

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

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 9 SPOILER Recap: “Ends of the Earth”