Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Season 2 First Reviews: Come for the Cinematic Kaiju Battles, Stay for the Compelling Characters

After finding success reimagining the origins of King Kong and Godzilla for the big screen, Legendary and Warner Bros. decided to expand their MonsterVerse franchise to television, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was born. Debuting on Apple TV in late 2023, the series split its story between two half-siblings in search of their missing father in the present day and a group of researchers during the fledgling days of Monarch decades earlier, connecting the two timelines in surprising fashion.

The show was a hit with fans and critics, and a second season was announced just months after the first ended. Season 2 premieres on Apple TV on February 27, but the reviews have started to come in, with critics calling it a confident expansion of the franchise that successfully balances its large-scale thrills with thoughtful character work.

Here’s what critics are saying about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Season 2:

Plots are a lot easier to follow this season. The Titans are also far more present in Season 2, with a mix of Kong, Godzilla and the original Titan X monster given generous screen time with feature-film-quality visual effects work. Indeed, this season looks good… Pace-wise, the first half of the season moves like a rocket with plenty of Titan set pieces of note as well as major plot twists and turns in the present and past. The back half slows down a bit until it introduces a clever device… that delivers poignant emotional turns that help close the season with unexpected resonance.
— Tara Bennett, IGN Movies

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 is equally as action-packed as it is emotional… The scale feels massive, as if it belongs on the big screen rather than the small screen. But on top of that, it remains deeply, almost painfully, emotionally driven… The writing has matured, and the stakes feel personal in a way that big-budget creature features rarely manage to achieve.
— Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Monarch Season 2 expands the Monsterverse world, anchored by excellent performances from Anna Sawai and Mari Yamamoto and some excellent monster moments… While it’s a gorgeous outing with excellent Titan combat, a great sense of scale, and some great new additions to the world, it’s worth noting that Monarch could evolve the threat level… Monarch fires on all cylinders in Season 2 for a top-shelf season of television.
— Jeff Ewing, The Direct

(Photo by Apple TV)

Season 2 is definitely a much more character-driven journey, but it also has a need to propel its kaiju-centric storyline forward. There’s a few exposition dumps and narrative drops here and there to keep the story going… The kaiju fights are also explosive and brutal, but that’s a given for any Monsterverse project… Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 continues to confidently propel its emotional, human-centric story forward amidst Godzilla, Kong, and the titanic craziness of the Monsterverse.
— Chris Gallardo, Tell-Tale TV

A thrilling, much more confident season that expands the MonsterVerse in exciting ways, all while deepening our emotional investment in both its human and inhuman characters alike… Any and all concerns over the MonsterVerse’s ability to generate human characters as compelling as its monstrous beasts dissolve completely in a new season that’s found its rhythm. Both are well represented in an awe-inspiring season that delivers on thrilling adventure and heart wrenching drama… That Monarch covers so much ground, constantly propelling the story forward amidst breathless action sequences and death-defying encounters, impresses all the more considering how intricately it’s woven into the MonsterVerse’s increasingly complicated timeline.
— Megan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is bigger and better in season 2, with Kong getting a good amount of screen time and a deeper understanding of the overarching Monsterverse mythology… The second season still features regular flashbacks featuring Wyatt Russell and Anders Holm but the present day storyline is much more engaging… The special effects are significantly better and I enjoyed the focus on Kong rather than Godzilla this season. It also helps that the story is much easier to follow with the characters unified in each time period.
— Alex Maidy, JoBlo’s Movie Network

(Photo by Apple TV)

It’s far from perfect — in fact, it’s far more uneven than Season 1 — but remains just as exciting. It’s also no Godzilla Minus One, but Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 more than delivers, especially in spectacle… Overall, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 is another solid building block in the MonsterVerse. It knocks it out of the park where it matters most, offering exhilarating monster mayhem and a new Titan that’s more than worth the price of admission — or the Apple TV subscription. Sure, the Randa siblings are a considerable nuisance, but the strength of Keiko, as well as both versions of Shaw, Hiroshi, and Bill, make up for the cracks in this ensemble.
— David Caballero, Collider

The season’s plot alternates between being a thrilling extension of the MonsterVerse series that raises the stakes and a Jurassic World entry (if it were good) while never losing sight of the engaging humanistic elements. The ensemble continues to deliver fine performances. Kurt and Wyatt Russell, particularly, are standouts, [and] Mari Yamamoto’s portrayal of Keiko is commendable, as she delivers a maternal performance that resonates with her older co-star Takehiro Hira’s Hiroshi… The young adult cast doesn’t fare as well.
— Rendy Jones, RogerEbert.com

Season 2 continues following a fractured timeline that becomes increasingly difficult to track as the season progresses… The series is steeped in too much melodrama, with not one but two romantic triangles, but it is at its best when it’s just heroes and monsters who are dominating the screen, in magnificent fashion, making the series a sheer blast of joy for monster kids like me.
— Peter Martin, ScreenAnarchy

(Photo by Apple TV)

There is a lot going on in Monarch season two, often to its detriment. At times, it bogs down the fun with too much technical jargon, bureaucratic red tape, and confusing talk of rifts. The series also doesn’t know what to do with its characters beyond the collective mission to not cause mass devastation by toying with Titans. Only when it finally hones in on its new monster does the season manage to tell a surprisingly emotional story that leans into the human-Titan connection at the core of the films. But increasingly, Monarch also pulls its punches… Titan X’s emotional arc is by far the most effective thing about season two.
— Hunter Ingram, AV Club

While that balance between human-focused melodrama amid big-budget spectacle (mostly) worked the last time around, this sophomore season of Monarch can’t quite recreate the same recipe for success… The Titan X mystery builds a decent amount of momentum in the early season, but this soon peters out as our ensemble spins their wheels on uninspired and uninteresting subplots… Still, the various flashbacks to Keiko, her lover Bill (Anders Holm), and third-wheel Lee (Wyatt Russell) in decades past continue to be a highlight, as is the endearing stunt casting of Wyatt and Kurt Russell as younger and older versions of the same character.
— Jeremy Mathai, SlashFilm

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 is better than the first one. If that’s all you want to know about it, you will have a good time… If you enjoyed the first outing, you’re bound to enjoy the second one. On the other hand, if you were put off by the dull pacing and flat characters three years ago, chances are this is only the first step in winning you back… What does work is the same thing that worked last time. Everything to do with Keiko, Shaw, and Bill Randa (Anders Holm) is tremendous… There are at least a handful of colossal set pieces involving the big name monsters, yet all of them fail to impress.
— Joonatan Itkonen, Region Free

Expectations that a more immediate monster threat might bring focus to the show’s ponderous human drama should be kept in check, because season two is even more mired in soapy family squabbles and love triangles than the first… For all the time Monarch: Legacy of Monsters spends trying to develop its characters and occasionally explain its science, the story is no more fulfilling, let alone believable… You’ll spend even longer waiting to care about these characters than you will for Godzilla to finally show up.
— Steven Nguyen Scaife, Slant Magazine

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Season 2 premieres on Apple TV on February 27, 2026.

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