‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Episode 7 “Will the Real May Please Stand Up?” Recap & Review

Spoilers for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 7 “Will the Real May Please Stand Up?”

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has been floating around mediocre levels since its promising first three episodes. Mostly to blame are the basic characters who don’t really inspire sympathy from viewers. Something has just been off with the nonplussed dialogue and tedious dramatics. None of the characters are properly traumatized, and only the 1955 characters seem to have any real consequences despite the 2015 characters having encountered multiple Titans and tragic events.

These kids jet-set around the globe and back again often enough to die from jet lag. Instead, they can trek across frozen tundras, treating hypothermia like an inconvenience and familiar deaths as unfortunate occurrences. The backstories are there, but they tend to be uninteresting. If there’s any gravity at all, it’s temporary.

The most cryptic background is May’s, but revealing her truth wasn’t the bombshell we expected. Somehow, though, she’s finally gotten to be a character with some depth. Not because her monkey wrench jammed the works but because she’s doubled down on her duplicity. When a cast of characters and their antagonists don’t have strife amongst their own, it doesn’t work. It’s there for the members of Monarch, but it’s still not convincing. At least now, we have a character on the ‘good’ side who is self-serving.

After Godzilla put the smackdown on Tim’s (Joe Tippett) helicopter in Algeria, he was the only survivor. Escaping without injury, he’s just a little thirsty and cranky. After a few complimentary bottles of water at the airport, where he coincidentally meets up with the Randa gang, he’s ready to jump back in the Mystery Machine and solve this case.

Cate (Anna Sawai) and Kentaro (Ren Watabe) vaguely and superficially discuss the subject of their father, who they’ve confirmed is still alive. Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira) doesn’t seem like a good man, as he’s led a double life, and all but left his children to face Godzilla alone in the desert. He’ll need as much redemption as his kids’ unemotional onscreen interaction to make these protagonists worth rooting for.

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May (Kiersey Clemons) plays it so nonchalantly when she’s kidnapped at the airport that you expect she must have superpowers. Her cup of confidence overflows onto a saucer of arrogance so often you’re tempted to just flip the table. To her credit, she was smart enough to know Cate would come looking for her in the airport bathroom before anyone else found her jacket, cell phone, passport, and plane ticket. Because kidnappers don’t think leaving evidence behind is a bad idea. If there were any more conveniences in the show, there would be an app to collect points for a free Kaiju Kooler.

In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode 7, We learn more about May (her real name, Corah) through flashbacks that are only slightly more interesting than Kentaro’s frustrated artist background. She’s got a mentor who’s ready to give her the keys to the kingdom in her company, but not without some hands-on experience the company will provide. May isn’t thrilled about not being launched into a top position from the go. To be fair, she’s upset that the code she’s been working on is sitting in a can and not being utilized to metaphorically save the world (as far as she knows). She’s so sure she’s been used that it makes sense for her to sabotage the code and ruin years of work on the Cybernetic Neuroscience-Interface unit code. She’d never know, but it sure does sound a lot like the company she was working for is rebuilding Mechagodzilla.

Corah’s multimillion-dollar fit sends her on the lam, giving us May. That’s her big secret. She upset Applied Experimental Technologies and disappeared for two years. When they finally caught her in the Algerian airport, she went willingly. 

Tim explains the legacy Cate and Kentaro have with Monarch. Their father is still trying to locate Titans before they wake so he can prevent another G-Day. And only Shaw knows how to find Hiroshi Randa. The team-up to find Lee Shaw is somehow the leverage May uses to get Tim to agree to also help them find May. The plot in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode 7 continues in circles as it spins down the drain. May has already proven to be a bad friend, and by the end of the episode, the group will be tighter than ever. Motivations are fluid, which probably explains why they are also spinning into oblivion.

The Alaskan Monarch outpost gets taken over by Shaw, and his new band of Monarch rejects. Dr. Barnes (Kiersey Clemons) is the only one to escape. Her pursuer tracks Her through the halls of the outpost by instinct alone, but when she gets outside, she decides she’s been chasing a ghost and gives up. For plot purposes, they never drew up storyboards that included a vantage point for Agent Duvall (Elisa Lasowski) to even consider looking down when she goes outside. The camera doesn’t show footprints in the snow, so they must not exist, luckily for Barnes.

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Outpost 88 contains enough explosives for Shaw and his merry men to blow the ground from beneath the ice beast in Alaska. An experimental weapon causes a black hole effect that sucks the Titan in, proving the concept of a Titan killing machine.

Cate, Kentaro, and Tim get from Algeria to the state of Washington in record time, with no jet lag necessary. They track Corah’s sister from Tacoma to Seattle only to let the teen get the drop on them in a parking garage. After a few sentimental stories are exchanged, Corah’s sister fills them in on Applied Experimental Technologies. Tim uses the Titan Advanced Warning System, the equivalent of pulling a fire alarm on the entire city of Seattle, to help her get away. Of course, Corah has no intention of getting away until she makes the deal with her old boss. Voila! She’s May again and willing to make amends with Cate and Kentaro so she can report everything they know about the Titans back to the company.

Applied Experimental Technologies will rebrand itself to APEX Cybernetics, the company that builds Mechagodzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). These facts might be considered Easter eggs to general audiences, but we can trust this story is finally going somewhere.

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