‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Episode 9 “Axis Mundi” Recap & Review

Spoilers for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 9 “Axis Mundi”

We finally have a phrase to describe the underworld, hollow Earth area, the king-sized rabbit warren, where Titans travel. Coined by General Puckett (Christopher Heyerdahl), the uncapitalized and unofficial term is “under-space.” They should nail this one down. It works.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode 9, “Axis Mundi,“ being the penultimate episode of the season, delivers the goods as no previous episode has. Directed by Andy Goddard, this episode pushes the characters to their limits, but more importantly, it pushes the actors to their limits. By far, the episode that works the best, “Axis Mundi” sets up events for the tenth installment, also directed by Goddard. The conclusion promises to call viewers back for another season, doing the work the rest of season one failed to do.

We abruptly open with Bill Randa (Anders Holm) and Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) taking care of a young Hiroshi. If you’ve been following along, Hiroshi’s mother, Dr. Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto), is presumed dead at this point, bringing us back to the beginning of the series when she was pulled into the underworld by a swarm of dog-sized beetles. There has been no promise of her return, but her character has become far too important in flashbacks to have such an early demise.

Lee is leaving to make an official attempt at reaching under-space where early Monarch knows the Titans move about. Handing Keiko’s son Lee’s trusty pocket knife, we have an object that will travel through the episode and time to an older exchange. Cue the slow-motion astronaut-like walk as Lee and his crew get set to drop into the Earth in 1962. Because of irregularities in pressure and gravity and instability of the tunnels, they’d be crushed if the vessel was dropped alone. They have to lure a Titan as close to the surface as possible with radiation for them to consume. When they turn off the bait, the Titan should turn back, leaving a field of protection in its wake for the Monarch vessel to follow safely.

It works (somewhat; there’s more to it) this time, but that lovely loophole leaves it open for accidental Titan attacks in the future. The expectation that a random Titan will always turn back when the bait is cut is a bad assumption. We’ll see this go wrong in a future episode.

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Plenty goes wrong anyway, but no one knows why. The same phenomenon they encountered in Alaska happens at the Kansas test site after the drop. A radioactive tempest devastates the area following Lee’s (unknowingly) successful drop and fair drama buildup. An electromagnetic storm followed by wind gusts reminiscent of the devastation in TOHO Studios’ Rodan (1956) teases a winged creature we never get a good look at. It may have only been an homage to one of Godzilla’s first adversaries, but it’s sure fun to speculate whether Legendary Television, Safehouse Pictures, and Toho have come to an agreement allowing classic established creatures besides Godzilla in Warner Brothers’ Monsterverse.

The Monarch vessel is presumed to have imploded, and Lee is presumed dead, but we aren’t in suspense too long. Dragging that out would have been a mistake since we know Lee survives through at least 2015. It makes for good drama for the characters, though. First, as the show likes to do, we see parallels between the two times as Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe) recovers in a hospital bed after the events of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, episode 8. He’s certain his ex-girlfriend and his newly found half-sister have been killed. Having dropped into under space where Keiko and now Lee have disappeared, we have a pretty good hint that loose ends are beginning to be tied. Kudos to actor Ren Watabe for not dropping the ball on this opportunity to show off his chops in this situation. Monarch plans to drop the association with the Scooby team since the majority of them have been lost. Natalia (Mirelly Taylor) and Tim (Joe Tippett) inform Kentaro he’s on his own.

The older version of Lee Shaw wakes in an under-space forest he’s evidently familiar with. Now that we know he’s survived the fall, we can finally safely surmise Keiko might be alive, and Cate (Anna Sawai) and May (Kiersey Clemons) are somewhere alive down there, too. Lee finds May pretty quickly, guiding her through the mysterious world. Scenes jump back and forth, showing the young Lee surviving the vessel’s crash landing on the under-space surface. Wyatt Russell wakes in the same way Kurt Russell did, in a foggy under-space forest charged with electricity that flows through the ground beneath them. Soon after he wakes in a Japanese hospital.

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Here’s where Kurt Russell’s age begins to make sense. An adult, Hiroshi Randa informs Lee he’s been lost in under-space for two decades, helping explain why Kurt Russell’s not looking ninety years old makes sense. This Hiroshi isn’t the Titan-obsessed Hiroshi yet, though, so the reunion is bittersweet. Lee feels betrayed by Hiroshi’s lack of interest in pursuing the Monarch project. To complicate a knot of loose ends being tied, Hiroshi makes his first romantic connection to Emiko Randa (Qyoko Kudo), Kentaro’s mother. So now we know which of his double lives began first.

Unfortunately for Lee, Monarch sends him to the same facility the older Lee breaks out of, implying he’s been drugged and held captive for thirty-something years, waiting for AppleTV+ to pick up the Monarch series.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode 9 sees a reunion of sorts between Kentaro and Hiroshi and paints Hiroshi as a bad father again. How can we argue that? But the emotion is real when Hiroshi learns Cate has been killed. It’s hard not to feel empathy for Hiro when Takehiro Hira acts as well as he does. As emotionally draining as this scene is for viewers we are shown Cate has survived immediately after. She’s nowhere near Lee and May, and she’s facing a boar-like Titan that’s about to eat her. A silhouetted archer drops the beast, and we get the best reveal of the series yet. It’s Cate’s grandmother, Keiko! The screen goes black, inviting amped viewers to watch the finale next week with something to look forward to.

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