‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Season 2, Episode 5 “Furusato” Recap & Review

This article contains spoilers for Apple TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2, Episode 5

With Monarch, our ragtime team of Shaw and the Randas, and Apex all setting to converge on Titan X at Santa Soledad, the show takes a moment to breathe and insert Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hirai) as a main focal point as well. His struggle with guilt, family, and the consequences of some of his decisions is front and center, giving the episode a much-needed boost of emotional energy, leading up to the devastating final moments that are sure to change the dynamic of our group of heroes going forward.

In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2, Episode 5, “Furusato,” Apex and their team arrive on Santa Soledad first and begin setting up their plan while they await the arrival of Titan X. As we discovered last episode, the Apex idea of co-existence with the Titans is less about mutual understanding and more about control.

Brenda (Dominique Tipper), who is running this operation, is relying on May (Kiersey Clemons) to complete her computer code for the nero-interface unit to be used to control Titan X. Brenda is all in, May has her doubts and with all great and ambitious plans like this fueled by greed and power, there is sure to be a disaster looming on the horizon. 

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While Titan X heads for Santa Soledad, passing the Monarch 18 outpost in the ocean on the way, Shaw (Kurt Russell), Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), Cate (Anna Sawai), Kentaro (Ren Watabe), and Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) have already arrived, and take shelter to form a plan to stop Apex from hitting Titan X with the computer code encased in a drone.

They take shelter in an old Monarch outpost, where memories of Bill (Anders Holm) come rushing back. This is a group that can never escape the past, in all its incarnations, and it’s fascinating at times to watch how it continues to shape them.

Up until this point, the episode has interspersed storylines, both current and past, centering on Hiroshi. From his guilt about leaving one family to witness the birth of his son, to bailing on a family to go back to Monarch to look at a new discovery, to him finding the letter Keiko wrote Shaw so many years ago. The letter was about their one mistake, and while part of her will always love him, her heart and soul belonged to Bill.

This is the true definition of a man haunted by his mistakes, guilty of his choices, and angry at others for theirs. However, it is here that he has a dramatic heart-to-heart with Keiko and realizes, as she does, that he needs to own his mistakes and move on. 

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The group moves to hide in the old town here, more memories from the past, and tries to use the confusion of the approaching Titan X and the hatching and swarming to the sea of its babies, once again, repeating the past when Keiko and Shaw first encountered it. However, they fail to stop the launch of the drone, and after Shaw is injured by the swarm of scabbard babies heading to Great Titan X in the ocean, Cate is drawn to the Titan and heads to the ocean for a one-on-one confirmation.

There have been hints of Cate’s connection to the Titans, and what that is and why remains a mystery. The quiet connection turns to anguish for both when the drone hits it with the computer-programming device. 

However, as May predicted and what you might have guessed would happen, the program failed, and Titan X escaped. The flying debris from the Titan X’s escape created more than just chaos, however. It fatally injured Hiroshi, who ended up dying in the arms of Keiko and Cate while Kentaro, Shaw, and the arriving Monarch team looked on, helpless to do anything. While Apex scattered, and certain individuals went their separate ways, the group that has been trying to do the most good has now suffered a devastating loss.

Looking back at how Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2, Episode 5, was set up, you could say Hiroshi’s death seemed inevitable. He finally found a bit of peace to move on, only to have it ripped away from him again, this time permanently. It just feels like that, a sense of closure for Hiroshi, but regardless, hats off to the writers and actor Takehiro Hira for giving us both a solid story and a great performance. It’s not an easy thing to pull off, being hip deep in monsters and mayhem, but they did a great job here.

“Furusato” took the audience to a different place this week, creating a wonderful episode. While it’s sad to see Hiroshi go, it creates all kinds of possibilities as Season 2 carries on.