Before getting into the details of Monarch Season 2 episode 3, I have to state that this was the worst episode so far. The editing, the cinematography, the performances, and the dialogue writing—everything just took a massive nosedive in terms of quality. After watching the Monsterverse movies, I was against the move to shift these Titans into the streaming landscape. The first few episodes of Season 1 didn’t exactly win me over, but by the time the finale of the first season dropped, I had become a fan of this area of the franchise. My expectations from Season 2 weren’t exactly sky-high, but I think the first 2 episodes did a good job of bringing us back into the franchise that had laid dormant for the past 2 years. The second episode concluded on a high with Lee going full cowboy mode, in the present day, to keep the El Gran Dios Del Mar from destroying several civilian ships, commercial vessels, and Monarch’s ship. Meanwhile, in the flashback plot line, Lee and Keiko encountered the El Gran Dios Del Mar for the first time. So, I thought that the third episode was going to ride that high; I suppose I was wrong. Anyway, let’s talk about it.
Spoiler Alert
Apex Takes Over Monarch’s Ship
The Monarch ship arrives at a port in Tokyo so that it can be repaired while the protagonists chalk out a plan to tackle El Gran Dios Del Mar. Cate tries to sneak away and go home, because she is guilt-stricken by what she has unleashed upon the world. May gets a hold of her and tries to convince her to stay and fight, but Cate is too determined to get away from Monarch and the Titans to listen to May. So, on that note, they part ways with each other. Meanwhile, Tim tells Lee, Keiko, Hiroshi, and Kentaro that he has been ordered by Barris to find a way to contain the movement of the Titan and keep it away from the masses. Keiko and Hiroshi theorize that since the El Gran Dios Del Mar responds to the call of the Scarabs (that’s what they are calling the Titan’s minions), they can replicate the sound and direct the Titan away from highly populated spaces. Hiroshi says that he has a prototype version of this device in his workshop in Tokyo, just outside Shibuya. Tim likes this idea, and Lee says that they need to get there immediately and put this plan into motion. Before they can do that, though, Jason Trissop, head of special projects at Apex Cybernetics, officially hijacks the Monarch ship so that they can go after the Titan, and puts Tim and the rest of his crew out of commission. This understandably angers Tim, and when he tries to get Barris to reverse this decision, he is told to help Apex in every way he can and turn Keiko and Lee over to Monarch for questioning.
Cate Spirals Out
Tim goes rogue and helps Keiko, Lee, Hiroshi, and Kentaro escape the ship so that they can get to Hiroshi’s workshop and make that Titan dog whistle device functional (which is pretty similar to the ORCA device in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and the device that Mechagodzilla was using to agitate Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong). While Hiroshi and Kentaro take off to get some additional gadgets for the device, Keiko and Lee head to Hiroshi’s office to get their hands on the blueprints of the device. In the meantime, Tim meets up with May to convince her to take up that job that Brenda had offered her. That’ll allow Tim or Monarch to have a pair of eyes and ears inside Apex Cybernetics and monitor why they are so interested in all this Titan business. Well, spoiler alert if you haven’t seen Godzilla vs. Kong, but Apex is tapping into Monarch’s area of expertise because they want to get to Hollow Earth, tap into its power source, and use its energy signature to create stuff like Mechagodzilla. Going back to the plot, May thinks Tim’s idea is good, and she starts making some moves to get in touch with Brenda again. We briefly see what Cate is up to. Well, it’s not much; she reunites with her mother, gets drunk with an ex of hers, blames herself for bringing El Gran Dios Del Mar into the earth, and then sobs near the wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s it.
Apex Steals Hiroshi’s Device
Well, while Cate is busy spiraling out, Keiko and Lee reach Hiroshi’s office to look for those blueprints. Keiko spots Hiroshi’s family photos and figures out that Hiroshi’s 2 children are from 2 different relationships. She asks Lee to shed some light on it, but he refuses to do so, because it’s not his story to tell. As the group heads back to the workshop after acquiring the blueprints and the additional gadgets, Lee creates an opportunity for Keiko to ask whatever she needs to ask Hiroshi regarding his personal life. After some initial hesitation, Hiroshi tells his mother about his extramarital affair but doesn’t get into an in-depth discussion about it, because he doesn’t expect her to understand why people cheat. Well, little does Hiroshi know that Keiko is an expert on that subject, actually. More on that later, I guess. When Kentaro, Hiroshi, Lee, and Keiko return to Hiroshi’s workshop, they notice that the device is gone. Who has taken it? Well, based on the bodycam footage accessed by May, after she got recruited into Apex Cybernetics, the Tokyo branch of that organization is behind this theft (this is obviously a setup for the events of Godzilla vs. Kong). As a result of this, news of the El Gran Dios Del Mar’s existence reaches the public, and the people of San Francisco go into panic mode, because they believe another G-Day is upon them. Hiroshi loses his composure because his passion project is gone and his mother still thinks Monarch is the solution. I guess he wanted to hear his mother tell him to abandon this search for Titans and just concentrate on being family again. However, since she’s still thinking about Titans, he is starting to feel that his chance reunion with his mother is rather pointless.
Keiko and Lee Go On The Run
Even though the El Gran Dios Del Mar’s tentacle lands inches away from Lee and Keiko, they are unhurt because the plot armor is in full effect. They emerge from the wreckage and notice the Titan calming down as soon as it is reunited with its minions. Keiko pulls out her camera and takes some pictures of the El Gran Dios Del Mar before it disappears into the ocean. Lee spots the villagers coming out of their huts and says that they should get the hell out of there, but they are surrounded by Tomas, Augustin, Lucia, and the rest of the natives of Santa Soledad. They won’t let Keiko and Lee leave until she hands over the camera; they believe that if the world learns about the El Gran Dios Del Mar and its association with the people of Santa Soledad, they’ll destroy their relationship and leave the people to starve to death. Keiko obviously doesn’t want to part ways with her camera, because she’s looking at this whole situation from the perspective of scientific discovery, not as a catalyst for colonization and a humanitarian crisis. Hence, Lee has to tackle Tomas (Keiko’s arm gets slashed and Lee himself gets stabbed), hold him hostage to keep the villagers at bay, and then dump him when he sees the opportunity to run into the woods with Keiko. After putting some distance between themselves and the villagers, Lee understands that they can’t outrun their potential captors.
Billy Reunites With Keiko and Lee
Lee takes the reel out of the camera and discards the device on the forest floor in the hopes of convincing the villagers to stop searching for them, because they don’t have photographic proof of El Gran Dios Del Mar’s existence anymore. Lee’s gamble pays off, and the villagers return to their homes. Well, Lucia does spot Lee and Keiko, but she doesn’t raise the alarm because she doesn’t want them to die. Once the coast is clear, Keiko and Lee venture into the woods and find an abandoned hut there. They light a fire, patch each other up, and then get frisky. As mentioned before, the writing in the first season was such that you could feel the sexual tension between these two, and you hoped that they didn’t act on their impulses because it’d break Billy’s heart. This time around, their chemistry is almost non-existent, which is why Keiko and Lee suddenly having sex right after Billy has left the scene is so odd. I know that the showrunners want us to believe it’s the fear and adrenaline of surviving a Titan attack as well as a human attack that made Keiko and Lee get naked. But, no, the build-up and the payoff aren’t satisfactory enough to justify this plot development. The following day, while walking through the forest, Keiko and Lee start a “What are we now?” conversation, but that’s interrupted by Billy’s arrival. Do you see what I am talking about when I say that the writing is horrendous? It’s one thing for Billy to spot the El Gran Dios Del Mar and return to Santa Soledad, but it’s just dumb for him to waltz through the waters in a steamer and find Keiko while screaming her name.
Billy Left Hiroshi Because Of Keiko’s Extramarital Affair
The flashback timeline moves forward by a few years to show us Lee getting a letter from Keiko, telling him about her complex feelings for him and why she’s choosing Billy over Lee. That said, in the ending of episode 3, which takes place in 1962, we see Billy finding that letter from Keiko in Lee’s stuff. Just to be clear, by this time, Keiko has fallen into the Axis Mundi, and Lee has gone to that realm as well, as a part of Operation Hourglass. So, Billy has been looking after Hiroshi all on his own. Hiroshi is an extension of Keiko, and since Billy loves Keiko, he loves Hiroshi as well. Now, it’s heavily insinuated that after learning about Keiko’s extramarital affair with Lee on Santa Soledad, Billy began drifting away from Hiroshi, because he couldn’t bring himself to be affectionate towards the child of a woman who had cheated on him, and that too with his best friend. Once he had severed his ties with Hiroshi, he went off to Skull Island in search of Kong, and was killed by a Skullcrawler. That’s just my assumption. The real reasons for Billy’s and Hiroshi’s estrangement can be something completely different. Maybe after Lee’s disappearance, Billy was forced by Monarch to work extra hours, which kept him from being there for Hiroshi. But why does this all matter now? Well, I suppose this is set up for Hiroshi’s realization that he has inherited his unfaithful nature from his mother, which is going to lead to their falling out. They’ll probably go their separate ways and only reunite when the world needs both of their Titan-wrangling skills. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below.
