Earlier this year, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire opened on the 2024 movies schedule and, like Godzilla vs. Kong, crushed at the box office. But that wasn’t the only story set in the MonsterVerse to watch in 2024, as the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1 finale dropped in January, and a few months later, Season 2 was officially announced. While it’s still unclear when those with an Apple TV+ subscription will be able to stream the next batch of Monarch episodes, Anna Sawai has shared what she think to her character, Cate Randa, next season, and I completely agree with her.
Before she earned critical acclaim for her performance as Toda Mariko in Shogun (which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription) and won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Sawai was outrunning Titans like Godzilla in Monarch. With Season 2 having recently begun filming, here’s what the actress told TVLine about what she hopes is ahead for Cate:
I feel like Cate should have more agency. In Season 1, she is kind of the victim — thrown into it all and sometimes wanting to go back to her normal life. But after going down to Axis Mundi, she should come out as a different person. She’s seen stuff that she didn’t know before. They have answers and things to do now.
A lot was indeed thrown at Cate Randa in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ first season, from learning about her secret half-brother, Kentaro, to being thrust into a global adventure with him, May and Lee Shaw to find their shared father, to ending up in Axis Mundi and meeting her grandmother Keiko, who hadn’t aged due to time passing differently in that realm. By the time Cate, May and Keiko resurface from Axis Mundi, it was 2017, two years after the former two women had fallen through that portal. So yeah, Anna Sawai is correct that a lot happened to Cate, but it’d be nice for her to be more in control when Season 2 rolls around.
Admittedly, there’s only so much control one can have when face to face with a Titan, but when those giant monsters aren’t present, I’ll be interested to see how the agency Sawai wants for Cate is shown in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. It may be a while until we get our first inkling of what will be, though, as no official plot details for Season 2 have been revealed yet aside from Amber Midthunder joining the cast. However, going off Season 1’s ending, we can infer the Apple TV+ show will continue exploring the time period between the MonsterVerse’s first Godzilla movie and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Apex Cybernetics will also likely have a more prominent role in the narrative.
As soon as concrete details about Monarch Season 2 come in, CinemaBlend will pass them along. For now, don’t forget that the MonsterVerse movies can be streamed with a Max subscription, and that a Godzilla x Kong sequel is set to come out on March 26, 2027.
