RECAP: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 — “Secrets”

This week’s episode of Monarch opens up with action and, well, monsters. Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3, “Secrets,” gives audiences our first look at El Gran Dios del Mar, the great god of the sea.

Knowing that Titan X is larger than life and now threatening the world after being released from Axis Mundi, seeing Dr. Keiko Muira (Mari Yamamoto) and a young Lee Shaw’s (Wyatt Russell) past has become pivotal.  

At the end of the last episode, Lee and Keiko were in danger of being attacked by the small trilobite-like monsters. that the locals call col-cai, which were rushing from the island to the sea. As you can expect from small creatures in oceanic ecosystems, the trilobite monsters are rushing to Titan X, where they call home.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 puts a spotlight on Keiko and Lee.

It’s here that we understand the even more expansive danger that Titan X brings with him in Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3. It’s not just his size and ferocity, but the smaller monsters that can overwhelm.

Despite being targeted by the villagers, Keiko and Lee survived. Having taken a picture, the locals of the Chilean island want Keiko’s camera to keep everything from getting out.

Still, their survival doesn’t mean much; the locals still want them gone or worse. And who can blame them? Still in trouble, Lee takes one of the villagers who attacks Keiko for her camera hostage, and they work their way through the villagers, only for the credits to begin for Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3. 

The present timeline remains the least interesting element of Monarch Season 2.

Throughout the rest of the episode, Keiko and Lee are running from the Chilean villagers. Whether being chased for their images and science, or just because they saw something they weren’t supposed to see, the yelling vigilantes are scared.

As much as the villagers are meeting them with anger, there is also a fear that their way of life will be eradicated. That their fish harvests will shrink, and that will change their lives. 

In the present, Monarch is attempting to keep everyone together. They have to plan for the inevitable because the memory of G-Day is still so real. To do that, Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell), Dr. Keiko Randa, her son Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), and Tim (Joe Tippett) are all getting ready to play a game of cat and mouse with a giant “dog whistle” —as Tim calls it.

Only, there is one hiccup. Monarch and the team are no longer in control of the plan. Instead, Apex’s Jason Trissop, played by Cliff Curtis. The Apex agents unplugged the Monarch systems, took over Outpost 18’s hub, and started moving without regard for what Tim and Monarch had planned. 

The goal is to find the Titan, and now, it’s Apex’s job. With operational control being handed over to Trissop’s team, Tim’s decision to save lives is questioned. Instead of tracking and not losing the Titan, Tim chose to follow Lee’s call, which put the lives of the ships in the strait first. 

But the fact that Lee is not imprisoned means Apex now has control, and Tim’s job is to pull in the Randas and keep them from doing anything else. Of course, he doesn’t respect that wish. Kentaro (Ren Watabe), Hiroshi, Keiko, and Lee head into Shibuya to pick up Hiroshi’s sound machine, based on Dr. Suzuki’s original designs, to call the new Titan to the place they want. 

This is how the group can save people, but Monarch has put up “wanted” posters throughout Tokyo to capture them. Our protagonists aren’t just fighting time or Titan X in Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3; they’re fighting their own government and a capitalistic company. 

Surprisingly, though, Tim isn’t shrinking in Monarch Season 2 Episode 3. In “Secrets,” Tim and May (Kiersey Clemons) begin to craft a tertiary narrative point as they plot to keep control after Apex seized it. May will be a mole and Tim will do what he can to keep everything moving.

Because of this, May (who goes by Cora from this part in the episode) enters Apex headquarters again and takes a role. With their access to security and their systems, she can spy on the company from the inside out and hopefully keep Monarch’s research not money approach moving forward in the background. 

Keiko and Lee fans get a huge payoff in Monarch Season 2 Episode 3.

Back in the past, Keiko and Lee were recovering from the wounds they got in the village. But as they take care of each other, Keiko has to talk about what they both experienced. Not from the villagers, but the fact that they danced, and that Keiko very much thought about their kiss.

The reality is that they agreed not to love each other. Lee was late, Keiko is married to Bill, and that is reality. Their conversation seems like the end of it all. An acceptance of both the tension and their inability to act on something that would hurt their friend. 

But when Keiko attempts to take care of Lee’s wounds, and he freaks out, the tension has hit a boiling point in Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3. With an episode title of “Secrets,” it’s only right that the Randa family drama goes back to the past. 

And for those of the audience who, like myself, wanted to see Keiko and Lee give in to their yearning, well, we’re rewarded in Monarch Season 2 Episode 3. Paralleling her son’s decision to follow her heart, Keiko sleeps with Lee. It’s a moment that, onscreen, looks cathartic, like both characters are letting out a long breath. There is comfort in it, but Bill will return, and they have no plan. 

In the present, you can see remnants of that love. Throughout most of the episodes in Monarch Season 2, we have seen small tensions between Lee and Keiko, as well as moments of comfort. In the present, as they move through the streets of Shibuya, Lee holds Keiko, protecting her as they pass through crowds. 

But all of that is more complicated when Bill (Anders Holm) gets back from sea. While Lee is just trying not to talk about it, Keiko wants to know what to do next. They’re torn. And for Lee, the answer is to do nothing. When the trio got back to Washington, D.C. in 1957, they went completely separate ways. 

Keiko writes a letter to Lee, promising that she won’t allow their love to ruin a good man who has her heart. Crying as she writes it, Keiko looks to another lifetime where they could have loved each other openly. But in the moment, they could not be together. They are the best part of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. 

The confrontations in Keiko’s heart don’t stop in 1957. In the present, Hiroshi tells Keiko that Bill left him with his grandmother and disappeared. At 11 years old, Hiroshi was alone. Both of his parents were gone, and from the looks of it, Lee took Keiko’s letter to heart and chose to leave as well. 

Cate Randa is the least interesting part of Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3.

The least interesting part of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3, however, is Cate Randa (Anna Sawai). While the Randa family drama continues to interrupt the flow of every episode, in “Secrets,” Cate is once again reduced to a character who can’t help but sulk. 

Yes, Cate is struggling deeply with guilt, but she is doing nothing to help save the people she believes she has doomed. Despite May, once again, attempting to keep Cate on the Outpost and working with the rest of the team, Cate heads home to San Francisco. 

She heads to her mom’s house, sees her mom’s new husband, eating dinner with them, and holding back where she has been. That said, the selfishness that Cate displays is present at that table with her mom, and it continues into the end of the episode. 

Cate is still struggling with the guilt from releasing a new titan into the world. She is running away, and May wants her to stay, but their relationship doesn’t mean much. She is home after two years, and her mother is just happy to have her home.

When Cate goes out with an old fling, as if May doesn’t exist, she panics when an alert is issued as Titan X enters the Pacific. Defiant to seek shelter and a drunk mess, Cate Randa heads to the beach, a shell of her former self in some ways, and in others, a continued example of how the writers of this series just hate her. 

Cate ends Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 pathetically. She is standing on the beach where G-Day happened and weeping. She’s angry and sad, but more specifically, she is ashamed of her choice to say, Lee. It’s easy to see that “Secrets” aims to be an episode that shows regret for making “the right call.”

We see it when Tim is forced by command to think that it was wrong to prioritize life over tracking, and we see it here as Cate continues to verbally self-flagellate and voice her guilt. Still, much like May, I am over this entire subplot. 

Audiences don’t have to like Cate, but they should be able to understand her. And right now, when everyone, including Hiroshi, Kentaro, and May (who also share responsibility for the rescue), works to fix their mistake, Cate just breaks. More importantly, it’s how pathetically she breaks that ultimately makes it feel like the writers just have no idea what to do with her. 

Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 brings back Season 1’s weaknesses.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 separates the characters once again, scattering us across the US, Japan, and, of course, the past. With everyone focused on their own problems and their own solutions, “Secrets” puts the series back where it was. 

There is a frustration when it comes to Monarch Season 2 Episode 3 , and it’s all rooted in the series refusing to engage with an ensemble cast all in one place, or at the very least all moving forward in one mission. The scattered approach to narrative building decentralizes where your focus should be, leaving me to question why I should care about anyone not named Keik or Lee. 

Monarch Legacy of Monsters Season 2 Episode 3 is streaming now on Apple TV with new episodes every Friday. 

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