During the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters series premiere, Mari Yamamoto’s character Keiko was thought to have died in 1959. We continued to follow along with her in scenes set earlier in the MonsterVerse timeline, but then it was revealed at the end of “Axis Mundi” that not only was Keiko still alive, she was still youthful. By the end of the Monarch Season 1 finale, Keiko finally returned to the surface, where it’s now 2017 in the series. Tory Tunnell, one of the Apple TV subscription-exclusive show’s executive producers, talked about how this Captain America-like situation she’s now in will be explored in Season 2, which will soon debut on the 2026 TV schedule.
For those who need more context, I’m referring to how Captain America ended up frozen in the final months of World War II and was thawed decades later, with the Super Soldier Serum in his body keeping him alive. It’s different for Keiko, as time flows differently in Axis Mundi, so she’d only been there for two months from her perspective. Nevertheless, now she finds herself nearly 60 years from when she first disappeared, and Tunnell had the following to say to SFX Magazine on CinemaBlend about the “uncomfortable emotional places” Keiko will find herself in:
It’s a unique opportunity, and other shows aren’t able to give that kind of storytelling. It’s unique to us with our Axis Mundi rules of time. It allows us to have her consider both the relationships she had in the past – some of which are here in the present at different ages. What does that mean? There are a lot of questions she needs to ask and a lot of re-evaluations. Also, that’s [played] against urgent time… that is really exciting and dynamic, and something we haven’t seen before.
Keiko realized how her world had been turned upside down in Axis Mundi when she came face to face with Lee Shaw, now decades older, and learned that her husband, Bill Randa, died long ago. Additionally, she met her granddaughter, Cate, in that realm alongside May, and upon returning to the surface, she was reunited with her son, Hiroshi, who’s now older than her, and her grandson, Kentaro. Talk about a shock to the system, one that became more jolting by these Monarch characters being together on Skull Island and having to quickly take cover on a stormy night because Kong was approaching.
So much like how Captain America is referred to a “man out of time,” Keiko finds herself in an alien time period where most of the people she knew have died. For the few that remain, her relationships with them will inevitably evolve, and she also has to forge meaningful connections with the new people in her life. Oh, and that all has to be balanced with the latest round of Titan craziness, which not only involves Godzilla and Kong, but also a new monster threat known only as Titan X.
It sounds like we’ll see a lot of compelling character work done with Keiko when Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 gets underway on February 27. This corner of the MonsterVerse is also set to expand on Apple TV with a Lee Shaw-focused prequel spinoff set in the 1980s, but if you’d like to revisit the MonsterVerse movies, you’ll need an HBO Max subscription.
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