Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 premiered on the 2026 TV schedule last week, and not only is Kurt Russell’s Lee Shaw back in play after it was initially assumed he died in the Season 1 finale, we’re also still getting to follow along with his younger self, reprised by Wyatt Russell. But the younger Russell isn’t only getting time to shine in the MonsterVerse through Monarch. It was announced in December that the Thunderbolts* star will also lead a Lee Shaw spinoff, and I’m intrigued by what the younger Russell had to say about why he’s “over-the-moon excited” about the upcoming Apple TV subscription-exclusive series.
It was previously revealed that this spinoff will follow Lee in 1984 when he’s sent on a secret mission to stop the Soviets from unleashing a “horrific new Titan” on the United States to turn the tide of the Cold War. When THR asked Wyatt Russell how “substantial” the talk is for the Lee Shaw show is while he was promoting Monarch: Legacy of Monsters alongside his father, he answered:
We are shooting it this summer, and I’ve read the scripts. They’re very well written. I’m more excited to start working on this than I have been about anything in a long time. The genre that the Lee Shaw show will live in is totally separate from the genre Monarch lives in, and it’s very different in a way that I think is really exciting. I think people will expect one thing when they watch it, and that expectation will be completely subverted. Early on in the show, people are going to be like, ‘This is wild. This is so different from what I thought I was going to be watching — in the best way.’
You may recall it was revealed in the Monarch Season 1 episode “Axis Mundi” that while Lee Shaw thought he’d only spent one week in the realm between Earth and Hollow Earth, 20 years had actually passed on the surface by the time he reemerged. From there, it was indicated that he spent the next 32 years being kept heavily medicated and under house arrest at a Monarch facility, with the events of Godzilla jolting him back to reality. And yet, now we know that’s not entirely true since he was sent on a mission to Russia a couple years after returning to Earth, and Wyatt Russell is clearly jazzed about what this story entails.
I suspect that the Lee Shaw spinoff will have more of a spy thriller tone compared to Monarch given the time period and setting, although there’s only so far you can go with the spycraft when giant monsters are rampaging about. Naturally Wyatt Russell didn’t open up about specific plot details, but he did mention how Joby Harold, who executive produces Monarch alongside his wife, Tory Tunnell (who recently spoke with CinemaBlend), is showrunning and writing the spinoff. The actor then said:
It is still early days in terms of pre-production, but I’m over-the-moon excited about it. Everybody is. It’s exciting to expand the MonsterVerse, and hopefully, for the next 10 or 15 years or however long, people can get excited about this new wave of storytelling that will come out of the MonsterVerse. It focuses on the humans, but the monsters are still a big part of it, so it’s really fun to be able to help create that.
I was already excited about getting to see more of Wyatt Russell playing Lee Shaw, but now I’m especially eager to see how the spinoff tonally stands out from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, yet still aligns with the overall feel of the MonsterVerse. That makes it even more of a shame that the show likely won’t arrive to Apple TV for several years, and that’s assuming there aren’t any complications. But it’s like they say, good things come to those who wait.
Fortunately, we can at least spend more time with the younger Lee Shaw through the latest round of flashbacks in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. New episodes of the series are released Friday on Apple TV. Wyatt Russell will also be seen reprising John Walker, a.k.a. U.S. Agent, in the upcoming Marvel movie Avengers: Doomsday at the end of the year.
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