It’s been two years since Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premiered to Apple TV+ subscription-holders, and there’s still no word about when or even if Season 2 will premiere on the 2026 TV schedule. But make no mistake, the next chapter of the MonsterVerse small screen tie-in is coming, with filming having wrapped back in March. Today brings us the biggest Monarch update since then, as it’s been officially revealed that a surprising character will be back in Season 2, and I’m now racking my brain about how this is possible.
Did you think we’d seen the last of Kurt Russell on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters after what happened in the Season 1 finale? Think again! He is confirmed to be reprising the older Lee Shaw in Season 2, as you’ll see in the below video shared on Instagram:
Ok, what’s going on here? When we last saw Kurt Russell’s Lee Shaw in the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1 finale, he’d sacrificed himself during the escape from Axis Mundi to repair the vehicle that Cate Randa, May and Keiko were aboard so they could get back to the surface. Surely I wasn’t unreasonable for thinking he’d died, right? Well, I guess the rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated, as the video ends with Russell saying on the Monarch set, “You ain’t getting rid of me that easy.”
Now some of you may point out that perhaps we’ll only see Russell reprising Lee through flashbacks, and I suppose that’s possible. However, the actor is clearly on the set for Skull Island, where Cate, May and Keiko ended up at the end of Monarch Season 1. So if you put the pieces together, not only did Lee survive that fall in Axis Mundi, he somehow managed to make it back to the surface. How did he manage to pull that off on his own? Or did the people at Apex Cybernetics, which has a base on Skull Island at this point in the MonsterVerse timeline, mount an operation to rescue him?
Whatever the explanation is, I’m certainly not complaining about this twist. The more Kurt Russell, the better! We’ll also see more of Wyatt Russell as the younger Lee Shaw in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2. Given that he was last chronologically seen being placed under house arrest in 1982, where he’d stay for the next 33 years, presumably we’ll look back on him in flashbacks taking place prior to his first trip into Axis Mundi.
Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe and Mari Yamamoto are among the other familiar faces who will be back for Monarch Season 2. Amber Midthunder has also come aboard to play Isabel, who is reportedly an “intelligent and powerful businesswoman.” With this Kurt Russell footage being unveiled, hopefully that means the show’s first trailer, accompanied by the premier date, will be released soon.
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