Spoilers

Episode 1: “Aftermath”

Episode 2: “Departure”

The new Apple + series that fills out the world of Monarch, the monster hunting organization from the Godzilla/Kong movies, from Skull Island to the recent Godzilla vs. Kong.

I really enjoyed these first two episodes, both dropped in Apple TV + this weekend. The next episode looks to be dropped next Wednesday.

The story jumps around in time, starting off in 1973 with John Goodman during Kong: Skull Island time. We went to the 20-teens and also back to 1959.

What is really cool about this is that, with the different time frames, Wyatt Russell is playing the same character ( a younger version) that his father, Kurt Russell, plays. Such a fun bit of stunt casting.

The show spent a good deal of time setting up characters and the world building. There were some monsters in the episode, but Godzilla appeared in scenes from the 2014 Godzilla movie. And a fascinating part of the episode was dealing with the world suffering from the danger of Godzilla.

Cate (Anna Sawai) heads to Japan to look into her recently deceased father’s apartment (that she did not know about) and found her father had another family. Cate had been front and center in G-Day (when Godzilla rampaged through San Francisco) so she is suffering from Godzilla PTSD.

We’ve seen some other monsters, including a really frightening bug-monster/World War Zombie-like moment.

This is a good start to this series. I am curious to where it is going from here.