One of the most subtle and clever elements of is how it honors its source materials without being obvious or boring. Similar to Season 1, major monsters like Godzilla and Kong are used infrequently, with humans remaining the focus as they face a new danger. This season centers heavily on the massive sea creature Titan X, and as it delves into the monster’s lore, Monarch revisits its roots.
Here’s how Monarch Season 2, Episode 2, “Resonance,” subtly references the original 1933 classic King Kong — but not in the way you might expect.
Spoilers ahead.
While Episode 2 has plenty of action in the near-present (technically, the show’s modern segments take place in 2017 here), the most compelling developments in this episode occur in the past, specifically 1957. As in the previous episode,, Bill Randa (Anders Holm) and Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) are exploring a remote island near Chile, following rumors of a strange creature. Episode 1 already revealed that the locals were urging the trio to leave, but in Episode 2, after Bill heads off to check out a nearby cave, the villagers suddenly shift their stance.
Why do the villagers actually want Lee and Keiko to stay? The short answer: they’re getting ready to sacrifice our heroes to the monster — probably a version of Titan X, or at least one of the smaller creatures we’ve seen linked to it. Remote island? Human sacrifice? Does that sound familiar?
In the original King Kong, while scouting Skull Island for the title monster, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) is captured by the island dwellers and offered as a sacrifice to Kong. This iconic scene finds Ann nearly eaten by Kong, before he takes her from the sacrificial altar and flees to his lair, driving much of the classic film’s second act. In fact, the reveal that Kong is a massive ape comes when the locals present Ann to him. This scene was later remade in the 1976 King Kong, where Ann was played by Jessica Lange, and again in 2005 by Naomi Watts.
Monarch doesn’t copy these exact plot points, and in this case, it’s not Kong the villagers are trying to appease with a sacrifice — it’s Titan X, or perhaps the small, bug-like creatures associated with it. In the present, Lee Shaw is trying to release one of the small creatures to distract while in the past, one villager even wears a costume that resembles Titan X, and foreheads are marked with a double-eye symbol mirroring the new monster’s creepy eye.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger, though we know Keiko and Lee can’t fall victim to this gruesome ritual in 1957 — they’re both alive in the present. That said, nobody was really worried Kong would eat Fay Ray back when these monsters were in black-and-white. The point of this kind of scene isn’t to make us think these humans are about to become monster food. Instead, like Kong in 1933, Monarch’s monsters are scary not just because they’re monsters, but because entire cultures have been built around fearing them. And when that happens, humans basically turn into monsters themselves.