Remember how I was upset with Castlevania? Very mild spoilers here.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters shows how to give a character life after killing them in episode one. It makes that death a tragedy instead of a cheap trick, and lets us come to know the person—their strengths, their joys, and their faults—even after we know they’re dead. Even better, that character’s death and life reveal the themes foundational to the Godzilla series; after all, Godzilla stories aren’t just about giant monsters.

Don’t worry. There are definitely some giant monsters. It’s just… Monarch, like the first Godzilla movie, is really more about human drama and humanity’s hubris than about a big stompy beast.

I think Godzilla movies are, in the classical Greek sense, very much about hubris and nemesis. Hubris in this case is a violation of the natural order, or transgression against the gods (often via placing oneself equal to or above the gods). Nemesis follows hubris as the implacable rebalancer, punishing and avenging the crime of hubris, ending the imbalance which hubris created. In the original Godzilla movie, humanity’s hubris is the creation and use of nuclear weapons. Godzilla is the nemesis, while also symbolizing the awful power of nuclear weapons in turn. Quoting the producer Tomoyuki Tanaka (sourced via wikipedia), “Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind.”

I’m reaching for Ancient Greek sensibilities here because I know them better than I do Japanese sensibilities. I’m pretty sure there’s thematic overlap, though the Japanese tradition may have more to do with imbalance or disrespect for a wider natural order (and the kami) rather than disrespect for the very personified Greek gods. Either way, Godzilla movies have long used themes of humanity’s obsession and overreach leading to destruction, disaster, and tragedy. That looks a lot like the cycle of hubris and nemesis to me.

Monarch plays with these themes. It highlights dangerous obsession and a disregard for consequences even in the more reasonable characters. People, even those who argue against the larger pattern of humanity’s hubris—the belief that humanity can master or dominate nature, the reaction to nature as a threat which must be eliminated, the embrace of nuclear weapons—may still be blind to the consequences of their own actions, ambitions, or obsessions. And those consequences roll on for everyone who comes after them, a smaller nemesis befitting their smaller hubris, visited on them and their descendants.

It’s poetic. And tragic.

Speaking of tragedy, I can’t talk about the character death bit without opening up some *SPOILERS*.

If you read my Castlevania review, you might expect me not to like Monarch.

As in Castlevania, a cool woman dies in the first episode: Dr Keiko Miura, Kei to her friends, who is clearly rad and at least a little irradiated. She dies but, unlike Dr Lisa Tepes in Castlevania, she’s not fridged. This is in no small part because the show does fun things with time. There are at least two main storylines, one in 2015 and one in the 1950s, and the 1950s segments aren’t given totally in order.

Monarch embraces the technique that I suggested might salvage some of Castlevania’s shittiness. After seeing her die, the show explores Dr Miura’s life in the 1950s storyline prior to her death. Because we know her fate, we’re given the bittersweet experience of growing to like Kei, even as we see what obsessions and ideals lead her to her death. There’s tragic tension in our growing appreciation for her despite our knowledge of her future. Meanwhile, the 2015 storyline is predominantly about uncovering old family secrets and mysteries—and here Kei’s mysterious death and the hole that creates in her family (not helped, of course, by the obsessions of other family members) reverberates down the generations.

This is how to give a character a meaningful life after killing them in episode one.

I admit, I wasn’t certain that the show would do this, or do it well. I was upset at the end of the first episode. But I kept going for several reasons: first, I like Matt Fraction’s work elsewhere and I trusted him to not squander a cool character or engage in fridging; second, Dr Miura’s death was dramatically- and genre-appropriate, rather than being shoehorned in; third, we already had other female characters who didn’t feel like caricatures. Basically, because they’d laid the groundwork and had a history of not being shitty, despite being distraught I was willing to give the writers a chance to prove me wrong.

I’m glad I did.

You want to know more? Okay, here are *MORE SPOILERS*.

I’ve only seen the first three episodes, because that’s all that’s out so far. But I’ve been impressed: we have yet to see anything that happens immediately after Kei’s death. We see character growth and emotional shifts for characters who saw Kei die, but it’s all many years down the line—and in the case of Bill Randa, it’s arguably not growth at all but a regression into obsession mirroring the pattern which led to Kei’s death in the first place. The writers successfully killed a character and then made the subsequent story more about her life, and the lives of her grandchildren, than about the effect her death had on anyone in her immediate circle.

This is anti-fridging! I love it!

People die. It’s a fact of life. Obviously, characters will die too. But writing a female character’s death in genre fiction has been done so poorly for so long that my hackles are raised every time I see one coming. So this show is refreshing. Catching the tiny glimpse of who Bill Randa became in the decades after Keiko Miura’s death, and seeing how Lee Shaw was still clearly shaped by his time with Keiko and Bill many decades later, really just reinforces my appreciation. We can see the impact of Kei’s life on these people because we’re given the chance to see her life with them before her death. But the impact of her death on others is not the focus of the show. We can also infer the impact of her loss on Bill and Lee, and on the rest of her family, without making the show about Bill or Lee. That’s because we see the gaping vacant hole of mysteries and questions that her grandchildren face, and the ways the impact of her life is still felt by those who knew her.

I could write a lot more about all that, but… *END SPOILERS*.

On to other fun things.

I love that this show got Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell. If you’re telling a story with one character in multiple time periods, casting a father-son pair to play the character is just perfect. I don’t know that I’m deeply attached to their character, Lee Shaw, but I like the continuity that the two of them bring to the role. Besides which, it’s early days yet. I’ve only seen three episodes out of a planned ten.

I’m curious to see how the seeds planted in the 1950s timeline will grow in the 2015 timeline. The show is building up a variety of secrets and intrigues, and I would be shocked if there weren’t yet more to come. I do want to care a little more about the modern day characters though. The 1950s story feels the most emotionally evocative for me, and I can’t put my finger on what’s not connecting with me for the 2015 storyline. Maybe it’s the fact that there are so many unknowns? The characters themselves are so much on the back foot—there’s so much going on, I don’t feel like I have a chance to feel whatever deeper pathos or emotional journey these modern day characters are experiencing.

In a way, this show really feels like it’s built of two separate parts. There’s the emotional storyline of the 1950s, with Dr Keiko Miura, Bill Randa, and Lt Lee Shaw; we know parts of their fates, and we’re given a chance to see their characters grow. Then there’s the more thriller-genre storyline of the 2015 segment, with mystery and intrigue and discovery, but with so much surprise and novelty that our POV characters are almost constantly bewildered.

That wasn’t always the case. The 2015 storyline starts off strong, gripping, very emotionally and experientially anchored in Cate Randa’s perspective. I don’t know how long it will take for the 2015 segment to settle down and give our characters a chance to recenter and feel something other than shock and adrenaline, but I look forward to whatever comes up when they do.

Anyway. If you have Apple TV, or if you like Godzilla stories, I recommend trying this show. Heck, I’d recommend this for the 1950s show segment alone. And the 2015 segment does a lot of excellent world building and exposition with diegetic elements, without beating you over the head or boring you to death. It’s fun. Give it a try.