After throwing most of the main characters down a hole last week, we find out where they ended up, as well as why Shaw looks so dang good for a 90 year old, and a rather incredible revelation at the end of the episode.
The Present
This week’s present section begins with Kentaro waking up in a Monarch hospital after the events of last week’s episode, where Deputy Director Verdugo and Tim inform him that Shaw was successful in collapsing the portal to Hollow Earth in Kazakhstan and also tell him that they are certain the resulting explosion and chaos had killed Cate, Corah (May), and Shaw. Kentaro refuses to believe Monarch at first but Verdugo insists he goes home to his mother in Tokyo. In the meantime, we see Shaw waking up in Hollow Earth and immediately starting his search for Cate. He does, however, find May and rescues her just as an electrical discharge shoots up towards the sky. He guides her through the forest, dodging several more discharges, which he explains are caused by a portal closing, leaving an electrical current in the ground. Once safe, Corah starts demanding some answers out of Shaw and he tells her why he knows so much about Hollow Earth. He’s been down there before. Realising he’s her best chance for survival and going home, Corah helps search for Cate.
Kentaro safely returns home to his mum in Tokyo, where he vents at her about losing Cate, realising he does now see her as his sister, unlike at the start of the series, and his mother urges him into following his instincts and keeping hope that Cate is alive. Kentaro decides to head to Hiroshi’s Tokyo office, where he runs into dear old dad and the two argue about everything that has happened. Kentaro tells Hiroshi about Cate’s assumed death and has a go at Hiroshi for failing the siblings as a father, regardless of Hiroshi’s intentions, at which point Hiroshi breaks down in tears.
Going back to Hollow Earth, Cate finally wakes up and comes face to face by what looks like a small boar Titan. She tries to escape but the boar charges. Out of nowhere, an arrow to the eye scares it off. The camera pans up to a shadowy figure who steps forward and reveals herself to be none other than Keiko!
The Past
This week’s flashbacks and the episode itself start off in 1962, with Billy and Shaw in a trailer with young Hiroshi. The pair are preparing for an expedition, so “Uncle Lee” comforts Hiroshi and promises to return by giving Hiroshi his pocket knife. Ever since Hiroshi lost his mother, Keiko, in the Kazakhstan expedition, Billy adopted Hiroshi as his own and is raising him as best as he can. As Billy and Shaw navigate through the Monarch site, we are quickly informed that they are planning an expedition through a portal and into Hollow Earth, with Shaw leading an exploration team. Monarch has also discovered that the portals between the two Earths are unstable until a Titan is passing through, so the plan is to “offer up a meal,” as General Puckett puts it, to a nearby Titan in the hopes they can hitch a ride down to Hollow Earth, which would be otherwise completely inaccessible for humans. Shaw and the team make it inside the portal but things rapidly take a turn for the worse on the surface as everything gets torn apart as the portal collapses. Once things have settled, Monarch finds the portal has gone and Billy is left to inform Hiroshi that Shaw didn’t make it home like he promised. General Puckett does later inform Billy that the DoD will be shutting down Project Monarch after Project Hourglass, the name for the expedition, was a catastrophic failure. Billy insists he be allowed to find Shaw but Puckett reminds me of everything Hiroshi has lost and how much he is needed by the kid.
Some point later, not yet revealed, Shaw wakes up in a quarantine bubble inside a Monarch facility, where nurses in hazmat suits are asking him his name, status, and mission but, instead of answering and cooperating with their enquiry, he demands to talk to Bill Randa, taking a nurse hostage to get what he wants. While holding the hospital under siege, Shaw runs into a now adult Hiroshi, who informs him he’s in a Monarch medical facility and that 20 years have passed since Project Hourglass, meaning Shaw has woken up in 1982. Shaw was inside Hollow Earth for 20 years! No wonder he looks so good for his age in the 2015 sections. Hiroshi does later visit Shaw in his quarantine bubble and questions him about how he survived in Hollow Earth and why he hasn’t aged at all.
Shaw proceeds to explain that his team survived passing through the portal and started their mission by doing recon on their landing area. However, they were confronted by several Titans, which Shaw describes as “massive unidentified terrestrial organisms”. During one such encounter with the dragon Titan from an earlier episode, Shaw was dragged back to Earth by the portal the Titan went through but he came out in 1982, meaning Billy and Keiko’s theories about the portals and teleportation were correct this entire time. Refusing to believe Shaw, however, Hiroshi refuses to explore Hollow Earth any further, claiming it drove his parents insane and that certain aspects of nature are best left alone. He then informs Shaw that he’s being sent to a Monarch monitoring station that’s disguised as a retirement home, which is where Cate, Kentaro, and Corah found him at the start of all this, and subsequently broke him out.
My Opinion
This week’s episode is arguably my favourite so far, just for the shock ending where Keiko is alive and well, after getting attacked by the baby bug Titans in Kazakhstan and falling into the darkness. Finding out humans don’t actually need the HEAVs they used in Godzilla vs. Kong was a bit of a disappointment but, as we roll into next week’s episode, which is sure to be an explosive finale to the season, I still have a lot of questions like, how does Godzilla really play into all of this? What is this threat Monarch is so scared of? How will Cate, Corah, and Shaw escape Hollow Earth? What is Hiroshi’s mission? How has Keiko survived in Hollow Earth for so long and will she return to Earth? Hopefully we will get answers to all of these questions next week.
Have you seen Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Episode 9? What was your favourite moment of the episode? Let us know in the comments below!
