Monarch trailer: At long last, Kurt Russell and Godzilla are teaming up
Plus: John Goodman, Wyatt Russell, Anne Sawai, and more round out the cast of the Apple TV+ giant monster series
In what we’re certain is set to be one of the great TV team-ups of all time—a buddy pairing on the order of Cagney & Lacey, Laverne & Shirley, and other beloved team-ups with an ampersand trapped betwixt their names—Apple TV+ has released the first teaser trailer for Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, a.k.a. “The show where Godzilla & Kurt Russell will soon be hanging out.”
Okay, so there’s slightly more going on with the series than just that particular collab-o, as Legendary’s fitfully extant “Monsterverse” Cinematic Universe finally gets its own WandaVision or Loki equivalent in the realm of streaming TV. That includes what looks to be a lot of jumping between timelines, much of it centered on Russell’s character, Lee Shaw, who appears as both a young man in the 1950s, and in the modern era; luckily, producers had access to “a young Kurt Russsell-type” in the form of his son, Wyatt Russell, who plays the younger Shaw.
Also appearing in the trailer: John Goodman, who appears to be hanging out in a whole separate timeline of his own, reprising his role from Kong: Skull Island, and giving the series a subtitle by talking about his “legacy.” (Of monsters, presumably.) (Also, Workaholics star Anders Holm is apparently playing a younger Goodman, which is a wild thing to consider.) The series also stars Anne Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, Elisa Lasowski, and Godzilla, who pops up at the end of the trailer to remind that this is, in fact, a Godzilla TV show, at least kind of.
Because, we’re going to be honest here: This thing looks stupid-complicated for a show meant to give a backstory to movies about big animals hitting each other a bunch. The Monsterverse movies have always been a little too into their own backstories—presumably hoping to create a web of narratives as rich and beloved as the ones that power the MCU, despite having to make all this stuff up out of whole cloth instead of relying on decades of comics—and Monarch feels like it’s steering into that side of things shockingly hard.
But, hey: We’ll know more when the series premieres on November 17.