This article contains minor spoilers for “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” season 2.

During the halcyon days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the idea of a fictional universe shared between multiple mediums seemed ripe with potential. Nearly two decades into the grand MCU experiment, the mantra of “everything is connected” leaves a lot to be desired, as the realities of film and television production make such a mission statement a tricky prospect. During the first phase of the MCU, the ABC show “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” struggled to balance the episodic adventures of its titular peacekeeping spy organization with the larger events taking place in the MCU that were supposedly concurrent. This resulted in future shows, like the Netflix “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” and others, being largely divorced from the feature films. This made it easier on the showrunners but less fulfilling for dedicated fans. Then, with the dawn of Disney+, the pendulum swung the other way, and while those series featured characters and actors from the films, they simultaneously felt too tied in and too disconnected from the movies at once.

Leave it to Godzilla to solve a problem. The second season of Apple TV’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” a series set in the Legendary/Toho MonsterVerse, makes this shared universe thing look easy. It takes place in the same universe as the feature films without having to hide its connections or obfuscate when, where, or how it does so. The series also has enough stakes and scale to feel cohesive as its own story, yet it is never big enough for its lack of mention in the films to become awkward. It’s the ideal version of an in-universe series, pulling off what most Marvel series still struggle to do. To be fair, it does have several built-in elements that make this achievement easier.

The biggest killer that the MonsterVerse has, which pretty much every other cinematic universe doesn’t have, is that its star characters aren’t human. The MCU became reliant on its biggest and most popular characters being portrayed by Hollywood’s A-list stars (and thus too expensive and/or busy to make a cameo on a TV show, let alone guest star). The MonsterVerse stars — Godzilla and Kong — may cost a little when it comes to the VFX that bring them to life, but they’re readily available to appear in an episode of “Monarch.” These appearances help make watching the show feel like you’re watching one of the films, just on the small screen. Even if neither Godzilla nor Kong are in a given episode, there’s undoubtedly some Titan activity to behold, such as Titan X, a new creature for the second season.

To be fair, this lack of reliance on human characters was established by the MonsterVerse films themselves, which generally have not featured the same actor/character for more than two movies in a row. Fortunately, it doesn’t mean that “Monarch” is similarly unconcerned with its human heroes. In fact, the humans in “Monarch” are easily the most consistently compelling human characters in the universe since 2017’s “Kong: Skull Island” (a film which the series not so surprisingly has the most connection to). The likes of actors such as Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Anna Sawai, and, new this season, Amber Midthunder playing these characters certainly help a great deal, too. Overall, “Monarch” never feels like a waiting game for big characters or events to show up or pay off, and instead operates like a solid genre show all its own.

The other major element that keeps “Monarch” from being a casualty of its cinematic universe is that the two seasons of the show are so far not set in the films’ current timeline. As of season 2, “Monarch” takes place (frequent flashbacks aside) in 2017, two years before 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” Similar to something like “Avengers: Infinity War,” “King of the Monsters” established a new worldwide status quo for the MonsterVerse, which carried over into the “Godzilla x Kong” films, and thus a series like “Monarch” would be forced to play alongside the movies were it set in the present day. 

Keeping it in the franchise’s past allows the showrunners to tell their own story without worrying about what’s happening in the future, since that future is already set. It also allows the focus to remain on the titular Titan defense and discovery organization, something which is emphasized during the season through Monarch team player Tim (Joe Tippett) and founder Dr. Keiko Randa (Mari Yamamoto), newly brought to the present from the past, jointly hoping to restore Monarch to its original mission.

That latter aspect of time travel is the secret weapon of “Monarch,” both for its dramatic possibilities as well as a skeleton key to the future, should the show ever wish to use it. The time-dilated realm of Axis Mundi (an offshoot dimension of the Hollow Earth as seen in the films) could provide a perfect excuse for a jump forward in time for the series. Yet, for now, “Monarch” seems content and busy enough to stay in its own corner of the MonsterVerse where it’s thriving. As they say, there’s no need to look a gift Titan in the mouth, right?