‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Season 3 in the Works at Apple TV, With a New Showrunner and New Titans: Everything We Know
Godzilla's TV career isn't over, but it may be about to get a brand-new brain. Apple TV is in talks with Legendary Television about a third season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters , the Kurt and Wyatt Russell kaiju drama that wrapped its second season on May 1. The catch, reported Thursday by Deadline and also covered by Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and TVLine, is that any renewal would come with a creative overhaul: a new showrunner, a new writers room and new Titans stomping through the MonsterVerse.
Nothing is signed yet, and nobody has said a word about who stays in front of the camera. But the shape of the deal says a lot about where Legendary wants its monster franchise to go on the small screen, especially with a Wyatt Russell spinoff already in the works and Godzilla x Kong: Supernova heading to theaters in March. Here's everything confirmed, who's behind the show, the numbers that make it worth saving, and what a reboot-within-a-series could mean for the King of the Monsters.
Watch the Season 2 Teaser
If you skipped Season 2, this is the official teaser Apple released ahead of the February premiere. It is the best look at Titan X, the tentacled, warship-wrecking original creature the season was built around.
The Details: What's Actually Confirmed
Let's separate what's real from what's wishful thinking. Here is where things stand as of October 30, 2026:
- No official renewal yet. Apple TV and Legendary Television are in talks. TVLine says its sources confirmed the negotiations, but the streamer has not ordered a third season.
- A new showrunner. Co-creator Chris Black, who ran both seasons, would reportedly not return, according to Deadline's report as summarized by iHorror. Variety reports several candidates have been approached, but no names have surfaced.
- New writers and new Titans. Every outlet agrees the plan is a fresh writers room and fresh monsters from the MonsterVerse roster.
- The cast is an open question. As Dread Central and TVLine both note, it is not confirmed whether any actors would leave.
- The show so far: 20 episodes across two 10-episode seasons. Season 1 ran November 17, 2023, to January 12, 2024, on what was then Apple TV+. Season 2 ran weekly from February 27 to May 1, 2026, on the rebranded Apple TV.
The core ensemble that carried Season 2: Anna Sawai as Cate Randa, Kiersey Clemons as May Olowe-Hewitt, Ren Watabe as Kentaro Randa, Mari Yamamoto as Keiko Miura, Anders Holm as Bill Randa and Joe Tippett as Tim. Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell share the role of Army officer Lee Shaw, with Wyatt playing him in the 1950s and Kurt playing the older version half a century later. That father-son casting trick has been the show's calling card since day one.
Who's Behind It
Chris Black and Matt Fraction developed the series. Fraction is one of the most celebrated comic writers of his generation, best known for Marvel's Hawkeye run, while Black steered both seasons as showrunner. If Black really is out, it is the single biggest change in the show's history, because the series' slow-burn family mystery, bouncing between decades, has been his structure from the start.
Photo: Matt Fraction via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures executive produce, and Harold oversees the MonsterVerse on the Apple side. That matters, because Harold is already running the next show. Toho, Godzilla's home studio, is a full partner through executive producers Hiro Matsuoka and Takemasa Arita, which is why the series can use the real Godzilla rather than a lookalike.
In front of the camera, the genre pedigree is real. Kurt Russell is horror royalty as MacReady in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), still the gold standard for creature paranoia. Wyatt Russell has his own genre credits, including the Nazi-zombie war movie Overlord (2018) and the "Playtest" episode of Black Mirror. Anna Sawai came to Monarch before her Emmy-winning breakout in FX's Shōgun , which turned her into one of the most in-demand actors on TV and makes her availability a fair question for any third season.
Photo: Anna Sawai via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped.
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The Backstory: From Greenlight to Titan X
Apple greenlit Monarch in January 2022 as a joint venture between Legendary Television, Safehouse and Toho, according to the show's production history. Casting rolled out across mid-2022: Sawai, Watabe, Clemons and Tippett in June, the Russells in July, Yamamoto in August and Holm in September. The first season premiered in November 2023, the same month Toho's own Godzilla Minus One hit theaters, which made for a very crowded month of atomic breath.
Apple renewed the show for Season 2 on April 11, 2024, and fans then waited almost two years for it. When it finally arrived on February 27, 2026, it moved the action to Skull Island and to a coastal village where an ancient Titan rises from the sea. That creature, nicknamed Titan X, was an original design rather than a classic Toho monster. TechRadar described it as a kraken-like horror with a horned, reptilian head, and the trailer shows its claw-lined tentacles shredding a warship. GamesRadar pointed out that the season also brought Kong into the show alongside Godzilla.
Then, in December 2025, before Season 2 had even aired, Legendary and Apple announced a spinoff built around young Lee Shaw. Wyatt Russell leads it, Joby Harold is the showrunner and, per Dread Central and iHorror, JD Dillard ( Sweetheart ) directs the pilot. It is set in 1984 and follows Shaw as he tries to stop the Soviet Union from unleashing a new Titan on the United States. iHorror lists Millie Brady, Pilou Asbæk, Corey Stoll, Ralph Ineson, Nyasha Hatendi, Connie Nielsen and Stana Katic in the cast, under what it describes as a multi-series deal between Legendary and Apple.
By the Numbers
Apple doesn't publish viewership, so the clearest numbers are the franchise's. According to the MonsterVerse box office tallies, the five films have earned about $2.53 billion worldwide:
- Godzilla (2014): about $529 million
- Kong: Skull Island (2017): about $569 million
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): about $387 million
- Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): about $470 million, during the pandemic and a same-day HBO Max release
- Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024): about $572 million, the franchise high
The next one, Godzilla x Kong: Supernova , opens March 26, 2027, from director Grant Sputore with a script credited to David Callaham, and stars Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Stevens, Jack O'Connell, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Matthew Modine, Delroy Lindo and Sam Neill. On the critical side, Monarch 's first season landed in the high 80s on Rotten Tomatoes, a better critical showing than most of the films have managed. Meanwhile Toho's own lane is hot: Godzilla Minus One grossed $116 million worldwide on a famously small budget and won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and its follow-up, Godzilla Minus Zero , reaches North American theaters November 6.
Analysis: Why Legendary Wants a New Brain for Its Monster Show
Read between the lines and this looks less like a rescue and more like a franchise tune-up. Legendary now has three things running at once on the Apple side: the flagship, a 1984 Lee Shaw prequel with a growing cast, and a theatrical tentpole every couple of years. A new showrunner on Monarch means a writers room built to fit that bigger machine rather than one story told on its own schedule. The phrase that keeps repeating in every report, "new Titans," tells you the priority. The monsters are the selling point, and Season 3 will lean harder on them.
That is a real tension for fans. The best thing about Monarch has always been that it treats kaiju like a horror movie treats a haunting: mostly unseen, terrifying when it arrives, and less important than what it does to the families living in its shadow. The biggest complaint has always been the opposite: not enough Godzilla. A creative reset is the obvious way to fix that complaint, and also the easiest way to lose what made the show different from the movies.
TV history is full of genre shows that survived a showrunner change. The Walking Dead went through four showrunners and ran for 11 seasons. But plenty of others lost their voice when the original architect left, and Monarch is a serialized mystery whose two timelines only work if someone knows exactly where they meet. The smartest version of Season 3 keeps the Randa family and Kurt Russell's Shaw as its emotional spine while the new team widens the monster roster. The riskiest version treats the show like a soft reboot to sync up with Supernova.
There's also the competition. Toho has proven with Minus One that a grim, human-scale Godzilla story can win Oscars and fill theaters. Netflix's animated Skull Island already explored the Kong side of the MonsterVerse. A third Monarch season needs to give Apple subscribers something those can't, and a dread-heavy, character-first monster drama is still that thing.
What We Still Don't Know
- Whether Apple formally orders Season 3, and when.
- Who replaces Chris Black as showrunner. Several people have reportedly been approached.
- Whether Kurt Russell, Anna Sawai and the rest of the ensemble return, especially with Wyatt Russell busy leading the prequel.
- Which Titans join. No creature has been named.
- How Season 3 and the Lee Shaw spinoff connect to Godzilla x Kong: Supernova on March 26, 2027.
Bottom Line
Monarch isn't dead, and that is the good news. The worrying part is that the show is reportedly coming back without the person who built it, and with a mandate for more monsters. If the new team keeps the dread and the family story while finally letting the Titans off the leash, this could be the season that wins over the people who bailed after Season 1. If it turns into a two-hour commercial for Supernova , it will lose the people who stayed.
So tell us: should Monarch Season 3 give us way more Godzilla, or keep the monsters in the shadows? And which Titan do you want to see next?
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Header photo: Kurt Russell by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added.
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