Chris Black and Matt Fraction Didn’t Mean To Put Kurt Russell in the Snow

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters brings a new kind of story to the world of Godzilla.

Split between two different eras, the series shows the beginnings of military monster research organization Monarch, and in the trailer for episode 3, the team is still searching for Hiroshi Randa and answers after an explosive end to episode 2. There is a lot to unpack and there are still more monsters to discover, but we also get to see Kurt Russell’s Lee Shaw in terrain that is very familiar to Russell’s career as a whole.

When I spoke with creators and writers Chris Black and Matt Fraction, after talking about the character-driven nature of the series and their love for the Godzilla stories, I asked the two about putting Russell in snow and whether or not it was a homage to The Thing.

“It was sort of a happy accident, and it was like, ‘Look, I wish we could say, Ooh, let’s do our The Thing episode,'” Black said. “And Kurt was actually the person who commented on it. We had built a storyline where in this kind of globe trotting adventure, they go to Alaska, they go to the desert to kind of give a lot of different locales and environments to have our characters in one of them. And it was a beautiful location that we had in British Columbia but Kurt actually called us out on it.”

Matt Fraction cut in to talk about what Russell said to them. “‘I’ve done the go to the middle of the ice and wait for the science guys to figure it out. It doesn’t go well.’ It was like, ‘Yep. Yeah. Thank you, sir.'” And honestly, if I ever wanted Kurt Russell to make fun of me for not thinking about The Thing, this sounds like my dream scenario.

You can see our full conversation here:

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters airs on Apple TV+.

(featured image: Apple TV+)