The MCU, with all of their Disney+ shows, has gotten into a habit of interweaving storylines from the small screen to the big screen (and vice versa). Godzilla is new to this game, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is the first real swing at it.

That wasn't as hard of a task as it may seem, at least for co-showrunners Chris Black and Matt Faction.

The duo spoke to ClutchPoints at the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters junket. They spoke about the unique perspective they took with the storytelling, adjusting to the MonsterVerse, what monster Black is most excited to see.

ClutchPoints: I was just talking to Sean Konrad, your VFX supervisor, and something he was talking to me about was how when doing the show, he had to think about really specific things about Godzilla. Did you guys have the same experience?

Chris Black: We did! I mean, and he was much more specific into the very meticulous about the look and appearance of Godzilla, but we were thinking really more from a storytelling perspective. Part of the pitch from the beginning of the show was in the feature films, you're really inside Monarch looking out. And we wanted our characters to be outside Monarch looking in. So everything is from a human perspective.

These are people who were not in the war room at the Pentagon. They're not in the secret underground base. They're not in all these meetings. These are the people on the streets. So your point of view is going to be, for the most part, with a few exceptions, from the ground looking up and with the monsters towering above you, how a person in the middle of this crisis would see it, versus these kind of floating God's eye view of the monster battles.

And so that was, that was definitely a creative choice that we wanted that [director] Matt Shakman was very supportive of and that Sean was kind of tasked with in doing the VFX work.

Matt Fraction: And as a storytelling thing, [a] kind of a gift from Toho is that to Toho, they're (the Titans) not monsters, they are characters. So it was a challenge as storytellers to treat them as characters and not just big special effects obstacles that get in the way.

They are characters, they have wants and needs, even if we don't understand what those are. You know, it's all right and then something explodes, right? [smiles] These are characters as much as anyone else in the show.

CP: To my knowledge, neither of you guys worked on the MonsterVerse films, but I know this, Monarch, is an extension of that. Did you find it at all difficult to step into a franchise that had already been established? 

MF: I mean, I think it was [an adjustment]. We had the MonsterVerse films, the Legendary films, there's four of them, there'll soon be five, [which] was kind of a gift. We had beads on a timeline, but they weren't all filled in, and we knew that in setting our show in the aftermath of 2014 [Godzilla], that's the name of the first episode, is “Aftermath,” that it's not about the world discovering Godzilla is real, it's about the world the day after Godzilla has made his presence known and felt how do we get up and go to work the next morning.

And there were kind of, between the films, big changes in Monarch as an organization, so we knew where we were going, but we didn't know how they got there. We got to fill those blanks in a little bit on our end.

CB: Yeah, and Legendary was very generous with us in terms of understanding, yes, we had these kind of canonical parameters that we had to fit within  — we couldn't do anything that directly contradicted the timeline or the events or the mythology of the films — but they were also very supportive of the fact that we were making a TV show and [that] this is its own thing and they gave us the freedom to kind of carve out our own lane and tell our own story, which was great.

CP: Is there a specific monster you're excited for fans to see?

MF: Yes [laughs].

CB: Well, look, I mean, we don't wanna spoil anything ahead of the game. I think there's a lot of surprises coming up. I'm excited that we're expanding the universe.

But just speaking for myself personally, I'm always excited when Godzilla makes an appearance.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will premiere on November 17 on Apple TV+.