Matt Shakman compared Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and WandaVision to a baton race.

Passing the baton

When Shakman directed WandaVision, he was setting up Wanda's story for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Say what you want about the final product, but Sam Raimi had to work with what he was given in the Disney+ series.

As it would turn out, Raimi didn't even watch all of it. “I never even saw all of WandaVision; I've just seen key moments of some episodes that I was told directly impact our storyline,” he admitted to Rolling Stone. “I’m not really sure what the WandaVision schedule was or how it changed. I just know that halfway, or maybe three-quarters of the way into our writing process, I’d first heard of this show they were doing and that we would have to follow it.”

For Shakman, he saw this as a baton-passing moment. What Raimi did with his film was out of his control. With Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Shakman was now in the opposite position. Instead of being the one to hand off a story — though he doesn't direct all of the episodes of the show — he's inheriting a franchise (the MonsterVerse).

Numerous films in the MonsterVerse have been made from Godzilla to Kong: Skull Island. Shakman didn't think much of it. “I think in the case of WandaVision, or in the case of Monarch, they're a little bit like baton races,” he revealed. “You have people telling stories and they pass you the baton and you tell your story and then you pass the baton and there's another movie coming from Legendary soon, which will be very exciting.

He also believes that WandaVision and Monarch are in two separate boats. For Monarch, it's not “trying to compete with the movies,” whereas WandaVision was honoring TV.

“But this show is unique in so many ways in that it was built for television. It wasn't trying to compete with the movies. It wanted to honor the scope and the scale and these amazing characters, of course, but it was built using what television does best in the same way that WandaVision was built that way, too,” Shakman explained. “WandaVision was honoring television. It was talking about how we gather around the television for comfort. When we're grieving, we gather around TV. This show is trying to tell a story of grief and trauma as well, and about mystery and discovery.”

Plus, Monarch is using TV's language in a way that keeps viewers engaged, at least according to Shakman. “And it's using the language of television in such a great way,” Shakman said. “It's following these characters from episode-to-episode as they encounter these amazing moments and these monsters, but it makes you want to come back week-to-week. It makes you invest in these characters in a way that television can really do better than movies.

“[With] movies, we've got two hours to tell a complete story. But [with] TV, we want to live with these characters. We want to bring them into our living rooms week after week,” he concluded.

Matt Shakman has had a long career in TV. He's directed episodes of the likes of One Tree Hill, Everybody Hates Chris, Psych, Weeds, Chuck, New Girl, and more. He took on two episodes of Game of Thrones in 2017, as well as an episode of The Boys in 2019 prior to landing WandaVision.

And then in 2021, Matt Shakman's WandaVision premiered. It was the inaugural MCU Disney+ series and Shakman directed all nine episodes. He directed the first two episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Coming up, he will return to the MCU to direct their Fantastic Four film.