Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Reveals The Origin Of 'MUTO' - But What's It Mean?
The big world of the Monsterverse still has plenty of secrets in store. The Apple TV+ series "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" aims to uncover these mysteries, spanning the universe across several generations of monster hunters. Among the show's surprises are the origins of some of the franchise's terminology.
In the second episode, "Departure," army officer Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) and Dr. Keiko Mira (Mari Yamamoto) come across William "Bill" Randa (Anders Holm) for the first time while on a research expedition in the Philippines in the 1950s. Randa, believing that the monster he is on the hunt for could be emitting the same radiation that Dr. Mira's team has detected, ventures out into the jungle with her to hunt it down.
At one point while on their trek, Randa describes the unknown beings he's hunting down as MUTOs, which stands for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms — a term Randa claims to have come up with himself. The reveal not only answers a longtime Monsterverse mystery, but adds a new perspective to Bill Randa's character, making his obsessive personality in "Kong: Skull Island" all the more logical. At the same time, it provides further context as to how the bevy of beasts within the Monsterverse are classified.
Every monster in the Monsterverse is considered a MUTO
The first thing many fans are likely to think of amongst hearing the term MUTO are the monstrous antagonists of 2014's "Godzilla." However, with the reveal in "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" that the title existed long before the defining battle in San Francisco, it now gives a new context to the name and its usage.
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" essentially confirms that the term MUTO is what Monarch uses to define any and all creatures that have not yet been given an official name, as the monster Bill Randa is searching for is only referred to as a MUTO. Longtime Monsterverse fans may already be familiar with this factoid as the 2014 tie-in graphic novel "Godzilla: Awakening" reveals that both Godzilla and his former adversary, Shinomura, were given this placeholder before being bestowed their eventual titles. As a result, the MUTOs from "Godzilla" were technically never given an official moniker by Monarch.
It's unclear if space monsters such as King Ghidorah from "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" could be labeled in this manner. But countless other Earthbound titans within the franchise from Kong to Rodan to the Skullcrawlers and more were, at one point or another, all considered MUTOs, as well. As to why the MUTOs from "Godzilla" were left out of the name parade is a mystery for another day.