One of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ main characters, Dr. Bill Randa (Anders Holm), actually first appeared in 2017’s Monsterverse entry, Kong: Skull Island. In the film, we’re introduced to Randa in 1973, after he convinces the U.S. government to fund and provide military assistance for a Monarch expedition to the mysterious Skull Island. It’s there on Skull Island, home of Kong, that Bill Randa, portrayed by John Goodman, meets his grizzly end when he gets eaten by a giant skullcrawler. But Monarch has given a whole new life to Randa’s character, as we discover how this once good-natured guy became the bitter and obsessed man whom we met in Skull Island.
In the parts of Monarch set in decades past, Bill Randa is shown as an amiable guy, although obsessed with the Titans after one destroyed a ship he was serving on during World War II. A giant creature destroyed his vessel, leaving Randa as the only survivor of a crew of 1,000 men. He becomes fixated on these giant monsters, needing to prove to the world that they exist. By the early 1950s, Bill became one of the fledgling Monarch organization’s top researchers.
He eventually forms a bond with fellow Monarch scientist Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) and Colonel Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell), and the three become good friends. His feelings toward Keiko become romantic, and he marries her and adopts her son Hiroshi, who takes his last name. But as we saw in Monarch season one, tragedy takes both his wife and best friend from him. Those circumstances are not why Bill Randa became the embittered man we met in Kong: Skull Island, however. As we learn in the season two episode “Secrets,” a betrayal from both Lee and Keiko is at the heart of his shift in personality.
On a monster-hunting mission in the Kazakh countryside, Randa believed Keiko died. Some years later, in 1962, Randa and Shaw return to where they lost Keiko. Sadly, Lee gets lost on this mission as well. Unbeknownst to Randa, both of his friends ended up in the Axis Mundi dimension, where time flows differently. For the rest of his life, Randa believes he let his wife and best friend die thanks to his own obsessions. But in season two, we learn how the Randa of Monarch becomes the slightly unhinged character later played by Goodman.
In the 1957 portions of the show, we see how Randa, Keiko, and Lee discovered what we know now as Titan X on an island near Costa Rica. For a time during this expedition, Lee Shaw and Keiko Randa were alone. After nearly losing their lives in a ritual sacrifice, the two consummated their long-simmering feelings for one another. They swore to never tell Bill, and to leave their one night together in the past. After reuniting with Bill, Keiko wrote a “Dear John” letter to Shaw. She explained that even though she loved him, she had to stay with her husband. Especially as he was the father figure in her child’s life.
We already knew from season one that Randa went from studying Titans to wanting to exterminate them in Skull Island. That made sense, having lost his wife and best friend to the creatures. Or at least, that’s what he thought. Both of his friends emerged decades later, the same age, at different points in time. A fact he’d never live to discover. But back in 1962, Bill believed he’d lost the two people closest to him. But that alone wasn’t enough to alter his personality, or to abandon his stepson. That happened because he accidentally discovered the secret of Lee and Kieko’s affair, which they swore to keep secret.
In a box containing Lee Shaw’s belongings after his apparent death in 1962 was the letter Keiko wrote him. This was the letter explaining how she loved him, but how they could never be together. After believing his wife and best friend were dead, he found out they’d betrayed him. And even worse, that his wife never stopped loving Shaw. We learn in episode four, “Trespass,” that not long after that, Bill essentially abandons young Hiroshi, and becomes a much more haunted man. For Bill Randa, it was a double tragedy. First, learning that his closest loved ones were dead, and then finding out they betrayed him. This knowledge is what truly changes Randa from the version in Monarch to the John Goodman iteration from Skull Island. And this sad revelation makes him one of the most tragic characters in the entire Monsterverse saga.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season two drops new episodes every Friday on Apple TV+.