The new MonsterVerse TV show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters marks the first project that Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell have appeared in. However, rather than sharing screen time with each other, the actors are playing the same man, Army officer Lee Shaw, across two time periods. For Wyatt Russell, his time on Monarch follows not too long after he made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as John Walker in the TV show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. However, while both men are soldiers, the actor explained to CinemaBlend why he sees Lee and John as “two very different people,” and he makes a good point.
Ahead of learning from Kurt Russell about how one Monarch action sequence reminded him of The Thing, I asked Wyatt Russell how his time playing Lee Shaw compared to bring John Walker to life in the MCU, noting that in addition to their military background, both men also have a morally ambiguous side. The younger Russell had the following to say on the subject:
I think Lee is… it’s a little more grounded in reality oddly even though it’s a monster movie. He’s more of a real person. John Walker… he takes super serum, he’s a superhero, so the path is from normal person to superhero. Lee is really guided by morals, but his morals, yeah, they might be ambiguous. He’s not driven by what John’s driven by. He’s not driven by insecurity and ‘I’m not good enough’ and ‘I need to be something that I’m not.’ They’re two very different people that way. Yeah, two totally different people, but a little bit of the same things in there.
Although Lee Shaw lives in a world where Titans roam the Earth, Wyatt Russell is right that at least where humanity is concerned, Lee Shaw is operating on a more grounded playing field. Unlike John Walker, who injected himself with Super Soldier Serum midway through The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s run and saw both his physical attributes and personalities traits enhanced, Lee’s just a normal guy trying to study these giant monsters on behalf of the Monarch scientific organization. There are no special powers for him to use if one of these giant monsters comes rampaging toward him.
Beyond that, while Wyatt Russell did acknowledge that Lee Shaw’s morals might be ambiguous, the character has a leg up on John Walker because insecurity doesn’t factor into his decision-making. That’s something that plagued John from the moment he was chosen to be the new Captain America by the U.S. government, but his failed attempts to stop the Flag Smasher caused that insecurity to grow. Despite eventually taking the Super Soldier Serum, he ultimately lost his shield and the Captain America mantle, and was also discharged from the military.
While we do know that Lee Shaw makes it to 2015, i.e. one year after the events of Godzilla, when the public learned that the Titans exists, there are still five episodes to go in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to both learn more about what happened to Wyatt Russell’s Lee in the past, and see what fate awaits Kurt Russell’s version of the character. As for John Walker, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended with him starting to work for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine as U.S. Agent, and he’ll jump back into action for the upcoming Marvel movie Thunderbolts.
New episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters debut Fridays to Apple TV+ subscribers, and following the conclusion of the season, the MonsterVerse will pick back up when Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrives April 12 on the 2024 movies schedule. Thunderbolts is now slated for July 25, 2025, and you can watch Wyatt Russell’s work on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with a Disney+ subscription.