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Marvel’s Hit-Monkey

a snow monkey wearing sunglasses loads a gun in Marvel's Hit Monkey tv series

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Emily Tsiao

TV Series Review

Bryce Fowler was just your average, all-around awesome guy.

Or so he claimed.

Secretly, the dude was an assassin. As soon as he had earned money for a kill, he’d be out drinking, gambling and partying it away.

But not anymore. Because he’s dead. Sort of. Let me explain.

His last job was to murder an up-and-coming Japanese politician. Bryce succeeded, but then the guy who hired him double-crossed him.

Bryce managed to escape the first little crew of would-be killers, blowing them up with a hidden bomb. (Guess it’s always best to be prepared for the worst.)

Bleeding heavily, out of resources (other than the guns he purchased to complete the job) and unable to seek aid (since you can’t really go to the police when you’re a mercenary), he wandered into the mountains. And he would have died if not for a kindly pack of snow monkeys.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Directed by the group’s alpha male, the monkeys manage to heal Bryce using a combination of herbs and hot springs.

But his presence among the beasts caused strife, since many of the younger monkeys don’t agree with the alpha’s choice to help Bryce.

One in particular believes that Bryce is evil. He suspects that the people who harmed Bryce will eventually come looking for him. And he fears that by helping Bryce, the monkeys are condemning themselves.

Proving the little guy right, as soon as Bryce starts feeling better, he begins to plot his revenge on the men who betrayed him.

But when the monkey tries to tell his pack how dangerous Bryce is, they don’t believe him. What’s worse is he gets banished after going on a rampage and accidentally hurting a fellow monkey. And to add even more salt to the wound, shortly after entering exile, his prediction that someone would come looking for Bryce comes true.

He rushes back to help, but after the mercenaries kill Bryce, they murder the monkey pack in cold blood, too, laughing at their feeble attempts to defend themselves with snowballs.

But their violence awakens something in the banished monkey. Channeling his newfound anger, he picks up Bryce’s guns and decimates the human forces.

And remember how I said Bryce was dead? Well, now he’s a ghost latched on to the Japanese macaque, determined to help this “hit monkey” get revenge.

Mercenary Macaque

Oh, where to begin?

Let’s start with the violence. I don’t know when Hollywood sent around a memo stating that every anime-style or Japanese-themed TV show needed an excess of blood, gore and obscure murder sequences, but I really wish it would get rescinded. Characters are shot, blown up and beheaded. Innocent animals are massacred. And the driving plot point here is revenge.

That “revenge” is likely what turned Bryce into a ghost—because of the “unfinished business” trope. But as much as Bryce wants to get back at the guys who betrayed him, he also doesn’t want to be stuck as a specter forever. And the only way to fix that is to somehow atone for the life of violence and cruelty that he lived from beyond the grave.

And if that doesn’t have you rolling your eyes and looking for a different show, then perhaps the show’s TV-MA level language will. We hear everything up to the s-word, including abuse of God’s and Christ’s names.

Ironically, Bryce tells Hit-Monkey to not touch a gun because “you pick up one of these in anger and you’ll never put it down.” And I would say that viewers have no need to pick up Hit-Monkey in anger or otherwise.

Episode Reviews

Nov. 17, 2021: “Pilot”

After getting double-crossed, assassin Bryce Fowler finds himself living amongst a pack of snow monkeys.

A murdered man returns as ghost hoping for revenge. A monkey calls a man a “devil” and insists the man is evil.

Many people are murdered—some shot, some blown up and some beheaded—and we see lots of bloodshed. A group of mercenaries massacres a pack of monkeys for throwing snowballs at them (and they laugh as they commit this cruelty). A monkey punches a few of his fellows in anger, causing one to bleed. (He is then banished from his pack.)

We hear uses of the s-word, “a–hole,” “b–tard,” “c—y,” “h—” and “p—k.” God’s and Christ’s names are abused.

A man gets drunk repeatedly. People gamble and party. Someone offers to purchase a pornographic film. We see a shirtless man. Monkeys chew up herbs before spitting them into a man’s mouth to help him heal.

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Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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