ALLISON DINNER/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockThe instant likability of Wyatt Russell is hard to deny, but perhaps even harder to explain. As the son of the legendary Kurt Russell, the younger Russell has a kind of instant familiarity and an everyman feeling in nearly all his roles. When Wyatt Russell shows up in a genre project — from Black Mirror to Marvel — he’s the kind of guy you want to root for right away, but also seems like an old friend. He’s also an action hero with a twinkle in his eye, as if Captain Kirk were the guy paying for your beers.But in the Marvel universe, where he plays John Walker, and in Apple TV’s Monsterverse series, Monarch, where he plays Lee Shaw, he’s also a very specific brand of reluctant hero, an archetype that he both embodies and has invented for himself. “I'm able to give this character the things that I want to be able to give this character, then you have the right guy,” Russell says of his process in finding the vibe of the men he plays.Wyatt Russell as young Lee Shaw in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. | Apple TVThis year, Russell is silently dominating the science fiction world, returning as John Walker in Avengers: Doomsday, as well as Steven Spielberg’s upcoming alien invasion film, Disclosure Day. He’s also going to be in the Monarch world for a while; his timey-wimey Lee Shaw is getting a new spinoff set in the 1980s, full of monsters, nostalgia, and more. As Monarch Season 2 roars back to life, Inverse caught up with Russell to discuss his love of sci-fi, the tension in Monarch’s tricky timeline, what’s next for his ‘80s spinoff, and why, at least initially, he wasn’t quite sure about joining the MCU.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.Wyatt Russell reading Dune in Lodge 49. | AMCThere’s this amazing moment in Lodge 49 where you’re reading Dune. What’s your background with science fiction?I love great science fiction. This is sort of a bad answer for Godzilla, but when I was younger, that wasn’t the kind of science fiction that drew me in as much as something like Dune or Lodge 49. I really love science fiction that feels like something like Event Horizon, where you put it in a world you’re living in now. Event Horizon was really one that introduced me to a certain kind of science fiction. Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, too. Monarch Season 2 returns to the structure of Season 1, in which we see Lee in the 1950s. But we know he jumps to the 1980s at some point, too. Do you have a hard time keeping his timeline straight in your head? Yeah, well, in Season 2, we’re not getting into the ‘80s yet. So it’s always the ‘50s and the ‘60s. We’re always trying to figure out where they [Keiko and Lee] are in their relationship. Have they had their night together or not? I have to follow their relationship in terms of chronological linearity. But the ‘80s timeline...Keiko (Mari Yamamoto), Bill (Anders Holm), and Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) on a monster-hunting mission in 1957 in Monarch Season 2. | Apple TVWhat can you tell us about that? About the spinoff show?I'm over the moon about doing it because it really does something that I love. I love historical fiction, like Ken Follett's books. So, this is historical science, historical fiction. It’s the Cold War. There’s monsters. It’s exciting to be able to do this in a way that is dead serious but also with a lot of humor and fun. The idea of having a setting in the ‘80s that has a monster element and you can go around Eastern Europe, is very exciting to me.I mean, Monarch sets up this question: Where did Lee go? You’ve set up this character that my dad plays, who can do all these amazing things. But you don’t really see how Lee learned to do all that. There’s a lot of time to play with. I’ve been more excited about this than I have been about anything in a really long time. We’re going to shoot that, hopefully, in June.Lee Shaw’s story in Monarch has so much tragedy and pathos. Did doing Marvel before Monarch help you with that?Definitely. And not in the way that you're preparing for a character at all. I think it prepares you for the scale of production, scale of what I'm doing now, which includes promoting. When you do indie movies or smaller television shows, it’s fun, but there’s a level of scale that’s totally different with a bigger franchise. When you’re younger, you don’t quite understand what that scale means. And sometimes, you can get nervous, and you can overthink things, and then you’re just not completely who you are; you can find yourself trying to be a certain way, because that’s what you're expected to be, even though no one’s really said exactly what’s expected of you.Wyatt Russell entered the MCU as the troubled John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier back in 2021. | Marvel/Disney+That sounds a bit like John Walker taking over the mantle of Captain America...When I auditioned for that [John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier], I didn’t know what it was, and I thought, they don’t want me to do this part. I said to my agent, “Dude, they don’t want me playing anybody in that universe.” But he was like, please just do the audition, because it would be stupid not to try. So I do it, and I’ll go home and just not hear the phone ring. And then, all of a sudden, I’m signing papers, and I have the part. And I go in, and they’re going to reveal to me what character I’m playing. I don’t even know what character they had me for.And... they revealed it was Captain America, and it was like I was a kid opening up a Christmas present that I didn’t really want, but I had to be cool.Obviously, you did it, though. And now, you’re a beloved part of the Marvel Universe. How did you navigate that?To be completely honest, I was like, I'm not going to play f*cking Captain America, that's like a death sentence. What are you talking about? And then they had to explain to me the evolution of the character, and I went, oh, that’s interesting. I think I can find something interesting about it.I felt like, if they were going to box me in some way, and make me feel like I need to be elements of something that I don’t want to be, then it’s going to be hell for you, and it won’t be fun for me, and it won’t be fun for anybody. But they have given a lot of license over how I play that character. And when you come to something like Monarch, I’ve had the experience of knowing how these things work. I feel confident in myself being able to do it, and I know things about these types of characters. I could still suck, but the confidence helps a lot.Monarch Season 2 streams new episodes on Fridays on Apple TV. Thunderbolts* streams on Disney+, and Wyatt Russell will return as John Walker in Avengers: Doomsday on December 18, 2026.