THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED SERIES. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
With the MCU continuing with Phase 4 not only through film but shows as well, it became a doorway to introduce new heroes as creative as possible. I knew I wasn’t ready, but I’m not sure if anyone else was when the series Moon Knight joined the fray.
PLOT
The series’ pilot ‘The Goldfish Problem’ follows Steven Grant who works as a gift shop clerk in London’s National Art Gallery. One day at work, his coworker Dylan (Saffron Hocking) reminds him of a date he doesn’t remember asking her out, but he still takes her up for it. When he goes to sleep at night, he ends up waking up in Austria and hears a mysterious voice demanding him to return his body to ‘Marc’, someone he’s never met. Nearby, he’d meet a man named Arthur Harlow who is preaching to others of the ennead Ammit and how it’s scarab is missing. When he spots Steven, he claims he took it but Grant still doesn’t understand what’s going on. As he runs away, he loses control of his body to another voice that is Marc and when he blacks out, he finds himself back in his apartment, presuming to have gone through a nightmare. Sadly, he missed his date with Dylan who confirms she hadn’t heard from him for two days. When returning to his apartment again after a moment of disappointment, he finds a cellphone with a note stating to call Layla. When he does, she responds by claiming she’s been calling him for months and keeps calling him Marc. When Steven says he’s not him, she hangs up and he hears the voices again to confirm what he’s experiencing is real. When his apartment suffers a blackout, he briefly sees the embodiment of the first voice, which is the ennead Khonshu, god of the moon and night sky, that is a white clothed figure with a bird skull for a head. The next day, Harrow finds him at work who believes he can save the world if he can regain the scarab of Ammit. He almost attacks him for it until sensing chaos inside him. By night, Grant is attacked by jackal-like beasts summoned by Harrow, but saves himself when allowing Marc to take over his body, doing so by turning into a strong cloaked warrior.
‘Summon the Suit’ shows Steven get fired for the damage done to the museum, due to the jackal not being spotted on camera. Due to also finding a key with the phone, he finds the storage that belongs to Marc and finds a passport where his last name is revealed to be Spector. There, he finds the scarab and and that moment, Layla El-Faouly, who happens to be Marc’s wife, finds him. Upon reuniting (and unaware of the personality of Grant), she scolds him for taking the scarab without her as it was their life’s work and just when she takes it from him, he gets apprehended by officers that follow Harrow. When they meet again, Harrow reveals he was the avatar for Khonshu before he considered following Ammit. His intent with the scarab is to use it to find Ammit’s tomb and resurrect her for the plan to purge all of evil by wiping out every individual that has or will commit evil. When Grant refuses to hand over control to him, Layla catches up to save him. Grant tries defending himself from more jackals when dawning his own dapper suit to fight before Marc takes control to defend himself. But with Grant being too frantic to accept he’s sharing a body, it results in Spector getting distracted and Harrow takes the scarab from Layla. With such a setback, Khonshu threatens to pass on the avatar mantle to El-Faouly if Steven & Spector can’t get along.
‘The Friendly Type’ shows Marc/Steven and Layla arrive to Cairo where Ammit’s tomb could be thanks to a lead but before they could find exactly where Harrow could be, Marc/Steven suffer blackouts and kill more disciples. The problem is neither personality recall who was responsible. This results in Khonshu calling a meeting with the other Egyptian gods in the Great Pyramid of Giza that include: Osiris, Horus, Iris, Tefnut & Hathor. Harrow is called to trial for what he’s doing, but his denial is enough to be let go. However, Hathor’s avatar Yathil informs Marc/Steven that they need to find the sarcophagus of Senfu, the last one to have a recorded location of Ammit’s tomb. Knowing that it was sold on the black market, Layla takes them to antiquities collector Anton Mogart who allows them to observe it for clues. Before they could anything though, Harrow arrives with his friend who shows Mogart the scarab, as well as Ammit’s staff, as an act to successfully persuade him to go against the protagonists. When that works, he destroys the sarcophagus and the couple escape into the desert with fragments of the coffin. With those fragments though, Grant deduces the pieces to be a star map that is 2,000 years out of date. Khonshu fixes that situation by using his powers to turn back the night sky to the correct night and find the tomb’s actual location. However, the god is punished by the council for his actions as he was not supposed to ever manipulate the sky again. With him trapped in an ushabti, Marc/Steven are left without powers.
‘The Tomb’ follows Marc/Steven & Layla reach the campsite where Ammit was found and in the process, they go through a maze and encounter multiple disciples of Harrow. They do defeat them, but Arthur himself confronts El-Faouly and reveals Marc was responsible for the death of her father Abdallah (Usama Soliman). Spector confirms that one of his mercenary partners, Raul Bushman, was responsible in killing Abdallah and shooting him as well, resulting in Khonshu to save him by giving him the choice to be his avatar, his “moon knight’. Shortly after this confirmation, Harrow shoots him twice to prevent being stopped from his plan. Marc’s conscience wakes up in what looks like a psychiatric hospital where it’s populated with people from his life and Harrow appears as a therapist. He does free Steven from a sarcophagus and ignores another next to him. When looking for a way out, they meet Taweret, goddess of fertility
‘Asylum’ shows the hippopotamus-like ennead reveal to both personalities that the hospital is in fact a boat to the Egyptian afterlife, the Duat. She then puts their hearts in the Scale of Justice to see if they can pass through a paradise known as the Field of Reeds, but there is an imbalance due to hidden memories and suggests for them to explore together if they want to gain balance. As they go through this, Taweret sends a message to Layla to free Khonshu before it’s too late to stop Harrow. Apart from the memory in which he was saved by Khonshu after being betrayed by Raul, Steven discovers he was created by Marc as a result of stress from his childhood; His mother Wendy (Fernanda Andrade) blamed him for the accidental drowning of his brother Randall (Claudio Fabian Contreras) and the personality of Steven was inspired by a character from his favorite movie “Tomb Buster”. Grant is mortified of the fact he’s not in fact real and was used to hide from the pain of her domestic abuse to the point of missing her shiva. He’s especially distraught with the knowledge of his mom being dead all along when he assumed she was alive. He does find reconciliation with Spector though when he points out he got to live a peaceful life in comparison. Despite reconciliation, the scale is not yet balanced. Sadly, it becomes so only after Steven helps Marc fight off hostile spirits and falls off the boat, causing him to freeze in sand
The series’ finale ‘Gods and Monsters’ shows Harrow officially open the tomb of Alexander the Great to free Ammit, who resembles a crocodile, and kill the Egyptian gods as well as their avatars. Just as Layla frees Khonshu, Taweret swerves around the Duat for Marc to save Steven and after they escape, they become the moon knight again. Back together, Marc/Steven come to terms with Khonshu that after Ammit is defeated, they are free to go. Layla then becomes the temporary avatar of Taweret in order to have a fair fight against Ammit & Harrow. In ceremonial armor, she joins the moon knight to fight off more of Harrow’s followers while Khonshu takes a colossal form to fight Ammit. Khonshu would almost be overwhelmed by his rival and both Marc & Steven suffer blackouts in which they find Harrow brutally beaten, but don’t recall who was responsible. Nevertheless, Layla helps them trap Ammit in Harrow’s body after reciting an ancient spell. Khonshu insists on killing them both, but both personalities refuse and demand to be freed as promised due to the threat being neutralized. When they wake up again, they find themselves back in Grant’s London apartment. Although the whereabouts of Layla are unknown, the series ends in a shocking cliffhanger where Khonshu uses a secret of Marc known as Jake Lockley to kill both Ammit & Harrow.
THOUGHT
The Multiverse Saga had a strong set up with returning characters hooking us in, but I stick around for the new characters that can bring new audiences in. Shang Chi is arguably the best debut on the big screen in this era, whereas Moon Knight nails it on Disney+. Showrunner Jeremy Slater knew he had big expectations to fill when given the opportunity and for the most part, he was able to exceed them. From start to finish, you got yourself what feels like a more grim Indiana Jones because of the protagonist’s connection to Egyptology and distancing itself from MCU canon by not mentioning any of past events like the Blip. They let the background do the work as in having a GRC poster on a bus, which fans would recognize from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Noticing that and after Taweret mentions the Ancestral Plane from Black Panther as an alternative afterlife, it remains a standalone story for once. With such a different kind of setting, you know the production design and visual effects are gonna cook, and boy was it all amazing. I mean it’s not hard to get gitty when you realize Steven’s attic apartment is a nod to a pyramid. The most unpredictable part of this six episode tale is how we got a protagonist that has dissociative identity disorder (DID) which makes the fight scenes all the more creative as are the costumes. I wasn’t going to doubt the range of Oscar Isaac in his third Marvel role to date because he delivered each time and he tops himself exponentially. It could’ve been straightforward if we immediately followed the bitter Marc, which is why the shy & anxious Steven makes it refreshing when starting it with him. The way they go from trying to tolerate each other to accepting each other as one was an incredible way to tell us our inner freedom is always worth protecting because that freedom is what makes us comfortable to be ourselves. Marc created Steven to cope with trauma that wasn’t his fault. Ever since he lost his brother, he had to fight for the rest of his life before even becoming Khonshu’s avatar. And he couldn’t forgive his mom for the pain because he felt she didn’t deserve it if she wasn’t gonna forgive him. By the time Steven was let in and had a taste of unusual power, he was able to realize the past would never define him and it was always up to him on the paths he wanted to take. Despite the confidence that both personalities gained in time to confront true evil, it was not yet enough to deal with his own secret that he doesn’t even know about, that is Jake who is visibly the most rageful that Marc has had balled up in him for so long. Because of this situation, the character needs to be seen again in order to have a proper resolution and I hope it doesn’t take too long to happen. Going into the rest of the cast, I enjoyed Layla very much because May Calamawy was able to express her as Marc’s polar opposite because she’s in fact kinder but won’t tolerate being left out of the journey. That is where it was bound to fall apart between the two because Marc was gonna keep being secretive in order to protect her, that is just pushing her away. I then felt Antonia Salib was a fine addition as Taweret because she’s the more optimal of gods and that was enough to give her a chance to pick her as her own avatar, ‘Scarlet Scarab’. With another cool dynamic, I hope Layla does find common ground again with Marc and helps him out with Jake if she can. Like Taweret, Khonshu was a bigger than life character and the combo of Karem El Hakim as the stand-in and the F Murray Abraham providing his fantastic choice was fitting to embrace how imperious he is. He’s also the most impulsive of gods because he’s all about imparting justice through his avatars but targets broken minds to do his bidding. Had that not been his motto, things would’ve not gone awry with Harrow. He goes behind Marc’s back when using Jake to kill him because it was an act of the absolute and didn’t want to risk him finding another way. The problem is this issue does not make him better than those he deemed a danger to the world. Ammit was indeed intimidating to behold as well due to Sofia Danu & Saba Mubarak portraying her to be inflexible in her motive to abolish evil and with the right avatar, she can reach success. Ethan Hawke was a great choice to be Harrow because he gives an accurate approach on how a cult leader can approach their beliefs. He comes off accurately deceptive when he starts out benevolent, but will get cunning if you don’t share the same beliefs in what feels right to him. With a dangerous mindset, it made sense he had to be stopped, but Khonshu & Jake killing him doesn’t undo the trail of blood he made. And with that being said, I will remain curious on which direction the story can go from here because either way, I’m interested. This show was a blast, but there were still a bucket full of moments that bother me as I look back on it. For instance, why would it be a bad idea in the perspective of Steven’s boss Donna (Lucy Thackeray), for him to get a promotion as a tour guide? The guy knows what he’s talking about compared to the others, so it shouldn’t be a bad thing to be knowledgeable. And if it took two days to get back to London from Austria, where are the scars on his right hand he got when fighting for the scarab? If Khonshu healed it, it’s weird how it’s not implied. Hell, it’s even weird Steven doesn’t go to the police when he spots Harrow on the bus before he meets him at work. Scared or not, it doesn’t feel right to ignore someone committing murder. The continuity errors really kick in when Harrow tries to talk to Steven through a radio when the latter wasn’t even using it as he was talking aloud. The same can be said with Layla’s getaway car between episodes. I also respect Steven’s politeness in saying he’d never divorce Layla, but he just met her so he’s overselling his kindness at that point. And it was totally on Layla when she decided to bring the scarab with her when she tried to rescue Marc/Steven because she could have stashed it like her husband did. Harrow was definitely onto something when choosing to tell his followers to keep digging no matter what happens, but what would happen if they hit stone or oil? You can’t expect them to dig around after a discovery like that. And why would Alexander the Great have so much loot in his tomb when being possessed by Ammit, that god doesn’t care about the gold, so it’s strange seeing that happen. I don’t even blame Marc for ignoring the second sarcophagus Jake was in, but how come he wasn’t curious about what was in it? After freeing Steven, it’s hard to believe he wasn’t curious enough for this instance. And if Steven isn’t real like Marc, why does he need a heart to be balanced? Maybe you can say he gained one as time went along but if he was never real, maybe the scale should’ve been balanced long before figuring out the twist. On top of that, if Steven can be in control without even trying, how was he able to get a job and an apartment on his own? If Marc hooked him up with a London lifestyle, that should’ve been clear as well. It was one thing to point out Harrow could’ve opened the tomb better, but it is so cold for Ammit to say his skills lack balance when he’s the reason she got free. Lastly, Harrow messes up when not shooting at Layla’s legs after proving the strength of her wings. If he knows being the avatar to an ennead makes him invulnerable to pain, he was wasting time. Ignore these issues, then you’ll appreciate what’s done here. In conclusion, Moon Knight is a great shakeup needed for the superhero genre due to being distant from the narrative formula. If you have Disney+ and are urging for a different kind of story, see this now.
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