Moon Knight S01E06 Review: Giant Crocodile Woman Kaiju

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 6: Gods and Monsters

(Apologies, I thought I uploaded this the weekend that the episode came out, but turns out it languished in my drafts for a while.)

A lot of these Disney+ shows kind of... stumble a bit in its final episode. So far, I think only WandaVision had a full season that felt cohesive from end to finish. Falcon and the Winter Soldier suffered from the main villain kind of becoming bland and boring, with a little too many moving pieces near the end -- though that was allegedly the fault of some emergency rewrites. Loki and Hawkeye both introduced a brand-new villain in their respective final episodes with varying degrees of success. And I was super-worried that with the two-episode detour to Marc Spector and Steven Grant's adventure in their fucked-up mindscape and the Duat that we wouldn't get a satisfactory conclusion to everything. Except it somehow manages to tie in every plot thread, both weird and mundane, together relatively well.

So much of Marc and Steven's journey throughout this season boils down to their shattered, split personalities, and I do like that at least some of this episode is devoted to exploring that. Without going through every single thing that the two split personalities do this episode, it's an absolutely great moment when Marc rejects the Field of Reeds and his peace to run back and look for his 'brother' Steven Grant. This ends up with his resurrection at the end, with some little wink-wink nod of Tawaret and an unseen Osiris giving them a bit of a pass to bend the rules of the underworld a little bit. I do like that it's not just the power of friendship (brotherhood? Self-love?) that magically allows Steven and Marc to come back to life, and that there's another reason... it's just that the power of them making peace and 'achieving balance' in their own personal scales is what caused Steven to be returned from the sands of the Duat. 

It really is interesting, though, that the Marc/Steven stuff didn't happen until 15 minutes into the episode. No, the first act picks up where we left off in episode... 4, I think, when Marc Spector "dies" after being shot by Arthur Harrow. We get to see Harrow and his cult basically walk their way into the Pyramid of Giza uncontested, with some pretty cool showcases of their instant-judgement powers. 

Layla, who... is a character I honestly really didn't care too much about before literally this episode, ends up being pretty cool as she sneaks around Harrow's cult and tries to do her best even though she's just a mortal. There's a couple great bits of black comedy as Taweret speaks through her through the corpses of the people Harrow killed. It's important for Layla to get some clues on what she has to do (find Khonshu's statue and release him) but there's a neat foreshadowing to Layla becoming Taweret's avatar later on in the episode. Layla also absolutely doesn't give two shits about Khonshu's deal and how it's 'so urgent' and whatnot, which is a great change of pace from how Khonshu seems to have every mortal he meets dancing at his fingertips. 

Harrow, of course, manages to release Ammit the crocodile-headed goddess, and there's an interesting bit where Ammit actually chooses the imperfectly-balanced Harrow as her champion or avatar or whatever instead of one of the many 'balanced' souls... we do get just enough of Ammit to know that she's just a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to these things, and for someone who only shows up in the final episode, Ammit does have a pretty cool presence. (Also, they clearly saved up the CGI budget for this episode). 

We get a very cool 'henshin' sequence for Moon Knight as he is resurrected and walks out to meet Khonshu, and, again, everyone is just sassing Khonshu today as Marc and Steven have found peace and camaraderie with each other, both refusing to take shit from Khonshu.

While all of this is going on, Layla accepts to become Taweret's (temporary) avatar and becomes an Egyptian superhero -- she basically is an Egyptian-themed version of the Falcon, though later press releases would identify her as an adaptation of the obscure Marvel superhero Scarlet Scarab. It's... it's definitely a great payoff that I didn't actually see coming by introducing Taweret as a benevolent deity, and having Layla actually take part in freeing Khonshu and later becoming a fighting force of her own is a lot more dignified than the confused love-triangle nonsense we got in episode 4.

And then the third act of the episode is just a huge, huge fight. Can I just say that my inner ten-year-old is loving this? Sure, it might not be the most sophisticated ending, but I absolutely love Moon Knight, Mr. Knight and Scarlet Scarab just teaming up to fight Arthur Harrow and his minions, while Khonshu and Ammit suddenly go kaiju-sized and have a giant god kaiju fight in the distance. There are a lot of cool moments to see -- like the juxtaposition of Khonshu's giant staff compared to the vehicles below, or Steve Grant's Mr. Knight casually fixing his suit now that he's got the swagger that comes with being partially-indestructible. 

There's an interesting bit where Harrow fights with Marc, talking about how his family would've been much happier if the 'imbalanced' weed, i.e. Marc, was the one to die... and Harrow actually wins! In a huge WTF moment -- which, by the way, I would claim to be terrible writing if we didn't get the answer in the post-credits scene -- we get another sudden-blackout of neither Marc nor Steven being in control of their body as we get the distortion sound effect and wake up with Harrow and the cultists brutalized and thrashed. 

Ammit and Khonshu repeat a lot of the same arguments we've seen in this season about morality and pre-judgement, and...  and it's nothing new. It's just that we haven't heard it enough in this season for it to get stale. Ammit's pretty cool for her very limited screentime, though that might just be my inner child squeeing over the giant-ass crocodile god eating souls and fighting a chicken-skull god next to the pyramids. Ammit gets sealed by Marc and Layla within Harrow, but then the two of them refuse to kill Harrow despite Khonshu's insistence -- because it would make Khonshu an even bigger hypocrite. It's a pretty cool bit where Marc finally puts his foot down and refuses to be a pawn of Khonshu, with a speech about justice versus vengeance.

There's a bit of an interesting bit where Marc/Steven wakes up in the asylum, 'breaks' that reality, before waking up in their apartment seemingly... back to normal, except Steven and Marc have found a way to 'cohabitate' their body. It's an abrupt ending, and I would've complained if this was it. But that's not it!

Except! Except that post-credits scene shows Harrow in a real asylum this time, and we seemingly see him being broken out by one of his cultists -- whose face we didn't see. There's a clever bit of misdirection as he meets Khonshu (dressed with a fancy suit!) at the back of a limousine, who talks about getting a new avatar that's not Layla. It's a great bit of misdirection where it seemed like Khonshu's making a deal to Harrow... before we get the revelation that Khonshu's current and very willing avatar... is the third personality inside Marc/Steven's body, Jake Lockley, who immediately murders Harrow. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you foreshadow this weird third personality throughout literally the whole show (thinking back, Marc wouldn't be the type of guy to 'set up' a date, would he?) and tie in various plot threads such as what happens to Ammit/Harrow, what Khonshu's next plan is... and adds another layer of plot threads to pick up not just on the mystical end of the spectrum, but also within the shattered psyche of the body cohabited by Marc, Steven and now Jake. 

All in all, a very powerful ending. Perhaps not the most smooth ride to get there -- there's an argument to be made about the main plot itself and whether the Harrow plot could've used a bit more fleshing out. I personally didn't care about the Layla backstory, and the pacing around the asylum scenes... I wouldn't say it's bad, but I would wonder how the show would be if the pacing was handled differently. But honestly? The action scenes were great, I love the mythology, I adore the post-credits epilogue, and, most of all, I absolutely love Oscar Isaac's seamless switching from Marc to Steven and having the two of them interact so well. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jake Lockley is one of Moon Knight's main personalities -- the 'cab driver' to Marc Spector's mercenary and Steven Grant's billionaire. He seems to have taken over Steven Grant's rich-billionaire status in this continuity as well. 
• Layla El-Faouly turns out to be the MCU's version of the Scarlet Scarab (Abdul Faoul in the comics) though her backstory is a bit more different than usual. 
• Khonshu wearing a suit, as well as a car with SPKTR as the vanity plate, came from the 2016 Moon Knight run. 

Moon Knight S01E05 Review: Scales of Truth

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 5: Asylum

Again, a very stylish and interesting delve into the minds of Marc and Steven and the still-unnamed third alter-ego within his-their minds. I would've thought that after the WTF moment of being shunted off to the maybe-insane-mind maybe-the-afterlife (it's both!) in the previous episode, we'd get some more superheroing again in this episode... but no! We don't even get to see the 'real world' at all in this episode, with the hippo goddess Taweret explaining that they are in a boat over the Duat leading to the Egyptian afterlife. Which is also connected to Marc-Steven's shared consciousness. 

And, in a way, all of this is just an excuse to give us a backstory, but oh boy, what a backstory. That's one of the biggest problems that some superhero shows have had, with so many retellings of Batman, Spider-Man and Superman's backstories that you really do kind of need a twist for these backstories to make them come off as interesting. And hoo boy, I absolutely love that the show-writers basically integrate Steven finding out about their shared body's backstory by a mystical sense that Steven and Marc need to 'balance' their scales, otherwise the Duat would consume all their souls. 

I absolutely love this. I absolutely love how we jump around as Marc and Steven -- essentially two very well-realized characters at this point -- bicker and argue about the things they have been hiding from each other. All the while, we still have breakaways to the psychiatric hospital ran by 'Dr. Harrow', which just adds to the mindfuckery of everything that's going on but also acts as a neat place for Marc and Steven to kind of 'decompress'. 

Also, whenever she gets to say something, Taweret is just adorable. Her giving exposition on the mythological parts of things, and essentially being a likable neutral goddess that wants to help the two Oscar Isaacs as much as she can, is absolutely fantastic. 

Again, without going through everything act-by-act, "Asylum" does a great job at showcasing different parts of Marc Spector's life. The superhero origin story, that he was part of a mercenary team whose job went sour (as with the comics, he didn't actually kill Layla's dad but was helpless to save him) and in desperation, he ends up crawling into Khonshu's temple and accepting the Moon Knight powers. But that's just... that's not the most interesting thing here, even if it's nice for us to see that. 

No, the most emotionally-charged scenes are the ones involving little Marc (he is Marc in the beginning, right?) being involved in some pretty fucked-up childhood memories. This alone would be enough to tug at our heartstrings, but the heavy emotions involved with both of them -- Marc wanting nothing to do with the past and actually throwing a fit at one point; while Steven is in full denial in regards to their mother being a horrible person... it's heartbreaking when Steven realizes that all of his memories about his mother being a nice person and how he 'converses' with his mother every week is actually a fabrication. 

The actual events that plagued little Marc is also pretty heartbreaking -- while playing around to imitate the television show of Dr. Steven Grant, he accidentally leads his little brother Randall to drowning in a cave -- a scene shot pretty horrifyingly and really made me squirm even though I knew where it was going. And then after Randall's death, Marc's mother Wendy kind of... well, broke down. It's understandable why the death of a child would completely shatter a person, and it's just... it's just heartbreaking, y'know, seeing it go from Wendy flipping out at the funeral to missing birthdays to outright physically beating the shit out of little Marc -- and this was when we see the alter-ego of Steven Grant be invented to 'escape' from mom... and we later see Steven Grant appear as an adult to also 'escape' from Marc's grief upon realizing that his mother is death. 

A lot of great, great moments and Oscar Isaac just sells the acting for both personalities of our protagonist. And, of course, there's still hints of the third personality somewhere there, locked up in a sarcophagus... there are still missing holes in the story and a weird New York accent that slips in here and there, and I'm genuinely looking forward to see how the show ties it all together. 

We also get Marc Spector admitting to Steven that, yes, despite being the badass anti-hero persona, he's wracked with guilt over all the people he killed, remembering them all in one of the many rooms-of-trauma within their subconscious. When their time is up and they haven't found balance, all of these dead people end up attacking Marc and Steven. We get some fun fight scenes on Taweret's boat, but ultimately Steven Grant pulls off a self-sacrifice, saving Marc but falling overboard in the process and getting turned into sand, while the scales balance and Marc Spector finds himself in A'Aru, the Field of Reeds in Egyptian afterlife. 

Very great episode, a massive kick in the emotions... it's just that I wonder how things will be tied up in one more episode. We are only having six episodes, right?

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Marc explicitly cites 'Bushman' as the leader of the evil mercenaries that killed Layla's dad. Bushman is one of Moon Knight's archenemies in the comics, and filled a similar role as what he did here in causing Marc Spector's initial injury that caused him to seek the help of Khonshu. 
• Taweret notes that there are multiple afterlives for human souls, even mentioning the 'Ancestral Plane' from Black Panther by name. 

Moon Knight S01E04 Review: Journey to the Center of the Mind

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 4: The Tomb

This one is an interesting episode, I feel, and one that I think is an episode a lot of my friends pointed to in saying how Moon Knight works better as a binge show. After the exposition-heavy episodes 2 and 3, "The Tomb" spends around half its runtime basically just... decompressing. There's a lot of neat panoramic shots of the Egyptian desert, a bunch of Indiana Jones style ruin spelunking and some honestly eye-rolling love triangle between Marc, Steven and Layla. It's neat television, but it's nowhere as engaging as the previous three episodes, y'know? And I don't really think I'm missing much by handwaving a lot of the first half of the episode. Oscar Isaac and May Calamawy are competent and engaging enough actors that the scenes never quite get boring, but they're also not as gripping as the previous episodes, you know what I mean?

Admittedly, the mummy stalking Layla in that ridge is suitably creepy, and I got some laughs out of Marc shoving around in Alexander the Great's mummy mouth, and I suppose if you're engaged with the Steven/Layla shipping you might be more invested, but I wasn't, so I was actually twiddling my thumbs a bit throughout the first half. For the writers' credit, though, there's really not much Moon Knight superhero activities you can do when Marc/Steven can't actually transform into Moon Knight at the moment. 

(After the Loki/Sylvie alternate-timeline-doppelganger stuff, now we have a love triangle involving two different parts of a split personality. Man, they're just trying to have as many weird-ass romance relationships as possible in the MCU canon, huh?)

I was definitely far, far more interested with the drama revolving around the revelation of how Marc Spector was involved in the death of Layla's father. Layla has been a constant presence throughout these episodes, but beyond being a competent fighter-slash-archaeologist I really didn't find her particularly engaging at all. So it's absolutely nice to have some drama unrelated to the weird split-personality romance. It's, again, pretty basic as far as these things go -- but it's pretty fun stuff. A lot of the themes in these Moon Knight episodes and the general dynamic between Layla and Marc revolve around how much secrets Marc has been keeping from Layla (so much that the 'Steven Grant' persona seems to be born out of honesty, as the show lampshades) and Marc keeping such a large and crucial information from his wife does give us some interesting drama. I also do like Arthur Harrow's minimal but impactful role in pushing Layla basically over the edge and getting her to confront Marc.

And then Marc gets shot and dies!

And then wakes up in an asylum!

All this imagery in the asylum segment brings me a lot of fond memories of Legion's excellent first season, which... which goes all out with the bizarreness and the trippiness of the concept. And honestly, after so many different superhero comics, shows and manga, this isn't particularly weird for me personally, but I did really love the balls on the show for basically diverting half the episode to running around in this... whatever this asylum is. 

Now obviously the superhero show about a superhero isn't going to have the twist that everything is all in a mental patient's mind all along. But the fact that Marc and Steven have been struggling so much with their mental issues throughout the season does really make it somewhat plausible -- in-universe -- for Marc to be dreaming all of this. Layla is the pretty nurse that takes care of him, Harrow is the well-meaning but strict doctor that 'shot' him up with anesthetics, Steven Grant is based on the persona of a bombastic Indiana-Jones-style movie, the Egyptian references are thanks to the hospital's decor, 'Moon Knight' looks like an action figure Marc is holding, he's bound to his wheelchair the same way that Steven finds himself bound to his bed...

It all really fits well into the mind-screwy themes of Moon Knight the character, and I absolutely love that the episode doesn't drag it out too long before revealing that, yeah, this asylum is... some sort of trippy dimension. As Marc runs out of "Doctor Harrow" and his office, chased by the orderlies that are played by the same actors that played Harrow's cultists in previous episodes, he stumbles into a sarcophagus and releases Steven Grant, allowing both Moon Knight personalities to interact. Joyous!

Which means that this 'asylum' is either a representation of Marc's mind (a la Crazy Jane's mind-world in Doom Patrol) or how he interprets the Egyptian afterlife. A lot of intentionally confusing stuff are thrown at us all at once -- including the showcase of the third sarcophagus with ominous rattling noises, which is totally the blackout persona that killed the cultists without Marc or Steven knowing in episode 2. Khonshu? Jake Lockley? Someone else? We'll find out. In the meantime, it's great seeing the two personalities get to interact with each other this much. 

And then the episode ends with the glorious gag of something ominous approaching them, and it's the hippo-headed goddess Taweret... voiced with the sweetest voice ever while both Steven and Marc scream their heads off. End scene. 

And... and it all hinges upon the revelations that we'll be having in episode 5 (which at the moment I haven't watched) but I do really like this. It's such an unconventional way to 'twist' the show beyond just Egyptian gods, split personalities and vigilante fighting. I actually did find the first half of the episode relatively dull if we're being honest, but the twist -- even though no one in the audience believes that Marc will permanently die from the gunshot or that this is all in a mental patient's mind -- was executed pretty well. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Less of a Marvel easter egg, but more of a mythology easter egg -- the hippo-headed lady is most assuredly Taweret, Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility.
• Layla's comic-book counterpart, Marlene Alraune, had a similar backstory to Layla where her father was an archaeologist that was killed due to some altercation that involves a mercenary group that Marc Spector was part of. I'm not sure if they're going to be adapting Raoul Bushman into this season or saving it for later Moon Knight outings, though. 

Moon Knight S01E03 Review: Gods of Egypt

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 3: The Friendly Type

Another interesting episode where this one's also pretty exposition-heavy, but in completely different ways. Episode 2 focused on telling us about Marc and Steven's Dissociative Identity Disorder; the identity of Khonshu; plus a little bit about Layla and Harrow. Here, our primary focus is the Egyptian gods and how they work in the Marvel universe. 

With Marc Spector at the helm of the mind, he goes around beating the hell out of Ammit cultists. And where Marc was a somewhat sinister presence haunting panicked Steven Grant's mind last episode, this episode Steven Grant becomes Marc's personal Jiminy Cricket, telling him through reflections how he shouldn't be going around murderizing people. Except a literal skull-headed mummy god with the best sarcastic voice ever is constantly telling Marc to do exactly that. 

The rooftop battle is particularly great, and I do love the implication that there's a third personality that neither Marc nor Steven are aware of that ended up causing the violence in one of their blanks. That's not the mystery for this episode to solve, though. 

Also, this episode really made me appreciate what a riot Khonshu is. Sure, his CGI isn't particularly convincing in the daytime scenes (that floating skull works best when half-shadowed) but I really love F. Murray Abraham's vocal performance, bringing along a simultaneously dry wit and the required menace for Moon Knight's mystical mentor. 

The relatively large setpiece in this episode involves a meeting of the Ennead gods -- or at least five of them. The Egyptian gods have taken a vow of noninvolvement with humanity, but they are still willing to judge the affairs of their gods. It's... it's honestly pretty typical as far as these scenes go, and while it is admittedly a bit underwhelming compared to major-budget MCU movies, it's miles better than the Shou-Lao we didn't get for Netflix's Iron Fist. Admittedly, as much as I love lore-bomb scenes like these, the Ennead trial scene does feel a bit clunky and somewhat forced. It doesn't distract me all that much, but compared to how well-done Moon Knight has been delivering its exposition, it does admittedly feel a bit weaker. There's a fair amount of awkward 'as you know' to explain Khonshu's relation to the other gods; shouldn't it be better shown as Steven or Marc discovering these facts themselves?

(If the show hasn't already made you realize that Harrow's a villain with his casual murdering of people for sins they haven't committed, then shoving Marc's mental illness as a reason to dismiss every point he's making should make it clear that, yes, Harrow's a dickbag)

Anyway, the trial ends up finding Harrow not guilty for anything. It's just an excuse to show that Khonshu can piss off the other gods by manipulating celestial signs like solar eclipses, and for Hathor to give our heroes the next clue in their Indiana Jones style clue-hunting globe-trotting mission, which sends them off to hunt down the mummy of Senfu. 

We do get some fun scenes between Layla and Marc. Layla notes how terrible Marc is at both archaeology and trying to blend into the Egyptian populace, and I do like that all throughout the episode, in the guise of playing it up as a bit of a 'shut up, nerd' between Marc, Khonshu and Steven, the fact that Steven's a huge Egyptian archaeology buff ends up becoming important in the final act of this episode. It's a neat way to make Steven a necessary component of the team, so to speak, instead of just reducing him to a wet blanket. 

Layla brings Marc to the rich criminal/collector Anton Mogart (played by the late Gaspard Ulliel, to whom this episode is dedicated to) who chews the scenery pretty well. This scene does drag on a bit long, but I do appreciate Marc stubbornly trying to do things his way and demanding that Steven tell him what to do when Steven himself would've solved the riddle a lot faster. Of course, the tables are turned when Steven morphs into Mr. Knight during the fight and tries his whole non-violence schtick with the trained cultists... and gets speared three times for his trouble. That's some black comedy that I actually find hilarious. 

I didn't quite like this fight scene quite as much as I did Mr. Knight's first debut and his later transformation to Moon Knight in episode 2, although actually having stakes with Anton Mogart technically being a named antagonist and having Layla run around in the background beating up Mogart's main bodyguard does make this a bit more eventful... though I will never not find that scene of Marc hardening his cape to deflect the bullets back at his attackers not awesome. 

(There's also Harrow dropping casual revelations about how Marc apparently killed Layla's father -- something Marc denies later on but obviously going to be an important aspect of the plot going forwards)

After that battle is over and Harrow is back with his cultists at Ammit's Tomb (I'm not sure what happened to Mogart, I guess he just rides off?), we get a pretty cool sequence where Marc finally lets Steven Grant out, and he figures out that the mummy sarcophagus is actually a constellation map. And in a neat callback to the earlier eclipse, Khonshu ends up reversing the sky in a pretty cool way to incorporate sci-fi and magic together. "I remember that night. I remember every night." Khonshu claims, before helping Moon Knight to essentially rewind time to show the position of the skies and therefore, Ammit's Tomb. This honestly pretty cool moment is juxtaposed with the other five Ennead gods sealing Khonshu in stone, robbing our poor multi-minded hero from their pigeon companion. 

Overall, it's admittedly a lot slower than the first two episodes, and the exposition a bit more clunky, but... again, I still really enjoyed this episode a lot. The pacing is a bit off, perhaps, but I've seen worse, and overall I feel like some degree of exposition is definitely needed considering the rather esoteric subjects we are dealing with here relative to most of Marvel's usual output. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The avatars of the Egyptian gods Horus, Isis, Tefnut and Yatzil appear here. Among the other gateways is a cat-themed one -- one of the most famous Egyptian gods associated with cats is Bast, but in the Marvel universe (and especially the MCU), Bast is very much associated with the Black Panther. 
• When Anton Mogart gets hit by Moon Knight, midnight clock bells are distinctly heard. Mogart's comic-book supervillain name is the Midnight Man. 

Moon Knight S01E02 Review: Get Out of My Head

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 2: Summon the Suit

The second episode of Moon Knight is a bit slower compared to the very excellent first episode, but amidst way too many reviews warning that 'the series goes downhill after the first episode', I found this to be... perfectly respectable? I suppose I perhaps have a much higher tolerance for sub-par superhero shows after literal years of reviewing so many of them, but I did really enjoy this episode of Moon Knight. Perhaps not quite as much as the first one, which had the great allure of basically being a horror story. Episodes 2 and 3 onwards start to unravel the mystery behind the horror, the little man behind the giant floating head, and that might cause some viewers to feel like some of the magic is gone. 

But not me -- I know full well what we're getting into when we're getting into Moon Knight. Egyptian gods and multiple identities and instant suit transformations leading to crescent-moon-a-rangs being used as weapon. 

A lot of 'Summon the Suit' builds up on what's already established in episode 1, and sees how poor, beleaguered sweet gift-shop-guy Steven Grant deals with the strange 'dream' of the first episode where he transforms into a badass hooded magic-mummy vigilante. After the expected comedic routine of Steven Grant showing the museum staff of... absolutely nothing, because the anubis-jackal CGI monster was apparently invisible to us normal mortals. Steven Grant gets laid off, and the poor, confused bloke ends up stumbling into more and more signs of Marc Spector's double-life -- including finding the scarab plot device and having certain conversations with Marc Spector, who starts giving the audience a fair amount of exposition about their true nature -- that they're the avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu. The multiple-personality thing is something that Steven shouldn't even be aware of, but now he's in control and he's not too willing to listen to the untrustworthy, potentially-psychopathic alter ego Marc. 

Now admittedly, I went into this already knowing this 'twist', if you could even call it that. But I suppose slowly peeling off the layers of the onions and showing us not just the multiple personalities but also the concept behind Moon Knight's powers... and, a bit more interestingly for someone who's already well-vested into the character's "gimmick", the actual events that had happened in this particular adaptation. 

So as Steven Grant runs around being pursued by a very irate Khonshu (the show makes the best use of Khonshu's CGI model in dark corridors or in brief shots where he's just ominously in the background), he ends up running into Marc Spector's wife Layla El-Faouly, who's none too happy that Marc has basically ghosted her for months. Layla thinks "Steven" is just Marc really getting into a role, and Steven himself is basically super-confused about everything and barely realizing the whole 'another personality takes control of my body every now and then' thing, and... and I feel like the whole Layla scene does a pretty good job at giving us both backstory and also letting the multiple-personality thing take some time to sink to the audience. 

The Ammit (we're apparently using this spelling instead of 'Ammut') Cult ends up taking Steven Grant to see Arthur Harrow again. And other than some hilarious butchering of the Mandarin language, Harrow's apparently built up a small community and shows what an utopia it is -- something that really speaks to poor, confused Steven Grant. The fact that all this 'god' nonsense, Marc Spector's obvious streak of violence and mean ol' Khonshu making creepy ominous winds are really confusing Steven Grant. It's a bit slow-paced, but I did really like that Harrow's pulling out the charismatic cult leader side of things to try and essentially seduce poor, gullible Steven Grant to his side. Harrow also claims that he was Khonshu's previous 'avatar', in the middle of expositing about Ammit's goal of judging all the guilty before they have done their sin.

The whole 'killing babies' thing, and the fact that Harrow doesn't have an argument for it, ends up causing Steven Grant to finally realize that the guy walking around with glass in his shoe soles is bad news -- that, and Marc, Khonshu and Layla all screaming at him to 'summon the suit'. Ultimately, Harrow sics another jackal demon-thing at Steven Grant again, and we get some very, very cool action scenes.

And... okay, the invisible doggo demon is pretty neat (and, I wager, saves the studio some CGI) but definitely my favourite part is the seamless transition from Steven Grant to Mr. Knight -- I did find it really hilarious that they decided to adapt suave Mr. Knight as the Moon Knight suit when summoned by Grant. And then when Steven "Mr. Knight" Grant gets a bit too overwhelmed, we get the very Tokustatsu-esque transformation as Moon Knight's bandages wrap around him as Marc Spector takes control. We get some very cool shots, too -- though two back-to-back shots of Moon Knight running in front of the moon might be too much -- and the debut of the moonarangs. 

This leads to what seems to be an ongoing season-long conflict -- Marc Spector essentially takes full control of the body in the way that Steven has been doing so throughout this episode, and shoves Steven into the locker. Khonshu also proves to be a lot more of a jackass than he initially seemed, because he's essentially holding Marc hostage by threatening to use Layla as the next avatar. And then the episode ends with Marc/Steven in Egypt. 

Again... none of these episodes would have worked all that well without Oscar Isaac's amazing performance, and how he effortlessly shows off his multiple personalities even in-suit as Mr./Moon Knight. Admittedly, Marc Spector's super-duper cool, but come on -- Steven Grant's over-the-top Bri'ish accent as he swaggers around with his newfound Mr. Knight super-strength? You can't tell me that's not at least a little bit funny! "Psycho Colonel Sanders" indeed, and my absolute favourite -- "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee; my name's Steven, with a VEE!"

Multiple-personality superheroes isn't something that's brand-new -- Doom Patrol's Crazy Jane is perhaps one of my favourite, but James McAvoy's character in Split as well as the titular Legion were also amazing -- but how engaging the main actor is would definitely make or break the show. And as someone who had to carry two pretty slow-paced episode essentially on the back of his acting prowess, I should say that, yeah, Poe Dameron and Apocalypse were absolutely poor showcases of what Oscar Isaac's true acting range could be. Enjoying this a whole ton for sure. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• While not named such, Steven Grant's Moon Knight suit is the "Mr. Knight" persona from the comics. 
• Marc Spector's profile number starts with 1975, the year the character debuted. A bus has the numbers "WBN 0032", which is Werewolf by Night #32, the specific issue Moon Knight first showed up. 
• Global Repatriation Council ads -- first seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier -- show up in the buses.
• Harrow mentions that he used to be Khonshu's "Fist of Vengeance", which was a moniker Moon Knight took when he was temporarily wielding Ghost Rider powers. 

Moon Knight S01E01 Review: Split Personality

Moon Knight, Season 1, Episode 1: The Goldfish Problem

So I really actually like Moon Knight from the comics. I don't actually know all that much about Moon Knight himself, but the bits and bytes of him that I've seen over the years of reading superhero comics have made me really appreciate this utterly crazy, multiple-personality brutal character. He's like Batman and the Punisher rolled into one, with some mystic Egyptian themes tossed in, with the craziness ramped up to eleven. But I don't really know why I never sat down and read huge chunks of a Moon Knight comic run. I do know enough to really appreciate what they did with this episode, for sure!

As the first Disney+ Marvel show to technically introduce a brand-new adaptation of a character into the mainstream audience (What If technically starred Uatu; and I'd argue that both leads for Loki are kinda-sorta new characters), Moon Knight does what the Netflix Marvel shows did in the past and ended up giving us a brand-new saga in the MCU continuity by introducing the audience so someone new. 

And "the Goldfish Problem" does an amazing job at taking it slow and giving us an idea of what the Moon Knight character concept is in a show-not-tell concept. We hang around the persona of Steven Grant, mild-mannered, dorky museum gift shop guy who's just trying to make ends meet. Some things are not quite right, though, and I feel like the show does a great job at showing how it's all easily explained by 'alternate personalities/movie-ized Dissociative Identity Disorder' and how it's foreshadowed even early on with Steve Grant having dates he didn't remember making, or tying himself to sleep to avoid what he attributes to sleepwalking. 

In a lesser show, spending a chunk of the first episode just going 'is the magic real or not?' is something that could very easily backfire and make the pilot episode boring -- refer to Iron Fist for how not to do it. I think Moon Knight gets away with it not just because of Oscar Isaac's amazing charm in playing the persona of Steve Grant, but also because both the supernatural factors (i.e. Khonshu's moon magic) and the mental illness (multiple personalities) are real. 

I do really like how we transition to the madness, and how our introduction to the multiple personalities, to Marc Spector and Khonshu, is as scattered and confusing as how Steve himself experiences it. The first-episode-action scene is him waking up randomly in some countryside (implied to be in Egypt) where Steve Grant, the 'gift-shop-ist' from London, finds himself smack dab in the midst of mercenaries shooting at him, a cultist with a strange tattoo based on the Egyptian crocodile judge-god Ammut, and a deep voice in his head that can command his fingers to clench around a mysterious beetle totem. 

I love how scattered everything is and yet how ultimately easy it is for anyone with the barest hint of literature savviness to piece things together. And if it's not obvious enough, Steve 'glitches out' and stutters, leading to very well-done snap-cuts to him regaining control of his body after Moon Knight takes over, beating the shit out of mercenaries and leaving his hands bloody. It's equal parts horrifying as it is comedic due to Oscar Isaac's amazing acting, as well as some pretty amazing comical scenes like Khonshu going "did you seriously just throw the gun?"; Steve waking up to find himself driving backwards; or giant cupcakes and the black comedy with the falling logs.

Again, I love that the MCU propensity of comedy translates to some hilarious black comedy in this case, something that I felt was kind of missing in the Netflix shows. 

Again, the whole episode really sets up a lot of great mysteries that I'm sure will be covered in the future, swapping around between Steve's "dreams" that turn out to be real, him losing two entire days (that date is soul-crushing) and increasingly terrifying horror moments. It goes from pretty subtle things like reflections not working as they should -- seriously, pay attention to Steve's reflections after his little action sequence. Even before the massive hall-of-mirrors sequence near the end, we get some signs that things aren't doing quite as right. And there's also KHONSHU! Impressively CGI'd into a horrifying being, everyone's favourite bird-skull-headed god ends up terrifying poor Steve in that elevator hallway, and later on just keeps showing up. Really, really love that the focus of this first episode isn't just a by-the-books origin story, but rather on how this poor museum worker is quite literally and unwillingly thrust into a world of mysterious phone numbers, missing days, dead goldfishes and the Cult of Ammut.

The bad guy plot, so as it is, involves a pretty cool villain. Arthur Harrow (played by Ethan Hawke) is introduced to us in the first scene of the show with that very uncomfortable glass-shards-in-shoes thing, and his stated goal revolves around the Egyptian deity Ammut -- in real-world mythology, Ammut is the crocodile judge in the underworld, who would judge a person's heart against a feather, and would grant them access to specific parts of the afterlife depending on the deeds they did in life. The MCU version of Ammut is a bit more vengeful, noting that he attempted to judge people in life before they died, and was held back by the 'indolence of the other gods'. Very neat worldbuilding for sure.

I really do love how Harrow ends up being shown as a charismatic cult leader -- what with the moving judging tattoo that causes him to deem his followers worthy or instantly kill them. Absolutely love his conversation with Steve Grant in the museum, too, with the very unsettling revelation that so many of the tourists and guards are already part of the Cult of Ammut. (And then we get the Avatar-the-movie and Avatar-the-cartoon joke, which cracked me up so bad). A very interesting villain from the get-go, and hopefully Harrow would remain interesting throughout the entire season. Please no more surprise final-episode villains, Marvel, please and thank you.

And then, of course, we get the epic final scene. Poor Steve is stalked by some hideous skeletal dog-skull-headed demon in the museum, and he finally comes face-to-face with his alter-ego in that very appropriate double-mirror bathroom, and in a transformation scene that has very strong Tokusatsu vibes, we get Marc Spector finally taking over of the body on-screen for the first time, and mummy bandages slither up his body as he transforms to Moon Knight while Egyptian hieroglyphics glow in the walls of the room. Very fucking badass. Did no one ever give Moon Knight a mummy-themed outfit in the comics? Well, I'm happy the MCU costume designers did it. 

Very, very powerful first episode, and I really do feel like Oscar Isaac is actually the perfect choice for this with how easily he communicates when he's channeling Marc Spector or Steve Grant (though Steve's hilarious faux-British accent helps too). Very entertained by this for sure. More, please. 

Marvel Easter Egg Corner:

• I won't do a (potentially spoilery) full intro on who Moon Knight or Arthur Harrow is, but I'll do note some Easter Eggs.
• "Steven Grant" is already one of the personas of Moon Knight from the comics, but I do like to note that it's also the first two names of Captain America (Steven Grant Rogers) so it's possible that Marc Spector took that as an inspiration when crafting this mild-mannered civilian persona. 
• Among the Ennead textbooks Steve is poring through are textbooks on Asgard and Wakanda. 
• Other than the massive lines of Layla missed calls, the one sole non-Layla name is DuChamp, referencing Jean-Paul "Frenchie" DuChamp, Moon Knight's sidekick. It's the 32nd missed call, and Moon Knight debuted on Werewolf By Night #32.
• More of an internal Easter Egg, but in addition to Marc replacing Gus the goldfish, all the postcards from Steve's "mom" are the same postcards you could see in the museum, meaning that Marc probably mailed them to Steve to keep him essentially 'docile' in this civilian life. 
• Less of an Easter Egg but more of a foreshadowing, but Steve Grant's phone wallpaper being a crocodile and him signing off his calls to his mom (which may or may not exist) with 'later, gator' might be a reference to presumably Ammut herself.