In preparation for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I figured it’d be wise to be up to speed on all things Marvel. That means I “binge watched” all six episodes of Moon Knight since the finale aired this past week on Disney+. Now, did I know if this show would have any crossover with the latest film? No, but anything is possible.
In this series, Oscar Isaac plays the titular Moon Knight, and honestly, quite a lot of other people. So, spoiler, we meet him as Steven Grant, a kind of happy-go-lucky, clumsy Brit, who works at a museum gift shop. Steven also seems to lose time and to his knowledge, sleepwalks. It doesn’t take long to learn that Steven is just one of several personalities living within his psyche. Marc Spector seems to be the main identity, but who has stayed behind the scenes unless called upon to dole out justice (and death) upon wrongdoers. How does Marc know to do this? Oh, just an Egyptian moon god named Khonshu pulling the strings there. See, back in the day, a dying Marc gets saved by Khonshu in exchange for using his body as an avatar. That means Marc can’t die though.
All of those identities have a steady conflict against one another through most of the series, although they all seem to agree on being keen on Marc’s wife, Layla, who only recently finds out he’s still alive, but unaware of Steven. She’s aware of Khonshu though…strange. The three are also pretty much against Ethan Hawkes’ character, Arthur Harrow. Evidently, he was Khonshu’s avatar prior to Marc and now that he’s free, he wants to cleanse the world of bad people…even if they haven’t done the bad thing yet. To do that, he needs to find the god Ammit, who’s been trapped for over 2,000 years. This is how Steven gets tangled with Harrow initially. And that’s also when his world starts crashing down around him. The mental barrier between the personalities has deteriorated, which means it’s hard for Marc or Steven to wrest for control all of the time. That kind of messes with Khonshu’s plans a lot.
Without giving everything away, I will stop there. Overall, this wasn’t my favorite Marvel series entry, but it did manage to redeem itself towards the end. In fact, as confusing as it was initially, I really enjoyed the penultimate episode a lot. It presented some really heavy topics that I haven’t seen broached in a Marvel entity before and dropped some real bombshells. Also, Oscar Isaac is amazing, and if it took this series (or Dune) for you to realize that, then shame on you. Ethan Hawke is equally as incredible in making you despise his cult-like antagonist. If you get the chance, add this to your undoubtedly never-ending watch list.