Marvel’s Moon Knight has finally arrived, releasing early morning March 30th on Disney+. Moon Knight (MK) is a character I know shockingly little about heading into this series. That didn’t stop me from being excited, but there were no real expectations other than “the costume looks cool.” The only thing I’ve really seen regarding this character up until now was that faked comic strip meme panel – you know the one:
Unfortunately, as I said, this strip is a fake. So if there’s one expectation I had, it was a goofy, ridiculous anti-hero of sorts, and that’s not really the case. Which is totally fine, because the reality of MK is way cooler than that.
We get introduced to our main man, Steven Grant (that’s Steven with a “V”). Technically the first character is some mysterious priestly man, who for some reason likes to smash glass and walk around with it in his shoes. In fact, we get a weird amount of foot shots in the first five minutes, as we transition from priest guy’s feet to Steven’s, and we’re off.
Steven has a “sleeping disorder” in which he never seems to wake up wherever it is he falls asleep. To counter this, he ties himself up at night, has like ten locks on his door, tapes the corner so he knows if the door is opened, and pours sand around his bed to track footprints. He thinks he’s doing a good job of monitoring himself, but we learn that that’s probably not the case.
Steven works a boring and unappreciated job at a historical museum in downtown of his home city of London. He knows his stuff about the exhibits, which makes it all the more unfortunate that he’s just a cashier at the gift shop. It’s kinda sad to see this genuinely sweet, heart warming man who leaves his mom voicemails daily and goes out of his way to teach kids cool things get pushed around by his soulless, lifeless boss who couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about anything.
The episode begins taking some pretty interesting twists and turns that I won’t go into much greater detail about. But I will say this: the show does a fantastic job of making sure you’re confused as hell, just as it does showing how confused Steven is on screen. There are some creepy moments too – and I mean like actually seriously kind of creepy.
The episode has stuck to the Marvel formula that made the franchise successful as a whole. You have light comedy intertwined with good action sequences, some terrifying moments with special effects, lore and setup sprinkled throughout, and capped off with a “cliff hanger” of sorts involving the badass reveal of the “superhero” we’re going to be watching for the next 5 episodes.
What makes this one stand out to me is the imagery and camera shots we see. There’s been an emphasis on this whole “dual persona” of the character. He hears voices in his head, and grapples with the struggle of releasing control to whatever is on the other side of his sleep cycle. To foreshadow this, we see a lot of mirrored image shots, and some emphasis on Steven’s reflections, which eventually don’t always match up with what he’s actually doing.
Going into the series blind so far has been a joy. I had no idea what I was getting. From what I’ve gathered, neither does the main character. Seeing him wondering what the hell is going on makes it feel like he’s watching the show for the first time with us. And so far, we’ve heard two voices in his head. One is a booming, elderly voice, and the other is sort of just Steven’s voice without a British accent. The latter is revealed to be “Marc”, the alter ego we’ve had foreshadowed. The former just feels like it’s an omnipresent force that speaks to him when it feels like – and not very kindly, either. So now we know that there’s two sides to this character, and another lurking around somewhere. But I have a theory.
In the credits sequence, we get a shot of Steven, and his face is kinda blown off. Not like to bits, but as if it was a mask floating a few inches in front of his face. Now the imagery here is obviously signaling that he has multiple “personalities” – however, there’s two faces floating out, not just one. Now my theory is that there’s the obvious other side of Steven, but I think there’s yet another personality in there somewhere. Another version that takes control that has yet to reveal itself on screen. Could this be the big, older booming voice we hear? I really don’t think so. When we hear Marc speak, it’s still Steven’s voice. This other character with the booming voice is a different actor all together. There are some hints as to who this person is, and the ties he could have to different factions, but I don’t think it’s another Steven personality.
There’s a lot going on in this episode, and a lot I haven’t gotten to. I don’t want to just outright tell you what happened, you can watch it for yourself and get a much better experience. Also, I’m well aware that I may look like an idiot guessing as to the nature of this character and his multiple personalities. Again: I know nothing about Moon Knight, and don’t plan on researching at risk of spoiling myself.
Overall, this is a fantastic first episode, and has me begging for the second one to come out ASAP. I’m absolutely invested in Steven Grant and his journey for internal discovery, and the costume reveal sequence at the end had me actually laughing – not at it, but that laugh when something is so cool, it’s the only response you can muster. We may never get a “random bullshit, go!” moment from this series, but it looks like what they have in store will be a lot cooler than that.
Hub World 