In Marvel’s most intense emotional journey yet, the Disney Plus show goes deeper into the minds of Marc Spector and Steven Grant.
Wednesday, episode 5 of Moon Knight, which is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, came out on Disney Plus and took us on an emotional roller coaster. After cult leader Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) shot him, Marc Spector woke up in a strange mental hospital full of people and things he had seen on his travels.
The weirdness went up a notch when he met his alternate personality Steven Grant, who seems to have a separate body but the same body as Marc. This suggests that everything is happening in Marc’s mind. The two of them hugged like brothers, but when they met the humanoid hippo Taweret, they were scared.
As the human form of the moon god Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham), Marc hasn’t been able to use his superpowers as the Moon Knight because Khonshu’s fellow gods have locked him up. All of this is part of Harrow’s plan to let the death goddess Ammit loose on the world after she has been trapped.
Got it all? So, let’s get to the SPOILERS for episode 5 right away. After the events of Avengers: Endgame, this show takes place.
Balanced Scales
At first, Taweret, the goddess of birth and fertility, wants to take Marc and Steven to A’aru, the Field of Reeds (the Egyptian afterlife). She gives them the task of balancing their souls so they can enter. To do this, they have to look deeply into Marc’s past. If they can’t keep their souls in balance, they will spend all of the eternity frozen in the sands of the Duat.
But her mood changes when a lot of souls fall at once into Duat’s sands.
She tells Marc and Steven, “Fear is spreading in the upper world.” “Unbalanced souls are being judged or sent to the sands before their time.”
It looks like Harrow has either let Ammit go or is using her power in a way we haven’t seen before. Either way, it’s bad. They talk Taweret into helping them get back to the world of the living so Marc can free Khonshu and heal his gunshot wound. Before that, they have to make sure that the scales are in balance so they can go back through the gate of Osiris.
After the most intense and personal emotional journey we’ve seen in the MCU, Marc is saved by Steven Grant, who turns out to be a character he made up to get away from his traumatic childhood, by fighting zombie versions of some of the people he killed as Moon Knight.
During the fight, Steven falls into the sand and freezes. This makes Marc’s scales even out and lets him into A’aru. This should let him get through the gate of Osiris.
Superhero Origin
Marc was kicked out of the military for deserting, and he became a mercenary with his former commanding officer, Bushman.
In a way that was similar to how he started out in the comics, he tried to stop Bushman from killing a bunch of hostages, including Layla’s dad, but he was shot and killed. He crawled into Khonshu’s tomb and was going to kill himself, but the moon god offered to heal Marc if he would become Khonshu’s representative.
“Get up and start living again,” the god says. “As my way of getting even. As the Moon Knight.”
Childhood Trauma
In a heartbreaking series of events, Steven learns that Randall, Marc’s brother, drowned in a cave flood. Marc’s mom kept telling him that he was to blame for the accident, and we skip from Marc’s 10th birthday to his 12th. In the later part of the story, young Marc runs into a room, and his grown-up self stops Steven from going in there to see what happened.
In the end, it turns out that this is when he made Steven help him forget that his mentally ill mother beat him. It seems to have gone on until he was in his teens when he left home.
Two months before the events of this show, this part of Marc’s traumatic past comes to a head. Marc couldn’t bear to go to her mom’s shiva, which is a Jewish period of mourning that lasts for seven days. Instead, he gave himself over to Steven in his grief.
In the comics, Marc’s mental illness is less believable but no less interesting. It started when he found out as a child that a family friend who was a rabbi was actually a Nazi deserter who found that he could live longer by being cruel. He did this by killing Jews behind their backs.
Also Read: Another Self Season 2 Netflix: See All Latest Updates Related to Season 2!
Observations and Easter Eggs
- “You’d be surprised by how many different levels of consciousness that aren’t tied down there are. The Ancestral Plane is like that. Oh! Just gorgeous.” Taweret is talking about the way Wakandans see the world, as seen in Black Panther.
- What would have happened if Marc and Steven did what Marc said and killed Taweret and stole the ship? It seems like the scales would have been very off.
- It looks like this is the last time we’ll see Steven on his own, which is a shame because he’s so much more fun than Marc. In next week’s finale, I hope Marc will be a mix of the two personalities.
- Marc and Steven seem to have reached a balance, but we still don’t know what happened when he stabbed Harrow’s goons in Cairo, and it’s not clear what the deal was with the fuzzy state that got him kicked out of the military.
- It’s possible that he has another personality hiding in his mind, but if he does, it should have come out during the journey of this episode.
- Young Marc tells his mom, “Later, gators,” just like Steven did in his made-up phone call with her. She tells the crocodile, “In a while.”
- In the comics, Randall, Marc’s brother, lived to be an adult. He became his rival because he was jealous of his older, tougher brother.
- In the comics, Marc lives in Chicago. Steven’s mention of Milwaukee Avenue and Harrow’s address for the institution indicate that the same is true in the MCU.
- Steven says that Dr. Harrow is like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, which is one of the few funny parts of the episode. After that crazy episode, I think we could all use a little Flanders.
Final Words
Moon Knight is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. It follows the characters of Marc Spector and Steven Grant as they try to balance their souls in the afterlife. WARNING: SPOILERS for episode 5 below. Marc created Moon Knight to get away from his traumatic childhood.
He fought zombie versions of some of the people he killed as Moon Knight. In the comics, Marc’s mental illness started when he found out a family friend who was a Nazi deserter was actually a Nazi sympathizer. In the comics, Randall, Marc’s brother, lived to be an adult.
