Moon Knight debuted in the Marvel Universe as a sort of Batman stand-in: a super-rich night-time vigilante with expertise in all forms of combat and an arsenal of super cool weapons. He also had his own Alfred of sorts in the form of helicopter pilot and confidant, Frenchie. However, Moon Knight took the dual personalities of Batman and Bruce Wayne one step further, adopting a host of no less than four public personas: mercenary Marc Spector, millionaire playboy Steven Grant, cab driver Jake Lockley, and Moon Knight himself.
In the latest addition to the MCU, however, Moon Knight’s origins have been tweaked a little. The first episode of Moon Knight on Disney+ focuses on the Steven Grant persona. Steven is a lowly gift shop worker at the Natural History Museum in London. He lives alone, keeps mostly to himself, and suffers from sleep issues.
A note: The following will contain spoilers for the first episode of Moon Knight. If you haven’t watched it yet, proceed with caution.
When we first meet Steven, he’s just waking up and unfastens himself from a tether to his bed. The audience is immediately keyed in to the fact that something is off with Steven, even if Steven himself is not aware of what exactly that is.
Steven also begins to notice things that he hadn’t before. A date with a coworker. The sudden reappearance of his fish’s missing fin. All of these things begin to happen that make Steven question his worldview, which really comes to a head when he wakes up in the middle of a foreign village being shot at.
As he’s escaping the gunmen, Steven hears a voice in his head. A voice that denigrates him, calls him a worm, and tells him to go back to sleep. He thinks he’s outrun the gunmen when he comes across a charismatic cult leader named Arthur Harrow. Harrow reads the goodness of people and drains the life of those who lack goodness. He sees Steven and asks him to return the scarab. Steven tries to, but some force takes over his body preventing him from doing so. The gunmen appear, and Steven runs away. He blacks out. When he comes to, the gunmen are on the ground, bloody and broken.
Steven again tries to escape in a cupcake van, but he keeps blacking out, only to find himself in different situations. At one point, he’s holding a gun. At another, he’s driving in reverse with a car of gunmen in front of him. All the while, the voice is shouting at Marc to wake up.
The music is a hint at Steven’s situation. The car chase scene is set to Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “A Man Without Love” by Engelbert Humperdinck is playing in the scenes set in Steven’s apartment. (This is more apropos with the knowledge that the hook of the Humperdinck song is “Every day I wake up, then I start to break up, lonely as a man without love.”) It’s a weird notion to include in a Moon Knight series. It implies that Steven’s sleep is what triggers the identity switching, making the character less like Moon Knight and more like a different Marvel character from the 90s called Sleepwalker. This isn’t a criticism, more of an observation. It could also be intentional as a springboard to bring Sleepwalker into the MCU as he would fit the supernatural elements winding through Phase 4.
Just as the gunmen get the upper hand and Steven thinks he’s done for, a cascade of logs falls down the cliffside. Steven is jolted awake. He thinks he’s slept through the night, but he’s been gone for two days. His date with Dylan (Saffron Hocking) is ruined, and he goes home sad and lonely (there’s that Humperdinck again).
While sulking at home, Steven finds a secret stash in the wall where a cell phone and keys are hidden. As he investigates the phone, he gets a call from a woman named Layla who calls him Marc. This shocks him, remembering the voice calling him Marc. This leads to visions of an imposing figure following him through his building and on the street during his commute.
Also on Steven’s commute is Arthur Harrow, having followed him in search of the scarab. Harrow corners Steven in the museum and takes a measure of Steven’s heart, proclaiming, “There’s chaos in you.”
Harrow lets Steven go and as Steven leaves work later that night, he gets chased through the museum by a creature of some sort, a creature clearly under Harrow’s control. Though we don’t get a clear view of the creature, it’s reminiscent of a werewolf, which is a nice nod to Moon Knight’s first appearance in the comic series “Werewolf By Night.”
Steven hides in a bathroom where visions of Marc Spector appear to him in the mirrors. Marc urges Steven to let him take control, which Steven obliges. As soon as the Marc identity comes through, Moon Knight appears and subdues the creature.
Oscar Isaac is fantastic in his multiple roles. As Steven Grant, he exudes a perfectly awkward charm that makes the audience feel for him and want to help him out with his problems. Unfortunately, that’s the bulk of what we get. There’s only a brief glimpse of Marc Spector toward the end with just a slightly longer glimpse of Moon Knight, so it’s hard to tell just how far Isaac gets into the role. However, if the rest of his performances are as superb as Grant, then all will be fine.
Ethan Hawke also appears to be enjoying himself. The charismatic cult leader has, so far, been portrayed as a gentle and stolid soul. He suffers for his beliefs, as evidenced by the opening scene of Harrow putting broken glass into his shoes. We get the impression that he is a true zealot, which only serves to make him more dangerous.
Director Mohamed Diab had fun with the episode’s visuals as well. He plays with mirrors a lot, showing multiple angles of Steven on screen at once, an obvious reference to his many personalities. The cinematography is also very dynamic, with lots of camera movements and interesting angles. Diab knows how to add life to otherwise lifeless frames, and that makes the show more interesting.
My biggest disappointment with the episode is the lack of Moon Knight. While I enjoyed the story of Steven Grant and the troubles his multiple personalities causes him, I really wanted a full-on punch fest with Moon Knight zipping around the city. However, this is the first Disney+ series introducing a brand-new character, so some groundwork needs to be laid, unlike The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Loki, which expanded on already existing characters.
What I’ve seen so far, I’ve loved, and I’m eagerly anticipating more Moon Knight. I hope that the writers get to play in some quirky sandboxes, maybe bringing Jack Russell and Werewolf By Night into the mix or—and I’d sell a kidney for this—introducing Sleepwalker.
