‘Moon Knight’ Is Unlike Any Other Marvel Film

Nicholas Kozhemiakin, Journalist

Marvel’s latest show has been unlike any series before. It’s lovely.

Moon Knight starts with Steven Grant, an ordinary man living an ordinary life as a gift shop employee in a museum in London. It also introduces another character, Marc Spector, a mercenary and the fist of Khonshu. 

While occasionally lacking action and fighting scenes, Moon Knight makes up for it tenfold with its story, plot twists, and acting. For the first time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it acknowledges the existence of Egyptian gods. 

When Marc Spector is badly injured in a battle, Egyptian moon god Khonshu takes Marc Spector as his avatar to be his fist, tongue, and ears in exchange for the chance to be reborn.

When Steven Grant starts waking up in random places with blood on his hands, he learns that he isn’t who he thinks he is. Steven Grant is Marc Spector, in a way. They have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a disorder that, simply put, creates multiple personality identities in a single person to deal with childhood trauma. As DID is a real mental illness, my definition does not fully encapsulate all of what DID is, so don’t take it as fact.

As Moon Knight, Marc Spector commits the will of Khonshu: killing those who are evil and protecting the travelers of the night. When Marc Spector finishes Khnoshu’s will, he has been promised freedom from Khonshu. To fulfill Khnoshu’s will, Marc and Steven must stop Arthur Harrow, a previous Moon Knight, from attempting to resurrect Ammit.

The show starts in London but quickly moves over to Egypt, where it spends most of its runtime. 

Like most Marvel shows and movies, the CGI is nothing short of incredible. Something enjoyable about the show was that Moon Knight’s suit and costumes weren’t CGI; it was real, which makes scenes look even more realistic.

As with most comic book movies, Moon Knight’s storyline is based heavily on the comics. In particular, the Lemire one. Moon Knight’s show, just like the comics, was highly confusing, but in a good way. Moon Knight is a mentally broken character, which shows in his DID. Marvel makes the watcher or reader unsure if everything that’s happened is real or not. Is Moon Knight even real, or is Marc Spector just insane? Does the story’s plot actually happen, or does Spector imagine everything?

Moon Knight’s ending was the show’s last attempt to confuse the viewer, and it worked. I vividly remember being visibly confused when the end credits started rolling. The post-credit scene was also a surprise for those who didn’t know Moon Knight outside of the show. As a pretty big Moon Knight fan, the post-credit scene was nothing more than expected. The post-credit was hinted at on multiple occasions in the show, like in episode 5, “Asylum.”

With all that said, would I recommend Moon Knight? Yes, I would highly recommend it. It’s an excellent show to get into and an even better character to follow.