Moon Knight’s fourth episode delivered just the kind of massive shocker audiences were in for since Marvel’s most unstable superhero made its debut on Disney Plus, however, with only two episodes left there is a ton of plot ground to cover but luckily the Jeff Lemire’s Moon Knight comics might just be able to answer where the series is heading.
Arguably episode four is among the best Moon Knight entries so far, and not just because of its unforeseen plot twist but also due to the way the directing duo of Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson approached this Indiana Jones type of adventure from the perspective of experienced horror filmmakers. Nevertheless, Moon Knight’s directors and writers wouldn’t be able to put all of this together if it wasn’t for the already fascinating source material the superhero brings to the table, especially with his revamped identity in recent years.
What Happened Inside The Tomb?
A trip down “The Tomb” was always bound to end up with a banger, and yet the true shock value of it is only boosted by how relatively calm of a start it gets. Steven and Layla struggle to find their way through the desert and when they finally get to the tomb the vibes change completely from the Fight Club-esque walks Steven and Marc had through the street of London, all the way to a Raiders of the Lost Ark mission.
Those influences had already been put in place in last week’s episode, as Marc and Steven’s (and possibly fellow Moon Knight Jake Lockley too) strolled past El Cairo, but that’s why the Loki season 2 directors return to provide a perfect change of scenery and pace. See, unlike so many of Marvel’s other heroes, who are blessed with their powers to carry some grandiose purpose, the Moon Knight mantle is more like a curse that was bestowed on Marc by Khonshu.
Moon Knight is not the typical MCU plot where audiences get a streamlined origin story, because the superhero’s genesis moment is not all that clear, both due to his varying origins in Marvel Comics and to Marc/Steven themselves. The mental asylum twist is the perfect way for the show to make use of this, to capitalize on Moon Knight’s strengths as an unreliable narrator, it’s how the series will probably tackle the beginning of the whole story five episodes in.
The story Marc tells Layla about her father being killed by his associate, who is presumed to be Raoul Bushman, usually ends with him being shot by the treacherous merc only to be revived by Khonshu’s Egyptian powers (another potential scenario yet to be explored). Only that in TV Moon Knight, the episode leaves Marc/Steven shot practically dead only to “revive” inside the same mental institution that Lemire chose as the perfect setting for one of his stories.
Dr. Ammit’s Psychiatric Hospital
Disney’s Moon Knight wakes up escaping death and a showing of the likely terrible "Tomb Buster", only to find himself locked and highly sedated in a worse place, as a carefully controlled patient in a mental institution. Regardless of that, in Moon Knight things are rarely what they seem to be, and one of Lemire’s most well-known stories already used this setting as perhaps Ammit’s most evil ploys to break down Marc/Steven.
In the comics, the mental asylum is nothing more than a meticulous hallucination created by the crocodile goddess to trick Marc into thinking he’s spent his entire life locked up due to his multiple personality disorder. The altered presence of so many elements like Crawley, the Khonshu bird drawings, and even the transformation of agents Kennedy and Fitzgerald into his caretakers are all clever nods from the show to that comic book storyline.
When Marc eventually breaks the shackles of this fabricated reality, where Kennedy and Fitzgerald (Bobby and Billy in the comics) were Jackals and the warden, named Dr. Emmit, turns out to be Ammit he gains a heightened sense of what his life has really been like since he was a child. The appearance of the hippo goddess of birth, Taweret, suggests the live presence of Egyptian deities is something Moon Knight writers want to use and given Arthur Harrow has apparently accomplished his goal, it’s not far-fetched to think Ammit could indeed be behind this illusion that will push the hero into discovering more about himself.
The problem is Moon Knight has so far chosen to follow a path not too closely tied to the comics, and it’s already confirmed that Marc’s parents were cast in the series, so expect some flashbacks to his childhood in the next episode. If there’s one thing to keep in mind is that Lemire’s comics went much further to humanize Moon Knight’s mental illness as ultimately something that Khonshu took advantage of, and by now that feels almost like a necessity in order to give Oscar Isaac's character a fighting chance against his mental issues.
It may be hard to piece out what Moon Knight’s final two episodes will take after, but above everything else, they’re likely to finally give viewers a proper background story for Marc/Steven, whose journey so far has been one of torment and confusion that's led him to this metaphoric mental hospital. Just remember, there’s a chance all of this was caused by Ammit all along, and there's no catchy them song this time around.