Moon Knight - Episode 5 - Review

It somewhat funny, I saw the fourth episode of Moon Knight some weeks ago, so I had to go for more than a month until this latest episode. That meant that all my thoughts and desires, hopes and wishes had time to build up and with how the previous episode ended, that could have been a blessing or a curse. Now that the fifth episode is here, what did it end up being?

***Spoilers Ahead***

Moon Knight, as a show has been vastly different from all the other Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, they very rarely allow a character to feel bad for any extended period of time. Tony Stark had panic attacks for 15 minutes in Iron Man 3, before he got over it, Thor had lost half of his people, his brother and hammer in the first 15 minutes of Avengers Infinity War, but he has bounced back, at least we are meant to assume he has, thanks to the teaser for his new movie. With Moon Knight though, we are seeing a character experience issues that last more than the time it takes to make a glib remark. Marc and Steven, while the same person physically, are two distinct people personality wise and seeing them attempting to make sense of things, while struggling to fight back against a man who wants to ruin the world, has been interesting. With the fourth episode containing them getting shot and winding up in a mental institution, there was a chance that things may have been smoothed out in the penultimate episode, though when you have an eight-foot-tall talking hippopotamus make an appearance, expectations needed to be shattered.

What was interesting is that the show didn’t stick with Taweret and make it all about the adventures of the underworld, sure they used the goddess as a means to get the two sides of Marc to balance each other out, but it wasn’t what I expected. Instead, what the show did was provide a chance for us to learn more about Marc and how Steven came to be, the events that lead to the fracturing of Marc’s mind, how Marc came to be beholden to Khonshu and of course, why Steven was around now. Dissociative identity disorder has been known to cause memory loss, more so when one personality takes over from the other, something we have seen since the first episode and using that as a mechanism to revisit the past was honestly, wonderful. The show has never shied away from making use of the disorder, but this episode, we got to see just how weird things can get for people that suffer from it.

With the show bouncing between the clean office of Dr Harrow, to the various sections of Marc’s life and of course the Duat, even as a viewer, it was hard to keep up with what was real at times. That could only be even worse for the Marc and Steven, especially when Steven pops up in the office near the end. It was wonderful to see both Marc and Steven sharing the screen, not in a broken mirror reflection, but literally side-by-side, it not only made things more surreal for the viewer but allowed them to have more direct moments. In the past we have seen one attempt to have a strong conversation with the other, but they just needed to turn away from whatever reflective surface was near, to cancel it out. In person, so to speak, it was much harder for Marc to leave Steven behind and vice-versa and what this meant was that everything we thought we knew, was going to be addressed and there was no stopping it.

I have said in reviews past that Ethan Hawke has made for a fantastic villain and while his role in this episode is less evil and more obstruction, he still manages to provide a sense of eerie calm to the scenes. While that is a strong performance, there is no denying whatsoever that Oscar Isaac delivered, across the board in this episode, from seeing both of the current versions of Marc and Steven, to flashbacks that dealt with trauma of varying kinds, each time we saw him, we were able to get something new to enjoy. Seeing Marc, Steven and past Marc, all standing below a massive statue of Khonshu, who is attempting to convince past Marc to join him and become his hand of vengeance, is made all the more painful, when it is clear to Steven that Khonshu is manipulating Marc for his own gains, something current Marc knows but still can’t admit fully.

There was one aspect of the show that didn’t click though and that was in the final moments, during the scene where Marc tells Steven that their mother has died and that was when Steven stated he thought he was real. Earlier in the same episode, we see Steven see people calling for Marc and he even makes mention about those events, but still somehow believes he was the real one and that includes the room of the dead. There was clearly another level of subtext that the team were aiming for, but it just felt too out of place and pulled me from the scene, because without that in there, it was a truly intense scene.

With how the episode ends, there is clearly a lot more to happen, as Marc standing in A’Aru, or the field of reeds as it is also known, was unexpected. It would have been easy for them to have him be thrown back to the world of the living, but they didn’t, so the final really needs to pack a lot in. Both Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke still manage to deliver performances that really make this show and their scenes together in this episode cement that. There wasn’t a lot of action in this one, but seeing Steven take up the fight was a nice touch and maybe something we will see more of, though it is unlikely. The final episode has a lot to deliver and with the main character dead, that is going to be a tall order, but given the god like power Marvel has exuded so far with the show, anything is possible going forward.

The Score

9.0

Review access provided by Disney

The Pros

+Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke both deliver incredible performances

+The show jumps from the past to the present, to dreams and beyond with ease

The Cons

-The jumps around can be hard to follow at times, which may leave some viewers confused

-They never really explore the underworld in much depth, just dropping a few words here and there