Warning: The following review of Moon Knight's third episode contains full spoilers.
You can check out our review of last week's Moon Knight episode, "The Friendly Type," here.
Wow!
They did it! Those crazy bastards actually got it done. What a bamboozle of an ending this week. And also... what damn fun.
As mentioned back in the review of the Moon Knight premiere, this particular Marvel hero's had a lot of cooks in the kitchen over the years. That's true of every Marvel title, sure, but think of these cooks as ones trying to playfully reinvent a particular cuisine. Various writers have had a blast remaking and remodeling the "Fist of Khonshu" and one of the most inventive takes over the years came from Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood back in 2016 when Marc Spector woke up in a mental hospital, unsure as to whether or not he'd imagined, well... everything.
So, that's how Episode 4 ended. And it wasn't even just a brief moment right at the end or a post-credits stinger; it lasted the final ten minutes and we're still not out of the woods yet, so to speak. Episode 4, at face value, may have seemed like a time out of sorts. No Khonshu. No Moon Knight. It was just Steven and Layla, having lost their supernatural protection, racing against time to beat Harrow to the finish line inside the tomb of (another bonus twist) Alexander the Great. Structuring can be everything in a TV season and this was the perfect episode at the perfect time. It may have seemed slower and less involved with the overall mythos, but the focus on Layla as a tomb raider, the ghastly ghouls stalking everyone inside the tomb, and the interesting love triangle between our heroine and two men living inside one body made for the best installment yet.
Where is My Mind?
Starting with the finish here, Marc was shot down by Harrow, falling into a pool of crypt water (so gross), only to wake up inside (presumably) a dream world where he's a mental patient with a long history of thinking he's lived an adventurous life as a mercenary superhero. Like in the Lemire/Smallwood arc, everyone he knew as Marc and Steven are also there -- from Crowley the Living Statue to his boss Donna to people he saw in the Alpine village. Most importantly, of course, is Layla (who seems to have a habit of stealing his winning bingo cards and keeping the prize).
Nothing here looks real and the reverse-Keyser Söze of it all speaks more to a life getting split up into tiny details rather than the other way around, so it's not like we as viewers are supposed to truly think he's been this unwell and delusional the entire time. And the show is smart enough to know we wouldn't buy that so we actually leave things with the hospital façade crumbling and Hippo deity Taweret (who we saw in plushie form in the gift shop) arriving for a very funny double scream ending (both personalities shrieking very differently).
Running underneath this detour is a funky and delightful Total Recall element, in which there's a lot of fun to be had with the "But what if?"s. Just like Schwarzenegger's Douglas Quaid could have actually been having a "schizoid embolism" and imagining his whole Mars adventure, Marc could be in such a deep schizophrenic state that he's now imagining seeing Steven and Taweret and the colony collapse of his psychiatric hospital.
Oh, and Ethan Hawke's fake-ass mustache. If nothing else, that facial hair could stand in for our "bead of sweat," if we're still lightly comparing things to Total Recall.
A different feature may be in order to break down all the "real world" things/symbols Marc sees in the asylum, but they range from minuscule things like a cupcake (Steven uses a cupcake truck to get away in the premiere) to bigger ones like a VHS copy of Tomb Buster, Harrow's cane and shoes, and the wheelchair ankle strap. After four episodes of dueling personalities, suit summoning, Overvoid politics, and generally most everyone not being on the same page, or knowing everything, except the series' villain, this reboot-ish use of the Lemire comics was inspired and needed. From the premiere, the series seemed like it might give us a one-off episode, be it a flashback (seeing Harrow as Moon Knight would still be awesome) or something else, but with only two episodes left this was definitely the best path.
Bizarre Love Triangle
Being frustrated with Steven is understandable. The Steven personality is an oft-silly rom-com archetype by design and with the fate of the world on the line his pacifism and overall bumbling seems to just get in the way. But Marc is an archetype too. The sullen closed-off soldier who pushes those he loves away is almost as outrageous. There may even be a third person hiding in there (bits of dialogue, plus the mystery of which persona killed the henchmen last week points toward it). This week, however, Steven seems to put the entire mission at risk because he's in love with Layla and refuses to give the body back.
Side note: It's still strange that Marc actually does seem willing to vanish and never return given that he's the main personality (as in, he was the one who knew about the other one).
Anyhow, Steven's goo-goo eyes for Layla could have tanked this episode except... look at the way Layla looks at Steven. Fortunately, it's not a one-way street. She even tried to kiss him first. Layla sees in Steven all the things she doesn't get from Marc so we're in this quasi-throuple situation where she may just be into both of the men residing in this one mind. This episode also expanded even more on Layla's combat skills for those thinking they absolutely needed Marc. Not only did she handle the goons at the beginning but she also took out one of those chittering undead priest protectors in the tomb (both sets of villains undone by signal flares too).
It might be hard to side with Steven because of how much Marc was willing to sacrifice for Layla (he basically buried his entire existence to keep her safe) but the solution probably resides somewhere in the middle. It might not be an all-or-nothing scenario. It would be weird if this limited series didn't somehow end with everyone finding some sort of common-ground balance -- some way for everyone's life to move forward on a positive note.
We still need more backstory, of course, even if we don't get full flashbacks. Basically, Marc's entire time as Moon Knight is still hanging out there. How long was he a superhero? Was he battling crooks by night for a while before Harrow hatched his Ammit plan or has Marc only been wearing the suit for this one long mission? Before Marc got shot down, and whisked away to ethereal psychiatric care, his big secret got revealed. Marc -- sticking with the original Moon Knight comic book origin -- was there when his gal's archeologist father was murdered (Layla being the Marlene role from the comics). He didn't do it, but his hands aren't clean. And when confronting his partner, he got shot down and resurrected by Khonshu. And this was... ten years prior? Again, that's a lot of Moon Knight time.
Emotions ran rampant in this episode, but it still all worked well despite it meaning that characters took their eyes off the prize because they got caught up in strong feelings of love or hate or what have you. It could have derailed things, but the time and care put into the Layla/Marc/Steven dynamic is paying dividends now and allowing our heroes to make mistakes for the benefit of drama. Last week, Layla discovered that she barely knew the man she'd married and this week, the revelations cut even deeper.
Before we got hit with heavy scenes near the end, the battle for Layla's affections was sweetly played for laughs, with Marc protesting from the void, even punching Steven at one point. The moves from humor to horror to drama threaded together wonderfully.
Tomb Busting Makes Me Feel Good
Episode 4 cast a nice nostalgia spell, giving us catacombs, puzzles, and creepy crawlies in the dark. Violence-wise, it got pretty gruesome when one of the tomb's monstrous protectors ripped that one guy's organs out while he was still alive. Moon Knight isn't a blood-soaked show per se, but it is super lethal. Both Marc and Layla have killed many in their path, especially during last week's battle at Mogart's, so none of this felt out of place. It did, though, add a nice horror tinge to the story.
People being dragged on the ground. Pulled into dark spaces. Screams and gunshots heard off-screen, hinting at a massacre. This was a wonderful pivot after weeks of more open-air kinetic action. Also, the scene between Harrow and Layla was obviously there to deliver the big "secret" to her, but it was also interesting from a Harrow standpoint since this guy was just off alone, with evil zombies lurking everywhere, unafraid -- perhaps even purposefully leading some of his followers into a nest of them so he could take the correct path to the tomb safely. Once again, Harrow's calmness in certain situations speaks volumes.
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