After the season (or series?) finale of Moon Knight, I remain conflicted about the show. The penultimate episode served to be the best this series had to offer, as most Marvel shows usually do, but the finale left a lot to be desired and included yet another giant CGI filled fight.
The Good
Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke. Two incredible actors who absolutely carried this show. As Ammit states to Khonshu, little separates these two and their ideologies, and they do a great job going back and forth with each other. Harrow, being the former Avatar of Khonshu, makes for a great overall dynamic, and plants enough doubt in your mind to not completely trust Khonshu (in addition to Marc feeling imprisoned by him).
I really enjoyed episode five, it was highly emotional learning about the creation of the Steven Grant persona, which was rooted in Marc losing his brother and the subsequent abuse at the hands of his mother. We also learn that Marc and Steven’s lives did not start intertwining until after the death of Marc’s mother. At the end, we see Steven sacrifice himself to balance the scale, and then is brought back in episode six wherein they are both revived and reunited with Khonshu.
The post-credit scene was the most essential part to the entire show. Khonshu, after releasing Steven and Marc, abducts Harrow from his psych ward with the help of a third personality that had been hinted at a few times in the show, Jake Lockley. A far more brutal persona and one that seems to be closely allied to Khonshu, who notes that Marc “truly doesn’t understand how disturbed he is.” Lockley then shoots Harrow, ending any chance Ammit had of escaping, such was Khonshu’s plan. While it hasn’t been officially announced, we can expect another season of Moon Knight, if not for the sole reason of exploring the third persona of Jake Lockley.
The Bad
Marvel definitely has a bit of a pacing problem, but when you are limited to six episodes that’s bound to happen. The finale felt rushed, and like I said in the intro, I am not a fan of the all-out CGI fight to end these shows (What If…? and Loki did their finales the best in my opinion).
This next point is double sided: there wasn’t enough Moon Knight. The show focused more on the personalities of Marc and Steven and, at its core, one of the main themes of the show is about brotherhood and their relationship with each other and learning to live together (we see them switching seamlessly in the finale). I love this about the show, I just think the balance was off. I’m sure we will see Moon Knight’s infamous brutality when Jake Lockley takes the reins to deliver Khonshu’s justice.
Another note, there is virtually no tie’s to the larger MCU. This appears to be in its own self-contained story, which is fine, but I was hoping we got more of a tease as to where Moon Knight could fit in with the rest of this universe. If they included the Jake Lockley assassination scene at the end of the show and then a different post-credit scene expanding on that, I would have been very satisfied.
Overall, I enjoyed Moon Knight. I think Oscar Isaac gave one of the best MCU performances to date, and Ethan Hawke was a great villain. The story was pretty generic, but the characters of Marc and Steven and their dynamic with Khonshu is what really drove the show for me.
I give Moon Knight a 6/10.
Updated MCU Show Rankings
- WandaVision
- Loki
- Hawkeye
- Moon Knight
- What If…?
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
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