Viewer Log: Moon Knight ep 5

Pasts are... complicated.

Last time on Moon Knight, Steven and Layla teamed up to try and get Ammit’s statue before Harrow’s people did. They cave dived into the tomb, met some The Mummy rip off guardians and were separated. Layla met Harrow who told her that he saw Marc’s memories when he judged him/Steven and implies that Marc killed her father. Steven, meanwhile, found the tomb and discovered the last Avatar of Ammit was Alexander the Great. He gets the statue, but Layla arrives and demands to know the truth. Marc takes over and tells her he didn’t kill her father but was there. His partner got greedy and killed the archeologist team, and tried to kill Marc, but he survived thanks to Khonshu. Harrow arrives, Layla hides, and Marc tries to fend them off. Marc is shot and killed. He wakes up in a mental hospital and has moment where he wonders if everything that happened to him was a delusion. But he quickly escapes “Dr.” Harrow and finds a pair of sarcophagi. He opens a white one and finds Steven, but they leave the red one alone. As they try to escape, a giant hippo lady comes in and says hi. They screamed together as the credits rolled. Enough recap let’s get to it.

 

Episode 5: Asylum

 

Its saying something when the hippo goddess is 
only like 5th on weird things in Disney+ Marvel shows.

We open with a memory of a cave and rushing water, a woman shouting, “this is all your fault!” and then seeing the hippo lady’s giant hippo teeth as she screams back at the boys. Marc screams alone and is in Harrow’s office. Harrow tells him that his mind is shifting between sense and nonsense. He describes Marc’ brain is a pendulum shifting between the reality that he’s in a psychiatric hospital in Chicago and a reassuring fantasy of his own making. That’s how you know it’s a lie, nothing about the last few days has been “reassuring” to Marc. Though nice nod that he’s a midwestern boy. Marc accuses Harrow of not being a real doctor, but Harrow treats that statement like a joke. Harrow presents Marc’s memory of the last few minutes as “nonsense,” and Marc seems to go along with it. Harrow starts pressing Marc about a little boy he’d been talking about before he got upset. Marc stands up and picks up a glass object, seemingly without realizing it. Harrow calls in security that arrive just as Marc lunges at him with it. Marc gets injected and returns to the hallway with Steven and the hippo.

 

Just boating with my Alternate persona.

She pulls out an intro speech, stating that she hasn’t had to usher people through the afterlife in a while, and welcomes them to the Duat. Steven recognizes this as the ancient Egyptian afterlife, and that she is Taweret, goddess of women and children and the one who will show them through the afterlife. She explains that this is *An* afterlife, not *The* Afterlife. The MCU and most comics these days run on this kind of idea, that there are multiple places to go when you die, your deeds, beliefs and actions just point your soul in the right direction. Obviously, the servants of an Egyptian god get sent through Egyptian afterlife. Taweret takes a minute to gush about how pretty the Ancestral Plane of Wakanda is before continuing. She explains that because the Duat is impossible for the human mind to process, their mind shapes it into something they can handle. Taweret does say a psych ward is a first for her. Marc has a bit of freak out and starts to believe that it’s an “organizing principle” of their insanity and opens a door… only to find them on a boat sailing through a desert. Steven explains that they’re on the way to A’aru, the field of reeds. Taweret tells them they’ll be in paradise if their hearts balance. She uses her power to pull out their hearts and puts them on the Scale of Justice against the Feather of Truth. If they’re hearts balance, they get to heaven, if not, they’re thrown over the side to hell. Marc proposes that they kill Taweret and steal the boat, but the plan is interrupted by their hearts not balancing at all. They just shift endlessly. Taweret tells them with ‘incomplete’ hearts, the Duat will eventually claim them. She tells them to go back into the boat and show each other what they’re hiding or else risk destruction.

 

The boys return to the hospital. Marc tries to convince Steven to steal the boat, but Steven just wants to do what she said. They see the Bad, Marc killing the Jackal in the bathroom, the Good, Steven turning back the night sky, and the confusing, one of them drinking out in the street in front of a house. It’s revealed to be Marc, but he plays the obviously important situation as unimportant. A child cries for help and Steven runs to see who. Marc follows. It’s a room full of dead bodies, revealed to be the victims Marc claimed as the Fist of Khonshu. As Marc talks about how much the killings, albeit justified by Khonshu, weighed on his soul and how he sometimes wishes he’d just died, the Scales (which just appear in the room) begin to slow down. They see a small boy. Marc tells Steven not to go near hm, but they both follow. Steven enters a room and locks Marc out. Marc is frantic to get him out but he won’t listen. We’re shown a lovely afternoon with the Spector family, Marc, his parents, and his little brother Randall. Marc and Randall go off to explore a cave they like to play in. Steven follows the boys, the two Specters playing out the movie from the last episode, Marc being Dr. Grant and Randall being Rosser. It starts to rain, and Randall says they shouldn’t go into the cave when it’s raining per their mother. Marc wants to go forward. They go in, Steven stepping on a dead bird as he tries to follow. Outside, Marc tries to find a way to them, but can’t find a door. Steven tries to call the Specters back but they can’t hear him since, ya know, memory. The cave floods, Randall drowning. Outside, Marc sees his mother’s judging gaze. He forces his way through them memory and to Randall’s funeral. No, the Rabbi and Kippahs aren’t a random detail, the show doesn’t say it out loud, but Marc is Jewish. His mother, Wendy, is in shock, saying she wants her Roro back and screaming at young Marc when he comes down. A wet Steven appears. Steven follows young Marc and into a new memory. Marc and his father Elias have a small birthday party for him since Wendy is still not doing well. Steven climbs higher, another birthday and his mom is still unstable. She still blames Marc for Randall’s death, because she’s depressed. Steven goes higher and opens a door, but Marc grabs him and pulls him away and into the street.

 

The fist of Khonshu reborn.

Steven tries to go back but Marc pulls him back. Steven asks Marc why he’s remembered their mom like that, saying she wasn’t like that. As they try to walk, they see a now teenage Marc walking out with a bag, their father following. Elias tells him that they’ll fix this, but Marc isn’t having it. Modern Marc and Steven wrestle, waking up in the desert in the dead of night. When Steven accuses Marc of being a killer mercenary, Marc explains a bit of his background. Namely, he joined the army after that scene with their dad, but he went AWOL in a fugue (meaning he swapped to Steven) and was discharged from the military. Needing work, he signed up as a mercenary with his old CO Bushman. Their job was to raid a tomb, Bushman changed the plan to have no witnesses and killed them all. Marc tried to lead them away, was caught and shot too for his trouble. They watch as an injured and bloody Marc drags himself into a temple of Khonshu. Marc prepares to kill himself when the lunar God asks (demands) Marc become his avatar. Steven almost immediately gets that Khonshu was manipulating Marc to agree to be the Avatar, but Marc still thinks that he was just taking the opportunity to keep being a killer. Their scales have slow significantly but are still shifting.

 

They get pulled out to the deck of the boat again. Taweret explains that unbalanced souls are being judged and sent to the Duat before their time. Oh, okay, so Taweret just admitted that Ammit’s judgement of pre-dead souls is a biased system and is damning people that might not do the deeds they’re being judged for, got it. Steven asks her to take them back, but she points out that if they go back to their body now, they’ll just die again due to the bullet wound. They ask if she can contact Layla and get her to free Khonshu. While Marc is happy to be free, he does admit that it’s their only option. Taweret agrees to help and steers the boat toward Osiris’ gate, the only path out of the Duat. Taweret tells them to get back inside and get the scales balanced.

 

Inside, Steven demands to see the bedroom. Marc wants to talk it out, not wanting to go through it all again. Steven insists that they do, as if they don’t get the balanced scale, Layla, and everyone else is going to die. Marc has an intense freakout at being pushed, screaming that Steven can’t make him go through that again.

 

Marc wakes up in Harrow’s office again. Harrow saying that Marc had a freak out, as the involuntary sedation of a patient is illegal. Harrow tells him that he’s proud of him for revealing so many of his traumatic memories. He gives Marc a glass of water. He asks Marc if he made Steven to hide from his bad memories, or if Steven made him to punish the world for what his mother did to him. Harrow encourages him to open up to Steven and figure it out.

 

It must be hard to look at a parent and see a monster.

We enter the memory. Steven knocks aside his toys and sits on the ground crying. Wendy beats on the door, demanding he opens the door. Marc keeps chanting Wendy isn’t his mom, clearly scared, until he has his first swap, and in his fake British accent decides to clean things up before “mum” sees. Wendy busts the door open, grabs a belt and is implied to start beating him. Marc pulls hm out, saying Steven isn’t meant to see that, that’s not the point of him. Steven hits Marc, angry at finally discovering that he wasn’t the original, that he’s someone Marc “made up.” Marc counters by pointing out that Steven got to live in a world where he believed he lived a happy, simple, normal life. He drops the bombshell that their mother died. Steven doesn’t believe him, but Marc says that their father called them about his mother’s “shiva.” I googled that, it’s the weeklong mourning period in the Jewish funeral rites. Okay, so there’s one out loud reference to Marc being Jewish.

 

Steven demands to be “let out” and wakes up in Harrow’s office. He threw water in his face by accident. He’s just as freaked out as Marc was initially. He says that Harrow is very “Ned Flanders” which made me giggle. He claims that Marc lied to him about things. Harrow reveals that Steven brought them to the hospital after their mother passed, which causes Steven to scream at him. Harrow offers to call Steven’s mother, which he does despite Steven’s objections. Steven takes the phone, and says his mum is dead.

Oscars Oscar moment. Seriously, the pain in him is
palpable.

 

He remembers the day that Marc tried to go to the shiva. He stood outside, drinking. His father sees him and tries to get him to come in, but he refuses.  Like many a child at the death of an abusive parent, Marc has tumultuous feelings about his mother. He storms off, breaking his father’s heart most assuredly as he does so. He drops to the street, cries, and beats his Kippah into the ground. He says he’s sorry, and then suddenly shifts to Steven. Steven gets up, puts his probably dead phone to his head and starts talking to his mom, telling her he got lost again. The current Steven arrives. Marc gets up and tells him this is the point where they started shifting more randomly. Funny, his mom caused his DID in the first place, and then ultimately made it worse. It was two months ago, by the way. Steven tells marc that it wasn’t his fault. Marc doesn’t believe him, but Steven insists it wasn’t his fault. They feel a shift and realize that the boat stopped.

 

Marc gets his rewards
Nooooooooo Steven!

    They come up to the surface. They learn they made it to the gate but they’re hearts still aren’t balanced. She apologizes but leaves them to their fate. Marc starts fighting the sand zombies that rise up and grab them. Marc is almost thrown over, but Steven grabs the helm and turns the boat to the other side, knocking them over. Marc tries to get up but is knocked out. Steven, realizing that if Marc has got this, and he is also Marc, then he has it too. He saves Marc and relieves a lot of anger all in one go. Another sand guy grabs Marc, but Steven sacrifices himself to save Marc. He turns to Sand, as Marc shouts his name. Steven’s death, or sacrifice, balances their scales and Marc finds himself in the field of reeds. Oh damn!

 

This is probably the best episode of the series. Which feels weird for me to say because I usually prefer more action, but this was such an interesting character study. We got to see how in this version of events, Marc’s mind fractured to protect itself. Frenanda Andrade did an amazing job portraying Wendy in her few scenes, showing us an at first loving parent, but how grief and anger broke her so completely that it was easier to punish her living son for an accident than to just live with her younger son’s death. It’s a terrible thing to do but extremely well-acted. The bit in the street during the shiva was brilliant. In one moment, Marc Spector is there, sobbing, and angry, and in pain, and in an upwards eye roll he’s Steven, befuddled and happy go lucky, trying to figure out where the bloody hell he is. Brilliant. The bit with Arthur Harrow psychoanalyzing them was fine. Again, I’m not a huge fan of the “is the hero living out a delusional fantasy?” trope, but they used it just enough to help drive home the fact that the mind of Marc Spector is a chaotic place. Even has he’s coming to grips with things, he’s not quite processing it right. Taweret is great, by the way. Hippos are not to be treated lightly, but she’s delightful as this bubbly goddess that’s playing tour guide. I liked the bit where she’s not even that upset that their afterlife isn’t visited that often and instead takes a moment to talk about how pretty the Ancestral Plane is. Top notch stuff right there. So yeah, that’s the penultimate episode. Next time, the finale. See you there. 

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