Since the beginning of the Disney Plus series, there have been some action sequences that hinted at a kind of Indiana Jones feel to the show and that’s fully embraced in Episode 3. Near the top of the show, Marc is shown running and jumping on the rooftops of an Egyptian village apparently looking for someone who can tell him where the sarcophagus is that is at the center of the episode. He eventually finds the man, though a group of thugs found him first and killed him before Marc could speak to him.
RELATED: Moon Knight Should Avoid A Regular Marvel Pitfall
Once he runs across the knife-wielding enemies a fight that is quite reminiscent of the famous fight in Indiana Jones when he takes on a villain who really enjoys showing off his knife skills by shooting him. That idea is adapted in this episode of Moon Knight when one of the baddies tries to intimidate Marc by … licking his knife. Rather than being intimidated, Spector takes the opportunity to punch the thug in the face and basically take control of the fight from there. Speaking of control, the fight also shows the trick that was shown off the most in the show’s first episode, where Marc/Steven encounters a kind of time jump and this particular time jump tends to be when the biggest bloodiest fights are carried out.
This is also the period of time when yet another mystery is injected into Moon Knight and one that seems like it will need to be answered before the show wraps its six-episode run. While the first episode hinted that when the most violent action was being carried out it was Marc Spector that was dealing out punishment, he seems to swear it wasn’t and isn’t. In fact, after waking up as he’s stabbing a combatant, he blames the stabbing on Steven, who in turn swears that it wasn’t him that did it. That would seem to hint that there is a third personality that is able to control of the body and doesn’t have any qualms about killing.
Those who have read the Moon Knight comics likely know who this third personality is though it appears that he’s been changed up a bit in the same way that Steven Grant has in order to pull the Disney Plus show off. In the comics, the Steven Grant that readers know is actually a very rich man, as opposed to a harried and haunted gift shop employee. It appears this third personality is going to show himself to be bloodthirsty and uncaring about harming other people. Just why there’s a need for this third character is a bit hazy. It appears that Disney and or Marvel want to make sure that the audience knows that it wasn’t Marc Spector that was taking people down with ruthless efficiency so that he can be viewed as a hero. But the show seemed to be doing fine when Marc was a kind of antihero so this particular addition seems both needless and more than a little lame.
The show also took some interesting liberties with how Marc and Steven interact that make the mystery of the third person all the more confusing. The two main personalities are now talking to each other quite often and are even cooperating to one degree or another when it comes to control of the body. This isn’t the first time this is how a comic book show has portrayed personality disorders before. Doom Patrol for one, has one of the main characters often talk and argue with her many personalities. It’s a little odd for this particular show considering it wasn’t that long ago that Steven didn’t have any idea he was one of many personalities.
The hangup of how quickly the personalities seem to be working as a team aside, it was quite a bit of fun to see Steven and Marc hand off the body during different parts of the show. There was one particular scene when the Moon Knight character had put on his cloaked suit and was fighting multiple baddies at the sarcophagus. At first, Steven wanted to take over and the suit immediately turned into Mr. Knight, further showing how their personalities even have their own uniforms.
When the fight became too much for Steven, he handed the body back to Mark who finished the battle. That battle also showed just how much damage Moon Knight can take as he had several spears run through him and it seemed as if they didn’t bother him all that much. That was of course explained away a bit earlier in the episode when Khonshu said his powers were a “shield of healing.”
In the episode as a whole, the action took center stage more than it had in any of the other installments of Moon Knight. It was a far cry from the season premiere that avoided showing any fights with the flash-forwards. The show did seem to sacrifice story for that action and hurried through a few plot points, like the meeting of the other Egyptian gods and their avatars. It does appear some blanks will be filled in next week, but as with the other episodes, the show, on the whole, felt like it was rushing through the plot in order to get somewhere Moon Knight hasn’t gotten to just yet.
MORE: Kevin Feige Reveals How He Convinced Oscar Isaac To Join Moon Knight
