TV Review: Marvel’s Moon Knight Episode 1
You might be getting a bit tired of Marvel movies by now but just as I was about to give up on the franchise the excellent Spiderman No Way Home sucked me back in and now Moon Knight has pulled me back to the TV shows on Disney Plus.
Moon Knight is one of Marvel’s most obscure superheroes and there’s a good reason for that. His backstory is batshit crazy for one! I’m so glad Marvel and Disney have taken a chance on bringing in my opinion one of their most fascinating characters to life on the small screen (fingers crossed for a full movie)..
Renewed excitement in Marvel
After the pretty lacklustre WandaVision, Hawkeye and Falcon & The Winter Solider Series, Moon Knight gets off to a surprisingly strong start that leaves the viewer desperate to want to know more. The first episode introduces Oscar Isaac’s character (or should that be characters) Steven Grant, a mild-mannered guy who works in a gift shop at the British Museum and who discovers that he is suffering from a severe case of dissociative identity disorder. He keeps waking up in random places, never remembers where he’s just been and even sleeps with a shackle on his ankle to stop himself from what he thinks is just mild sleepwalking.
In reality, Steven is actually sharing a body with a badass mercenary called Marc Spector. In this first episode we are only offered glimpses as to just how good a fighter Marc is but it works incredibly well to showcase the disorder affecting him.
During one of his episodes, Steven wakes up in a field in the Alps with no recollection as to how he got there or why there’s a bunch of gun totting blokes trying to kill him. What follows is a really well done chase scene where a mysterious voice tells Steven to go away and let Marc take over. As he switches between the two identities, we the audience, are shown very little except the aftermath of Marc’s actions, needless to say he knows how to handle himself.
What happens after that I won’t spoil, but as the episode progresses we learn just how intense Steven’s disorder is and how it ties into a mystery that involves a man who fills his shoes with broken glass and is obviously magical, and the powerful ancient gods of Egypt.
I can’t wait for the next episode and that reveal at the end of Moon Knight in all his glory was enough to get me hooked.
