Everything Wrong With Moon Knight (2022)

...I may regret this post title later, since I don't actually like CinemaSins on YouTube. But I wanted to compile a list of everything about the TV show that bothers me and that I'm still thinking about weeks later because IT MAKES NO SENSE.

(Okay, I said that, but I realized this post turned into a list of my general grievances with the show, so...whoops.)

Also, I want to get this out of the way: I'm criticizing the show for not providing enough information/consistency in its writing. Most fans seem eager to come up with their own explanations for a lot of what happens, but the thing is, an outsider can always make up their own explanations. Hell, I can and have come up with my own explanations as well, for fanfic purposes. That does not excuse the source material for not being written well.


Episode 1

• Most people—including the writer, Jeremy Slater—have assumed that Jake was the one who set up the date for Steven. However, Slater also admitted that that was not part of his script and was improvised on set. That makes me a bit nervous that this was a decision made "because it would be cool" but without taking into account whether this was consistent with Jake's character (especially given the post-credits scene). Because if true, this would have to mean that Jake (1) is, or can be, a charismatic person, and (2) can mimic at least Steven's accent. But the MCU already has a spotty record with character consistency, which doesn't make me confident about how they'll handle Jake in his next appearance...

• Many people interpreted Khonshu's dialogue when Steven wakes up in the Alps (?)—"Go back to sleep, worm. You're not supposed to be here. Surrender the body to Marc. Oh, the idiot's in control"—as indicating that Khonshu actually thinks he's talking to Jake at first. Because he doesn't seem to realize Steven, "the idiot," is in control until the end. I think this interpretation is logical. However, the problem is that Khonshu's tone suggests that he doesn't actually respect Jake—or any alter other than Marc—all that much, which then leads to the question: When did Khonshu get so chummy with Jake before the post-credits scene in episode 6?

• When I first watched this episode, I thought the show kept Khonshu's ability to resurrect Marc because Steven clearly gets crushed by a bunch of logs before he wakes up in bed. I suppose we're meant to infer that Marc was seriously injured, maybe on the brink of death, and Khonshu healed his injuries before he was able to go home, but...come on, isn't it more likely that someone crushed by logs would straight-up die?

• On the topic of giving Moon Knight supernatural powers—I feel like this permanently excludes him from the kind of street-level stories Moon Knight has always been associated with, because now only supernatural creatures/supervillains can pose a physical threat to him, if he has magical healing abilities and super strength. If the show had kept it at Moon Knight being unable to die (because Khonshu resurrects him), he can at least still be seriously injured and knocked out of a fight. Le sigh.

Episode 2

• When Steven meets Layla, she says, "Is this 'Steven' the latest fake identity for you?" This seemed to be a pretty damn obvious red flag to indicate that Layla has met at least one of Marc's alters before—which, by process of elimination, would have to be Jake. However, there is nothing else in the show that supports this idea, or Layla ever bringing up to Marc the question of his "fake identities" before...?

• Why does Marc decide to divorce Layla after Steven starts fronting more? He mentions something about disappearing at the end of this episode after he does this last job for Khonshu, except that's not how DID works... Did he become suicidal after his mother's death? It's all so unclear.

• Marc seems to know that he has Dissociative Identity Disorder, given his dialogue with Steven. However, this leads to problems with consistency in the show that I'll discuss later.

Episode 3

Ah, episode 3, also known as THE BANE OF MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE.

• I was convinced that Jake was the one who actually fought the three guys on the roof, for multiple reasons:

(1) Because his fighting style was completely different from Marc's style later against Anton Mogart's men and did not resemble a military fighting style. This just completely baffles me, because every time I've seen a behind the scenes video about fight choreography in movies, fight choreographers always mention that they take care when developing a fighting style for a particular character. Marc Spector was a Marine; the way he fights should reflect military training. There is no explanation I can think of for why "Marc" would have such an inconsistent and non-military fighting style in this scene.

(2) "Marc"'s attitude while fighting. In other scenes in the season, Marc is depicted as someone who will take down the bad guys by any means necessary but who doesn't appear to take any joy from fighting. He's also depicted as someone who loses emotional control during a fight, e.g. his brutality when fighting is a result of his emotions getting away from him, possibly due to anger issues that lead back to his childhood trauma. However, in this scene, "Marc" is a less refined fighter but seems to have a lot more emotional control. He never loses himself emotionally. When he and the knife-licking guy are trying to psych each other out, "Marc" even smiles, like he enjoys the back-and-forth dance of a street brawl.

(3) "Marc"'s dialogue. Based on how Marc acts in episode 2 and other scenes where it's definitely him, the way he talks in this opening scene really doesn't seem consistent. In the previous episode, Marc is shown to have a temper issue, and in the next two scenes when Marc is trying to interrogate the Harrow cultists, he sounds extremely pissed off, impatient, and determined when interrogating them about Harrow's location. However, here, he sounds super chill and almost disappointed when he's told he won't be able to find Harrow. Almost like he's ready to give up.

After that, "Marc" says, "Oh. What, are we dancin'? What, are we fightin'? What are we gonna do?" At no other point in the show is Marc shown to taunt his opponents before fighting. Again, Marc is generally shown to be a somewhat grim and somber person in other scenes/episodes, so this taunt appears wildly out of character for him.

(4) The way "Marc" speaks in this scene (also in the scene where he runs into Layla in the square) is different from how he talks in other scenes. He has a slight New York accent, and his voice is pitched differently from how it normally is, a bit higher.

(5) There's an odd visual detail of "Marc" initially wearing a baseball cap, only to lose it as he's running. I thought that was supposed to indicate that he was actually Jake, since Jake is well known for wearing a cap in the comics. If the baseball cap isn't important, why was Marc wearing it in the first place?

(6) When Marc wakes up in the taxi and then sees the cultists again, his dialogue always struck me as odd. This is the exchange:

MARC: Let me talk to you.
CULTIST: Just let us go, man.
MARC: (angrily) That wasn't me!

One: Does it really make sense for Marc to beat up the guys on the roof and then insist on talking calmly to them? Two: When Marc says "That wasn't me," at first blush, it seems like he's talking about Steven running away from the cultists. However, if that's what he's talking about, why does he sound so angry? Wouldn't it make more sense if he's angry because he thinks Steven/another alter was the one who beat up the cultists, and that's also why the cultists are asking for him to "let [them] go"?

• The scene where Marc wakes up to find that two of the cultists have been stabbed, a.k.a. the first real hint of Jake's existence. I'll get into this later, but it's weird that if Marc knows he has DID, he doesn't immediately think he might have another alter in the system besides Steven. (Especially because Steven is literally the least likely candidate as the person who stabbed two guys to death.) I could have let it slide for this one scene, given that Marc and Steven are supposed to be at odds with each other and emotions are running high, but not when the show pulls this off again later. This ties into a running problem with the show, which is that they tried really hard to hide Jake's existence so they could save it for a shock factor post-credits scene, even when it leads to plot holes in how the characters act.

• The car scene with Layla: Another scene in which I was convinced it was Jake, because the dialogue makes no sense for Marc.

(1) "Marc" is generally pretty chatty in this scene, which is not consistent with the fact that he's mostly pretty reserved and tends to be precise with his words in other scenes.

(2) The subtitles have "Marc" saying: "Ay. I really liked that jacket." "Ay" is a Spanish interjection. Since they portrayed Jake as fluent in Spanish in the post-credits scene, was this supposed to be a hint (that never got confirmed)?

(3) When Layla is asking about what Harrow said, here is the exchange:

LAYLA: What was Harrow talking about?
"MARC": What do you mean?
LAYLA: He said I had a right to know.
"MARC": I have no idea.
LAYLA: I never told anyone why I really moved. But he knew, he just saw right through me.
"MARC": I don't know, I don't know, he's just tryin' to mess wit'cha, you know? He's tryin' to get in your mind. No, don't let him do that. He's, you know, he’s got this idea that he can see the true nature of people, or some baloney like that. If that were true, I don’t think he’d have a bunch'a homicidal maniacs as his disciples, would he?

One, the word choice—"baloney," "homicidal maniacs"—is quite specific and doesn't align with the way Marc talks in other scenes.

Two, the way "Marc" flatly denies answering Layla's questions until she references the death of her father—at first glance, you could just interpret this as Marc being an asshole. However, he has no emotional reaction to Layla's questions, not really like someone who feels guilty and is trying to deflect. And we know for sure from the previous scene that Marc knew exactly what Harrow was talking about. It would make far more sense if "Marc" were actually Jake in this scene, and he genuinely does not know what Layla is talking about until she mentions her father, and then he puts two and two together. There's even a camera close-up of his face at that point, and the shift in his expression makes him look like someone who's just realized what's going on.

(4) When Layla says "it’s like I’ve not known you at all" and "Marc"'s response is "Yeah, you haven't. You don't." Except Marc is used to hiding things from Layla—his DID, his role in her father's death—so why would he answer in a way to purposefully make her suspicious of him? I've always thought this made more sense as a Jake thing to say, e.g. he's letting the truth slip that she doesn't know him because he's not Marc.


Episode 5

• I don't really have an issue with the explanation for why Marc developed DID, except...how the hell does Marc live in the middle of Chicago and yet have access to woods and a deep cave capable of flooding in his backyard??? (I suppose, if someone wants to retcon this so that it makes more sense, you'd have to change it so that the Spectors were on a camping trip or something.)

• People more qualified than I have discussed the fact that Marc's Jewish background is mostly erased. (In the comics, Marc was raised Orthodox and his father was a rabbi, and his difficult relationship with his father and by extension, his faith, have always been a core aspect of his background.)

• When Taweret asks if Marc and Steven are twins and Steven answers, "Yeah, sort of" - Marc has never explained to Steven that they have DID. What does Steven actually think they are, and why has he never questioned Marc more about it? I assume Steven's written that way because their DID is kind of the big reveal of this episode...even though Marc still never technically tells Steven they have Dissociative Identity Disorder...but it doesn't make sense for Steven to behave this way. Even if this is the MCU and regular people are used the idea of wacky things happening, most people would be (at least initially) alarmed at the idea that they're sharing a body with a completely different person.

• Has Marc ever been in a psychiatric hospital and actually diagnosed with DID before? Some people have criticized the show for never explicitly stating he has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and I agree that's a failing. Marc acts as though he knows he has DID, but if that's the case, he should have been diagnosed at some point (because people experiencing the symptoms of DID don't simply assume they have DID). It also seems unlikely that Marc would mentally construct a psychiatric hospital if he's never been in one before.

• I would call this season a half-assed attempt at a Lemire comic run adaptation, because there are clear influences from Lemire while a lot of aspects of that run are disregarded. For example, Marc's backstory in terms of how he was discharged from the Marines sort of follows what happened in the Lemire run, but the details are changed for no reason. In the Lemire run, Marc is dishonorably discharged because his erratic behavior (he's depicted as having both DID and some sort of schizophrenic disorder, FYI) leads the Marines to discover he was previously hospitalized for psychiatric problems. Yet in the show, they reduce it to "Marc went AWOL while in a fugue state and was discharged because of that." Which...is not actually realistic, because the military does not discharge people for going AWOL unless they've been AWOL for at least thirty days (a.k.a. they basically tried to desert the army). And if Marc had been in a fugue state for thirty whole days, I have to think he would think he seriously needs medical help at that point.

• (It's possible that they changed his backstory because they were trying to avoid any references to his DID. Except...why? Why build your entire narrative around the protagonist having Dissociative Identity Disorder and then refuse to even name it?)

• I very much dislike the idea that Khonshu forced Marc into becoming his avatar. Like...way to remove Marc's agency and his motivation for becoming Moon Knight as a way to make up for his bad actions in the past, a.k.a. becoming Moon Knight was a good thing for him. I know the idea of Khonshu being abusive comes from the comics, but the critical distinction is that comics!Marc (and, in one instance, Jake) is able to reject Khonshu while still embracing being Moon Knight. However, the show turns this into the system rejecting both Khonshu and Moon Knight, which is...awkward. And takes the "hero" out of "superhero."

• So it seems that whenever Steven "called" his mom, he didn't actually call her, he just put the home screen of his phone to his ear. This is...very confusing. So many fans had the headcanon that Marc set up a fake number for Steven to call, and honestly that would have made so much more sense, because...are we supposed to accept that Steven is operating under such a powerful delusion that he forgets how to properly use his phone—and carries on a complete one-sided conversation without realizing it—but only when he's calling his mom? (He clearly knows how to use his phone properly, as shown when he called Dylan in episode 1.) THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

• I do not understand, at all, how the Moon Knight system's scales can balance if Jake isn't there. Also why it balanced as soon as Steven died—that creates the very bad inference that Marc doesn't need Steven and/or Steven is an extraneous part of him. None of this is ever explained in the show.

Episode 6

• I'm just going to say it: The writing in this show is very unclear and ambiguous regarding Marc's attitude toward Steven and his DID in general. Maybe it's because they had to cram too much into six episodes, or maybe the writing is just bad. To me, Marc's behavior in episodes 2 through 4 very strongly indicate that he has a lot of internalized ableism and complicated feelings about Steven—on one hand, he does seem to want to protect Steven from the darkness in his (Marc's) life, but on the other, he seems to view Steven as an annoyance and an obstacle. However, what Marc says in episode 6—while meant to be heartwarming—is almost a retcon of his earlier behavior, because he claims that he valued Steven all along. My guess is that they were, again, going for a half-assed Lemire adaptation, which has as its central emotional core Marc first rejecting his alters before he learns to accept his alters as his strength rather than his weakness, except the MCU show botched the writing so that Marc's character arc and his feelings about himself/Steven are vague instead. (This could have been so easily fixed by changing Marc's monologue just slightly to have him acknowledge that he didn't realize how important Steven was to him for so long, but clearly the MCU will never tackle a topic as important as internalized ableism!)

• I can't get over the show just skipping over the climactic battle against Harrow by turning it into a Jake black-out moment. Here's where it really makes no sense that Marc still doesn't have a clue that there's another alter in the system. (We might be able to excuse Steven if we're charitable since he technically doesn't know much about DID.) If it's inconvenient to have Marc/Steven freaking out about a third alter in the middle of the season climax, you could just...not have Jake appear.

• Look, I know people were happy about Mr. Knight finally being a badass, but I hate that Steven suddenly knows how to fight out of nowhere. Where did he learn how to fight from? From DYING???

• I really, really hate Marc sparing Harrow's life. Like you could really feel the influence of Disney here. One: Harrow already murdered a lot of people!! It's like Marc and Steven conveniently forget that fact so they could paint Khonshu as Ammit 2.0. Two: I loathe it when protagonists are happy to murder the villain's grunts, but they can't bring themselves to murder the actual villain. What are you actually saying about morality, here?

• The change to Moon Knight's character from the comics in calling being Moon Knight being "enslaved" by Khonshu both is problematic and causes a lot of unexplained plot holes. First of all, this leads to all sorts of problematic associations when you have a Jewish protagonist. Second of all, how can the show come back from this? How can Marc/Steven return to being Moon Knight (which they have to, because this is a comic book superhero) after they called it slavery? Hell, why is being the avatar of Khonshu slavery and being the avatar of Taweret...isn't? (How am I supposed to celebrate Layla being a superhero if I'm questioning whether or not she, too, is enslaved??)

• On the topic of Layla, I hate how all of Marvel's social media is now calling her Scarlet Scarab when she (1) wasn't called that in the show, and (2) is given no reason to be called that in the show. There's nothing red OR scarab-themed about her Taweret avatar outfit. And why does becoming the avatar of a hippo fertility goddess grant Layla wings??? (On a broader note, I'm not against Layla becoming a superhero but I felt like the focus on her took away from the already very limited time spent on Marc, and I wish her superhero arc had been saved for another season.)

• When Steven tells Dr. Harrow in the psychiatric hospital reality that "We'd rather go save the world"—Bro. How are you gonna save the world when you just renounced being Moon Knight???

• The post-credits scene with Jake Lockley. Look, I've been mad about this for an entire month now. For anyone who wants to argue that the show did not want to make the audience think Jake was hyper-violent and evil: (1) Literally tons of fans, including fanfic writers and fan artists, now portray Jake as a bloodthirsty sociopath. (2) There were plenty of different choices the show could have made to not portray Jake as a sociopath. He didn't have to smile maniacally while shooting Harrow/Ammit. He could have said "This is for Marc and Steven" instead of "Today is your day to lose." He could have showed emotions other than glee over shooting a defenseless person, like anger or pain. It's unquestionable that the show made the choices it did because it wanted to go with the most "shocking" interpretation of Jake. I'm not going to argue about this. And I maintain the show could have done something so much more interesting with Jake Lockley's character.