‘Moon Knight’ Episode 4 Spoiler Review
While Moon Knight has been by and far the most unique Disney+ show in the MCU so far, this week’s episode, entitled The Tomb, really swings for the fences and sets up Moon Knight to be one of the best series Marvel Studios has made to date, should they stick the landing. Let’s dive in.
Episode 4 opens with the avatar of Osiris placing the stone figure of Khonshu amongst a collection of other stone figures. With how the shot opens upside down, I’m going to double down on my theory that some of the Egyptian gods we have met might be on Harrow’s side and some of those other stone figures are actually some of the missing gods from the trial in Episode 3. After the opening credits we return to Layla and Steven as they are pursued by a pair of assailants in a Jeep. May Calamawy continues to excel in her role as Layla, and continues to put her own badass stamp on the character, as she is able to take out the would-be assailants with nothing more than a set of flares. While this isn’t really the most realistic of scenarios, her continued development is much appreciated.
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Over the next 15 minutes, Moon Knight really hits home on it’s marketing promise of being Fight Club meets Indiana Jones. We get further development of the love triangle between Steven, Marc, and Layla, even going so far as Layla trying to kiss Steven before ultimately Steven kisses Layla. Marc then delivers on his promise from earlier in the episode and punches Steven in the face, pretty much straight out of Fight Club, and throws them both down the deep shaft of the tomb’s entrance. We then really get into the Indiana Jones aspect as Steven and Layla explore the underground maze and rely on Steven’s expertise in Egyptian history and lore in order to beat Harrow and his crew to Ammit’s tomb. After a short monster thriller sequence that ultimately splits up Steven and Layla, we get a classic Indiana Jones type obstacle, where Layla must cross a precariously small walkway over a nearly endless hole in the ground, all the while fighting off the said monster. After Layla finally conquers the monster, we get our first real interaction between Harrow and Layla alone, across the giant pit from one another, and really get down to what Harrow had alluded to last week, that Marc knows explicitly what happened to her father and caused his death. Despite being separated by a bottomless pit, the scene is acted with such intense emotional intimacy and closeness between Ethan Hawke and May Calamawy, in a way only great actors could really pull off, and they do it in spades.
Layla eventually catches up to Steven in Ammit’s avatar’s tomb which, as it turns out, is the long lost tomb of Alexander the Great, a great historical connection to an ongoing mystery in our current day. Understandably, Layla confronts Steven, forcing Marc to come to the personality in control and makes him explain what happened to her father. Marc explains that his mercenary partner got greedy and killed everyone, including Layla’s father, and left him for dead. This confirms my theory that Layla’s character is based on Marlene from the Moon Knight comics, and would also likely mean that Marc’s partner that killed Layla’s father would be Raul Bushman. If there is a Season 2 of Moon Knight I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bushman be a main antagonist as he is in the comics. Eventually, Harrow catches up to Marc and Layla in the tomb and ultimately double taps Marc with a pistol, sending him back into a bottomless pool of water. It’s at this point where things really start to get weird and Benson and Moorehead earn their paycheck.
If you are familiar with almost anything Benson and Moorehead have directed, the drowning sequence is very much in their signature psychedelic style and tone. But what happens next might be one of the most ambitious sequences in the entire MCU. We cut to an aspect changed and physically filmed scene depicting a pair of explorers searching for treasure in a rainforest, very much evoking Indiana Jones, with the main explorer ending up being a character named Steven Grant. If that wasn’t weird enough for you, we then pull out of the 4:3 aspect ratio film into a psychiatric ward which appears to be almost equal parts One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and FX’s mutant TV show Legion. As we travel across the psych ward we see characters from previous episodes and other items that have made appearances in the show, such as cupcakes and a goldfish, along with scarabs and bird skulls. We then meet a sedated Marc and seemingly manic Layla who are patients of the ward. At this point, we pretty much have no clue what is happening and are forced to start questioning the reality of the first three and a half episodes. The writing team goes even a step further when they introduce Marc’s therapist as Arthur Harrow, really pushing the audience to the edge of belief.
Marc eventually comes out of his sedation and breaks out of therapist Harrow’s office, stumbling across a sarcophagus containing the physical manifestation of Steven. They give each other a self-hug and continue on their plan to escape the ward, passing by a third red sarcophagus that they leave unopened and run into a giant talking hippopotamus dressed like an Egyptian goddess. Pretty much at this point Moon Knight has gone off the rails in one of the best ways you could possibly imagine and left audiences absolutely stunned and asking so many questions headed into next week.
First off, that unopened sarcophagus is almost certainly going to be Marc and Steven’s third personality that was referenced in Episode 3, likely Jake Lockley. After doing some internet digging, it appears the hippo goddess is going to end up being Taweret the goddess of childbirth and fertility. Based on everything we saw at the end of the episode, I expect Episode 5 to be about Marc, Steven, and Jake reconciling their dissociative identity disorder in this psych ward, led by Taweret, before returning to life reborn. But who knows, absolutely nobody saw this ending coming so we could be in for an absolutely bonkers episode next week, before what I would be certain is a fairly typical Marvel season finale in two weeks.
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