I always saw Moon Knight as a poor man’s Batman. That’s changed as of today.
I didn’t know what to expect going in. As a comic book fan of the ’90s, I’d seen Moon Knight on the comic book shelves, but I wasn’t really a Moon Knight fan. Everybody was comparing him to Batman, and that’s where I left him. Then I watched the first episode of the brand new Marvel Studios show and I was kind of taken aback. I was blown away by this thing, which is no surprise for a Marvel show. They tend to do that, and they seem to be hitting on all cylinders, at least for me.
This is Moon Knight Episode 1, “The Goldfish Problem.” If you’re coming in cold: when Steven Grant, a mild-mannered gift shop employee, becomes plagued with blackouts and memories of another life, he discovers he has dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with a mercenary, Marc Spector. As Steven and Marc’s enemies converge on them, they have to navigate their complex identities while thrust into a deadly mystery among the powerful gods of Egypt.
I don’t know about you, man, but that sounds pretty intense.
Glass in the Shoes
The episode starts with somebody sitting at a desk, and he’s got a tattoo on his arm of weights and scales. Later on you find out this is Ethan Hawke’s character. He breaks a cup, puts the glass in his shoes, and then walks out of the room into a bigger courtyard type of area. I assume that’s there to show just how penitent or religious he is. Whatever it is, man, that sounds like it hurt pretty bad.
A Man Who Has Set Up Every Alarm He Can
Then we see Steven for the first time and we walk through his day. He takes his covers off and he’s got a leash running from his ankle to the post near his bed.
That immediately gave me vibes of somebody with a sleep disorder. I have a friend who used to have really bad sleepwalking, almost dangerous sleepwalking, and he used to have to put himself in mittens, into a sleeping bag, and have it zipped all the way up. It’s one of those things that’s very serious. So when I saw the leash I went, oh, okay, I get it. That’s how he’s handling it, and it’s smart, because when you don’t know what’s going on, you default to what you do know.
He’s got sand all around his bed. There’s tape on the door. He’s essentially set the place up the way someone who sleepwalks would, with as many things as he possibly could to tell him he’s gotten up.
Then he feeds his fish, the eponymous goldfish of the problem, while he’s leaving a voice message for his mother. They focus for a brief moment on the fact that the goldfish is disabled. It has one fin. He’s on the phone, he’s half asleep, and you can tell he doesn’t get much sleep very often.
Eventually he gets to work, and he works at a museum, with all these banners up for the Egyptian exhibit. There’s a little kid looking at a display on the pyramid out front, and he talks to her for just a minute, hey, what’s going on, let me tell you a little about this. Then his boss shows up, and she’s just mean. There are a couple of British TV tropes, and one of them is the angry boss, and it’s always that shopkeeper type. She’s exactly that.
By the way, Oscar Isaac’s accent in this is brilliant. I did voiceovers for UK companies, and over time I learned how to do some British accents. His is dead on, I really like it, and it doesn’t take away from anything at all.
At work a young lady comes up to him and she’s like, hey, we’re going out for steaks. Come to find out he’s apparently a vegetarian, so that’s interesting. But he doesn’t remember having made the date with her.
Mirrors Everywhere, and All of It on Purpose
A neat thing this show is doing, and it’s very consistent with the story it’s trying to tell: there are windows, there are mirrors, there are reflections everywhere, and that’s all on purpose. Even earlier, when he woke up, his sink is surrounded by three mirrors. There are glass doors. Reflective stuff all over, just so he can see himself.
A little later his boss is ripping him a new one, and then he talks to the classic posed man, the living statue. In New York City they’re all silver, and apparently in England they’re gold. He’s just kind of talking to him.
Then he goes home, and he’s trying to stay awake because he doesn’t want to have these nightmares. He’s reading, constantly. The guy is super well read, he’s got books everywhere, and it’s very intense. As he’s reading, the voice gets louder and everything gets more intense, and pretty soon there’s this weird stutter.
He Wakes Up in the Alps
He wakes up in the middle of grass and his jaw’s dislocated. He fixes his jaw, and he’s like, where the heck am I? Sure enough, he’s in the Alps somewhere.
He finds something in his pocket, a little gold scarab, an Egyptian artifact. He turns around, he gets a feeling, and we see an image of what looks like a mummy behind him. This is Khonshu. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Moon Knight mythology, Moon Knight is the avatar for the Egyptian god Khonshu, and that’s going to come into play a little later. Very important. He turns around and of course it’s gone, and he starts running, because there are guys who saw him and they start shooting at him.
The whole time he’s running, he’s himself. He’s Steven Grant, going, oh no, what’s going on, I can’t believe what’s happening, oh my goodness, I wish I’d wake up. Because he thinks this all has to be a dream.
He’s in a village, and you see the dude from the beginning, Ethan Hawke’s character, who’s this religious zealot, a cult leader type, and it comes across that way. All the people are ready in the town square, and they’re offering themselves up to be judged. I believe Ethan Hawke is the avatar for this other Egyptian goddess, a goddess of judgment. He’s got the weights and scales tattoo on his arm, so he holds people’s arms, he puts his cane between them, he teeters the thing, and you see the scales moving on his arm. If they turn green, you’re good, you’re a good soul. If they turn red, you’re bad, and then he kills you. And everyone has accepted this judgment, because it’s truth and honesty and whatever else.
I’m conjecturing that Marc was sent there to kill him, but we don’t know all that yet.
Ethan Hawke says his thing, whatever it is he says, and everyone immediately goes down on their knees, and Steven’s like, “Oh, bollocks.” Yeah, we caught you, buddy.
Ethan Hawke wants the scarab. Steven’s like, yeah, dude, here, totally take it. He tries to give it to him, but his hand clenches up and won’t let him, and he’s like, what’s going on here?
The Voice in Full Stereo
This whole time there’s a voice that Steven hears, and we hear it as the viewer too. It’s all-encompassing, all surrounding, purposely, I believe, in full stereo. It’s talking to him like, who’s this? Oh no, the idiot’s in charge. It’s a really cool bit of dialogue that lets you know there’s more going on, and you think it’s in his head.
It’s funny, this is more what I would’ve imagined Deadpool was going to do. In the comic books Deadpool talks to himself. He hears voices in different character styles, and I would’ve loved to have seen them do something like that with Deadpool. They still might in the third one, which I think would be cool. But Moon Knight’s doing it first, which is really awesome.
So he’s trying to fight these guys off, and really it’s his body doing it for him. Eventually they corner him, and the next thing you know he wakes up and everyone’s down. He’s holding a gun. He’s got a bloody hand with the scarab in it, so apparently he snatched it back from somebody. Everyone’s looking at him all crazy and he’s like, I have no idea what’s going on. And he runs.
He steals a cupcake truck, because why not, and that begins the chase. Guys are jumping onto the truck, one guy gets in and he’s wrestling him, and Steven’s going, oh my God, oh my God. Then there’s that little flash again and he wakes up. One of the other cars has flipped, and the dude who was trying to jump into his truck is now dead against the back door. He’s like, what’s happening? And it happens again in the same fight.
Eventually there’s a truck (ADHD brain, sorry), a big logging truck loaded with logs. He does his thing again, and the next thing you know the truck is flipping over another vehicle. The last car chasing him pulls in front of him, and those same logs from the truck he flipped come crashing down and wreck that SUV.
The Goldfish Has Two Fins
He wakes up and he’s like, oh my God, I can’t believe it, it was all a dream. He’s walking around, and then he notices from across the house that his fish has two fins.
The goldfish problem. This is when he really starts to realize something’s up.
He goes to the pet shop and they’re like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, you were here yesterday. He’s like, I wasn’t here yesterday. To him, yesterday was Thursday and today should be Friday. He dresses up, he gets ready, he goes to the restaurant, and while he’s waiting there he calls the girl up. Come to find out it’s Sunday. He’s lost two whole days, and this floors him.
So he goes home and kind of pathetically eats the chocolates he was going to take her. The whole thing really focuses a lot on his sadness. He drops some of the chocolates, goes to pick them up, and notices there are scratches on the floor. He realizes the scratches are from his own metal table being slid against the wall. He looks up and there’s a kind of divot where one of the wood slats above is wrong. He climbs up and finds a cell phone and a key in there.
As he’s about to call the name Layla in the phone, Layla calls him. She’s like, oh my God, what’s going on, it’s been months, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. He’s like, I don’t know who you think I am. She’s like, what’s with the accent? And she calls him Marc, not Steven. He’s floored.
Then he starts to hear a voice, and it’s his voice. He looks in the reflections, he goes out into the hall, and he gets to see the spirit of Khonshu in the distance, a shadowy figure, the stuff we’ve seen from the trailer.
The episode’s forty-some-odd minutes long and they get to the chase pretty quick, so I definitely think it’s worth watching. It’s not slow. This isn’t an origin story.
Just as Khonshu’s about to get to him, he reaches the elevator, and there’s an old lady in there. He gets to his floor, turns back around to the elevator, there’s Khonshu, and he wakes up on a bus. Everyone on the bus is looking at him crazy. He gets off the bus, only to see Ethan Hawke’s character still on it. So now he’s realizing, wait a minute, what the heck is going on?
“You Are Full of Chaos”
He goes to work and the dude’s there. And the dude’s literally like, oh, so you legit work here? I thought you were just giving me an alias, but this is your actual name.
They talk, and while they’re talking he’s being cornered, and Ethan Hawke begins to explain about the goddess he serves. Steven (sorry, I want to get the names right, because it helps you understand who’s talking) is stunned. Finally they do the thing with the tattoo, and the dude looks down and his scales are going back and forth like crazy and won’t go green or red. So he tells him he’s full of chaos.
It’s pretty dope. It’s pretty awesome when he tells him that.
Clean Dark
Then we cut to that night, and an Anubis dog chases him. He’s about to leave work and he thinks he hears someone’s dog, and he’s like, here, boy, here, boy. Then you start seeing this thing, and he’s running, and it’s chasing him, with those reflections everywhere, of course.
There’s a lot of, I don’t want to say horror undertones, but there are definitely suspense and thriller undertones here, and it can’t get out of its own way in terms of being a Marvel series. Even though they’re going for dark, it’s a very clean dark. I’m okay with it, but you know, it’s that kind of thing.
Finally he sees the silhouette in the shadow and he runs, and he makes it into the bathroom. We’ve all seen this scene. It’s the one in the trailers where he’s backing up and there are mirrors everywhere, and he hears the voice say, “Steven, you have to give me control so I can save us.” He turns around, and sure enough it’s a cooler-looking Oscar Isaac who clearly has it all together.
The door’s about to break down, and Steven gives him control. All these bandages start to wrap up around him, and while he’s transforming, Egyptian symbols start to show up on the walls. Then you see the little Anubis monster thing trying to claw its way away, and it gets pulled back in. That’s the shot we’ve all seen, where Moon Knight’s just wailing away on this dog-like thing, and then he comes toward the camera.
Roll credits.
What Oscar Isaac Is Doing
Oscar Isaac’s doing some cool stuff, man. I was really impressed by the way he shifted gears, and you believe he’s going through something.
Obviously it’s a little bit, I don’t want to say corny, but it’s a little contrived that it all just so happens to be right now. At the same time, whatever, dude. The stories we watch are literally just snapshots of a series of coincidental events that are interesting when you string them together.
The Verdict
Moon Knight Episode 1, “The Goldfish Problem,” is a solid 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
There you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself. I’m going straight up on this one. I loved this. I thought it was really, really interesting, I thought they hit a home run, and I can’t wait to see what the next episode looks like.
Did the first episode change your mind about Moon Knight the way it changed mine? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.
