In any other context, Moon Knight Episode 5 would be a full-on mental health family drama, and the people in it would be getting Emmys, Oscars, awards of some sort. But because superheroes, you sleep on it.
That’s where I’m at with “Asylum.” It’s a lot of fun, in that they really went deep into the psyche of Marc Spector, and it’s a big idea and a big episode. The way it chooses to deal with mental health, and with something as complicated as dissociative identity disorder, I feel like is to the show’s credit. And Oscar Isaac is again doing amazing and phenomenal work, playing off himself and playing inside the memories, because this entire episode is basically a This Is Your Life episode.
The Hospital, the Hippo and the Boat
Marc has reawakened as a patient at Putnam. He and Steven Grant, no longer sharing the same body, have to travel the underworld, better known as the Duat, with the deity Taweret as their guide. Along the way their hearts are going to be weighed against the feather of Ma’at on the scales of justice. If the hearts balance by the end of the journey, they’re welcomed into the Field of Reeds for all eternity. And to balance them, Marc and Steven are going to have to revisit hidden and painful memories from their past.
It opens with Marc cycling through fragments. A flooding cave, and that cave is very important. The distant cries of somebody calling for help. A woman screaming vitriol. His first encounter with the goddess Taweret. Then he wakes up in Dr. Harrow’s office at Putnam Medical Facility, heavily bruised up, and Harrow is trying to calm him down, telling him he didn’t shoot him, I’m here to help you. He tells Marc his mind is violently vacillating between sense and nonsense as the brain tries to cope with a very difficult reality. He reminds him he’s a patient there, that he’s dealing with fantastical delusions of being a superhero while refusing to acknowledge the horrors of the things he’s done. He even reminds him that moments earlier Marc said he was in a hospital just like this one, except it was in Egypt, in the company of a talking rhinoceros. And Marc’s like, hippopotamus.
Harrow’s explanation is that a struggling mind builds a shelter out of traumatic events. Marc’s mind is taking things from reality to build this mind palace of fiction that’s protecting him. He tells him he needs to go in deeper, and next thing you know Marc is back in the Egyptian mental hospital, standing with Steven and Taweret.
Taweret, by the way, is the most adorable person in the world. I really do like her. I thought they did a good job with her. She tells them no, you’re absolutely dead, and that it’s been some time since any soul arrived there. Steven is delighted and in awe, because Steven knows all about this, and he’s explaining it to Marc and fangirling over Taweret at the same time.
She reveals that this absolutely is the afterlife, one of many intersecting planes, and you get a really cool name drop: she mentions the Ancestral Plane. That keeps in line with the whole attachment to Wakanda I’ve been talking about this entire season. If you watched Black Panther, that’s where Chadwick Boseman goes to see his father, and later on you see the same thing with the other guy.
The true nature of the Duat is impossible for a human mind to comprehend, which is why the place looks like a psych ward. I like that concept. When you’re dealing with ideas this cerebral, I think it lends itself better to this type of filmmaking and this type of storytelling. Earlier she isn’t even sure why it looks like a psychiatric hospital, and Marc’s like, that’s because we’re crazy.
Then she pushes the doors open and they’re on her massive boat, navigating the underworld desert as if it were a sea. A boat on sand, doing its thing. She reaches into their chests and pulls out their hearts, which come out as these little stone crystal things, and places them on the scales against the feather of truth. That’s Egyptian mythology. That’s how the afterlife works. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar, because I wasn’t super familiar with this. I did a little bit of research for the show and was like, okay, well, that’s interesting.
She has the same problem Harrow had a few episodes ago, which is that the scales won’t stop moving. Neither heart is full, because each one feels incomplete. If they don’t go back inside and solve it, they get sucked into the sands of the underworld like so many other souls. If they can make them balance, they get the Field of Reeds. Heaven. Elysium, if you will.
Marc’s plan, speaking privately to Steven, is that they kill the hippo, or steal the boat, or throw her over the side. We’ll figure something out. Because reasons, and Moon Knight.
A Cafeteria Full of the People He Killed
Back inside the boat, the doors used to have smoky white windows you couldn’t see into. Now each one clears, almost like it had been frosted over, and you can see into a memory. Steven finds the moment he let Marc take over as Moon Knight to handle the jackal Harrow released in the museum back in Episode 1. Another door is the recent evening where Mr. Knight helped Khonshu cycle through what they call the thousand Egyptian nights, because it’s so poetic to call it that. That was Episode 3. Then Steven comes across one of Marc’s own memories, and Marc refuses to revisit every single memory he’s ever had.
They hear a distant cry for help from a child, the same one we heard at the top. Steven takes off running, Marc follows, and they end up in a cafeteria filled with dead bodies. The scales are swaying violently.
These are all the people Marc has killed in the name of Khonshu. He explains that the bodies belong to criminals, murderers, predators, the worst of the worst, and that Khonshu wanted all of them punished. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t weigh on him. Steven says he’s surprised Marc remembers all of them, and Marc’s answer is basically, you try killing somebody.
Steven notices the scales slowing, which means acknowledging the hidden parts of their past is working. Then, in the corner of the room, he spots a little boy, and he’s suddenly really upset, because why is there a child in a room full of people you’ve killed? The implication, I assume, being: as a mercenary, have you killed children?
Randall, the Cave and the Mother Who Blamed Him
Steven runs after the kid and locks the door behind him so Marc can’t follow. The hallway opens onto a backyard. It’s a brand new memory. He sees his mom, Wendy, barbecuing, very family oriented, and you see the kids. I say kids because apparently Marc had a brother, and Steven sort of forgot this. Wendy’s telling him to watch his brother, take care of him.
That takes us to the cave. Marc and his brother went down there before dinner, where they shouldn’t have gone, playing explorers, Dr. Steven Grant and the whole thing. That VHS tape we saw earlier in the season is a movie he liked and respected, which is why they played like that. It’s raining, the cave goes downward, and water fills it immediately. Steven’s not stupid. He’s like, oh no. The water goes from his ankles to his knees and then he’s swimming, trying to get to where the boys are, because this was a tragic moment.
Marc, meanwhile, is pacing the hallways looking for another way in, and eventually he finds another entrance to the same memory. He sees his mother staring coldly at him through one of the doorways. Overwhelmed by Steven’s voice and the cries of his younger brother Randall, he closes his eyes and reminds himself that this is just a memory.
A different doorway lets him back into his childhood home as the family holds shiva for Randall. They’re Jewish. Steven is across the room, soaking wet, despondent, inconsolable. Wendy tells Elias all she wants is her RoRo back. And then she spies young Marc coming down the stairs and she snaps. She’s shouting at him, the veins in her neck are popping out. Steven is horrified to see that his mother blames Marc for Randall’s death.
This is where the whole episode clicked into place in my head canon next to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. People are going to sleep on this show and on this episode because it’s a superhero thing. But look at the stakes. This isn’t man versus an enemy. This is man versus himself, and they’re doing some serious work here. The actress who plays his mom, the guy who plays his father, everybody is doing amazing stuff, and I sit here and I’m like, God bless, man.
The house keeps going up a floor at a time. On the next one, Elias is begging his wife to come out and celebrate their son’s birthday. She spiraled into depression and became abusive. Another level, another birthday, and Elias has enthusiastically made Marc’s favorite cake for his 12th. The drunk mom staggers over, starts in on him, all abusive, and he runs out.
Steven is really upset. Why do you remember her like this? This is nothing like who she was. He demands to go back inside, and they’re interrupted as another memory pours out into the neighborhood street: a young Marc storming off with a duffel bag. I’d place him at college age, maybe 18 to 20. It’s hey, I’m tired of taking this abuse, I’m leaving. His father’s saying come on, please, she’s going to get help, and Marc’s like, no, absolutely not, I’m done. He doesn’t understand why his father, who was supposed to fix this, hasn’t.
The Fugue State, Bushman and the Deal With Khonshu
Marc tackles Steven, and the scuffle lands them in another memory, an Egyptian desert, where we finally get the whole story. Marc reveals that he went AWOL in a fugue state.
That’s an interesting distinction. If you read anything about psychology, fugue states are known to be the gateway drug, if you will, to dissociative identity disorder. It’s a very rare diagnosis, even though fiction and movies will put it on everything. So I’m glad they’re trying to stick to some of the rules and not just what popular entertainment wants to make of it. I like the fact that they mentioned it.
He was discharged, and there’s not a whole lot of work for soldiers who go AWOL, so he ended up doing mercenary work for his old commanding officer, a guy named Bushman. For those of you playing at home, Bushman in the comic books is definitely a Moon Knight enemy. He’s the guy who betrays him and the guy who shot him all up.
Steven sees everything. The bodies lying around. Layla’s father, dead. He asks, well, what happened to you, and you follow a trail of blood through the sand to the steps of the temple of Khonshu. Marc’s at the base of it, and all of a sudden you hear Khonshu’s voice: what a waste. And you’re like, oh, I haven’t heard that voice in a while. I love F. Murray Abraham all day long. Friend of the show. I love saying that. It’s totally not true, but I love saying it.
Marc remorsefully recollects that he tried to get all the hostages away and they didn’t make it. That’s when Khonshu starts making him a deal. Funny enough, the only cogent person in this moment is Steven. Marc is very much of the mindset that he had no choice, he brought us back to life. And Steven’s like, he took advantage of you.
They get pulled out of that memory by a disturbance on deck, caused by baboons, creatures ancient Egypt viewed as the dead who oversaw the Duat. Taweret tells them fear is spreading in the underworld, because unbalanced souls in the land of the living are being judged and condemned to the sands before their time. Steven explains that this is Harrow’s doing, and Steven is the one who begs her: send us back, we can fix this. She asks if they’re sure they want to go back to Khonshu, because it seems like he kind of screwed you up. Then she throws caution to the wind. Osiris will not be pleased, but screw it, I’m going to help you. She turns the whole boat around and tells them to get back inside and get themselves balanced.
Harrow Asks Who Created Who
In the hall, Steven is talking really rationally. We could lose everything. Harrow succeeds, Layla dies, everyone dies. And Marc is saying I can’t go back, I can’t go back, slapping his face and his head, and the slaps transition into Harrow putting a hand on his shoulder. They’re in the office again.
What I think they’ve done is this. Everything we see between Steven and Marc together is them dealing with each other directly. When we come back out of that, it’s Marc dealing with his own instability, which happens to be in the form of Harrow. For better or worse, Harrow is the vehicle Marc’s mind is using to learn how to fix itself. He even praises him for it. You’ve done the work, you’re doing great.
Then he poses the question. Does Marc think he created Steven to hide from all the awful things he’s done in his life, or does he think Steven created Marc to punish the world for what his mother did to him? He’s asking who the real one is. And you’ve got to remember, in a genuine scenario, all a doctor has to go on is you. Unless a family member checked you in, somebody who can say, oh hey, by the way, this is Larry, and the guy’s like, no, I’m Scott. All right, then we know Larry’s the beginning and Scott is the new one. Or vice versa, depending on who brought you in.
The Bedroom Where Steven Grant Was Born
Harrow advises Marc that it’s time to open up to Steven, which brings us back to the childhood bedroom. Steven remembers the bedroom. He doesn’t remember this memory.
It’s the tail end of what began earlier. The kid is sitting there crying, there’s a mirror right next to him, and his mother is banging at the door. Open this door, Marc. Open this door. Next thing you know his eyes roll back in his head, he gets up, and he’s like, oh, this place is a mess, my mother’s never going to like this. He pushes all of his Tomb Buster toys off the desk and starts tidying. Steven pokes his head around Marc, looking closely, and starts mouthing the same lines the kid is saying, because these are some of his first memories.
That’s the aha moment. Steven realizes Marc invented him. Marc made him up.
Then Wendy bursts in and grabs the belt, and Marc starts pushing Steven out of the room while Steven’s asking what’s happening. You hear it. She’s beating him.
Marc, frustrated, explains that Steven got to live a happy, simple, normal life thanks to him. Who cares if it’s a lie? Why would anyone want to live with the truth that his life was a living hell? Steven was the buffer. He tells him, I wanted you to remember her that way. And then he spits out that he didn’t want him to remember that she’s dead.
Steven can’t handle that. You’re trying to hurt me, it’s revisionist history. And he wakes up in Harrow’s office saying Marc is telling him lies, that he said my mother’s dead. Harrow says, well, she is dead. No she’s not, are you having a laugh at my expense? So Harrow backs off, okay, okay, you’re right, you’re right, and calmly picks up the phone. You want to speak to her? Let’s ring her up right now. We have the number. Steven refuses, hesitates, and finally comes to the phone with tears in his eyes, holds the receiver, and acknowledges that his mom is dead.
That takes them back to the street outside the house, with Elias standing there. This is the shiva for Wendy. Elias has invited Marc home and Marc can’t deal with it. He’s walking down the street angry and upset, he falls on his knees, and boom, Steven shows up. Marc tells him this is the moment. Two months before everything we’ve seen so far. This is when their lives began to bleed together, because he couldn’t process it. He just moved on with it.
The Scales Balance
In the middle of that street everything starts to shake, and they have to rush back onto the deck. They’ve arrived at Osiris’s gate without managing to balance the scales, and Taweret says I’m sorry, I can’t do anything else.
These zombie things start coming up out of the sand. Marc is getting dragged over the side, and Steven’s yelling, Marc, you got this, you can do this. And then: wait a minute, if you’ve got this and we’re the same body, I’ve got this. He rushes up, grabs a bat off one of them, and funny enough Steven is able to fight them off when Marc couldn’t. Then one that wasn’t there before grabs Marc from over the edge and starts to pull him. Steven jumps the guy, the guy spins with him, and they both go over.
Steven has been abandoned in the afterlife. You see him reach out toward the boat, and he turns to stone. Very sad. That’s the moment Taweret notices the scales have balanced, and just like that, Marc is in the Field of Reeds.
How’s that for a cliffhanger?
The Verdict
Moon Knight Episode 5 lands at a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I really liked it. They’re doing some good work. I like the representational stuff, how mental health actually works, and I like what the episode does with it. This whole thing could have been a mess. Doors, memories, two versions of the same man, a hospital that may or may not be real. I thought they did a good job steering us through it, and I was never lost in the shuffle. That’s a difficult trick when you’re dealing with something like dissociative identity disorder.
I can’t wait to see how this whole thing wraps up.
What did you make of “Asylum,” and of what it did with Marc, Steven and Wendy? I’d really appreciate talking it through with you. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
