Moon Knight' Episode 5

'Moon Knight' Episode 5 goes inside Marc Spector's mind, but it leaves us in an uncertain place. Here's what it all means heading into the season finale.

Separately, we actually have the chance to see the moment we learned about earlier in the season, when Marc—on the verge of death following a "fugue state" where he killed a dozen or so people, including Layla's father—is saved by Khonshu, who grants him the power of Moon Knight. At the end of Moon Knight's penultimate episode, it seems as if Spector's exploration of his childhood might have allowed him to leave Steven behind and enter the afterlife. Regardless, this installment, even if it's a bit scattered at times, is a nuanced exploration of grief and mental illness that we rarely see in comic-book fare. Marc Spector lives with the trauma of loss and parental abuse; Steven Grant, until this episode, is the persona Spector assumes when he needs to shift into a relatively pain-free life to survive. We know precisely what Isaac was talking about when he mentioned the survival power of the brain. It's just that the show has focused more on the interplay between Marc Spector and Steven Grant—plus, you know, all of the Egyptian mythology lessons—than the suffering that led to split personalities in the first place. “It’s basically saying, We have a superpower and it’s the human brain, particularly for those who deal with trauma and sustained abuse.

The fifth episode of Moon Knight explored Marc Spector's intense trauma—but did it do so well?

Fingers crossed that the series won’t be a victim to a lackluster finale like some of Marvel Studios’ Disney+ outings have been so far. It is worth noting that the absence of Marc’s rival Bushman was a rather glaring omission. If this is truly Steven’s end, having his time run out right after basically losing the innocence for which he was created is a very poignant and heartbreaking way to go.

This trauma dump of an episode tells us pretty much everything there is to know about Marc Spector's past. A recap of “Asylum,” episode five of the Disney+ ...

Marc also mentions that he went AWOL in the army and was summarily discharged; that could have been Jake’s doing. Marc can, in theory, go back to the “upper world” through the Gates of Osiris. He may need to first appeal to the God of the Underworld, but it’s not impossible. Back on the boat, eventually Marc and Steven convince Taweret to turn around and take them back to the land of the living, a.k.a. the Gates of Osiris. But once they get there, even after Steven helps Marc to forgive himself, the scales are not balanced. What happens when Marc teams up with Bushman is more or less the same on the page and on the show: Bushman murders the father of Marc’s future partner (their names are Dr. Peter Alraune and Marlene Alraune in the comics, though, rather than Abdallah and Layla El-Faouly) and would have successfully killed Marc if it weren’t for Khonshu. Putnam is also the name of the psychiatric hospital where Marc is first interned in the comics. Then came the mission that resulted in the death of Layla’s father and Marc’s “rebirth” thanks to Khonshu. His name is Selim, and he’s played by Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner). But the last we saw Selim, he seemed to be on Harrow and Ammit’s side. The work to balance the scales continues there but in the form of a more traditionalish therapy session. Steven gives a litterbug of a little girl a lesson on the Egyptian afterlife, and she sasses back to him, “Did it suck for you, getting rejected by the Field of Reeds?” “That doesn’t make sense,” he says, “because I’m not dead. Over the course of the episode, Marc and/or Steven occasionally get stressed out and disassociate back to Harrow’s office. Marc and Steven (and maybe someone else) traveled to the Duat, the Egyptian afterlife, where the goddess Taweret is leading them by boat toward the Field of Reeds. She explains a few things: (1) Marc perceives the Duat as a psych ward because it is too much for the human brain to process, and (2) he and Steven need to balance their hearts with a feather by confronting some memories before the boat reaches the Field of Reeds or else sand zombies will claim their soul. Am I … am I?” What a disturbing bit of foreshadowing, knowing now that Steven actually does get rejected at the end of this episode. We first heard about the Field of Reeds — within the context of Moon Knight, that is — in the series’ very first episode.

The penultimate episode of Marvel's series lifts the lid on Marc Spector and Steven Grant's backstories and reveals whether they've been naughty or nice.

“They believed you needed your heart to be judged in the underworld and only the worthiest would be allowed to pass through the Field of Reeds,” Steven explains. With Steven left behind in the Duat by the end of the episode, Marc is alone with only the hope that Taweret can help free the imprisoned Khonshu, assuming Osiris lets him return to the natural world. As early as the second episode of the series, Harrow and his followers planted the idea in Steven’s mind that Marc was a mercenary who executed a group of archaeologists at a dig site. In exchange for your life, do you swear to protect the travelers of the night, and bring my vengeance to those who would do them harm?” The memory sheds some light on Marc’s role in Abdullah’s death, but perhaps more importantly, we get to see how Marc came into Khonshu’s service, and how the moon deity took advantage of a dying man who’d already been suffering for years. Lemire and Smallwood’s series lays out the blueprint for the Disney+ show, but Moon Knight takes this crucial step of adding the traumatic loss of Marc’s brother and the physical and emotional abuse he suffers at the hands of his mother. With Steven again serving as our eyes in the fifth episode, we witness Marc’s tragic core memories, beginning with the death of his brother Randall. On that fateful day, a young Marc led Randall to play in a cave near their home in Chicago, and—despite Randall’s reminder of their mother’s warnings—they continued to venture into its depths after it started to rain. “You’re not meant to see that, that’s the whole point of you,” Marc tells Steven as he pulls them out of the memory. In my previous Moon Knight recaps, I’ve covered some of the inspirations and departures the Disney+ series has taken from the comics, and “Asylum” is another great example of how head writer Jeremy Slater and the rest of the creative team have borrowed concepts while inserting their own ideas. Through the first four installments of Moon Knight, the show’s perspective belonged largely to Steven, with the details of Marc’s past parceled out in small doses (and often only through conversations Steven conducted with other characters, including Layla). The fifth episode serves as an earnest introduction to Marc Spector, including his Jewish heritage, his family, and how he eventually became Khonshu’s servant. “Asylum” is a heavy episode, with rare moments of levity supplied by Steven’s ever-entertaining quips, as well as the charmingly awkward CGI hippo that guides Marc and Steven through their confusing journey into Duat, the Egyptian afterlife. Moon Knight’s penultimate episode hops between Marc’s repressed memories, his transition to the afterlife, and his attempts to make sense of it all with the dubious aid of his newfound psychiatrist in Harrow. “Asylum” is reminiscent of WandaVision’s penultimate episode, which similarly saw Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff stepping through doorways into Wanda’s past, including one that led to the deaths of her parents in Sokovia when she was only a child.