Well, here we are. At the end of the endless sea of sand. “Moon Knight” has reached its season finale (more on that in a minute) and it went out in style, with a lot of calamitous spectacles and a smattering of fun character moments. The Marvel Studios shows on Disney+ have had an awkward relationship with their finales, sometimes erring on too showy (“WandaVision”) or too talky (“Loki”).
With “Moon Knight” (like “Hawkeye” before it), they seemed to find the right balance, with Marc Spector/Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) attempting to return from the afterlife to thwart Arthur Harrow’s (Ethan Hawke) insidious plot and also come to terms with unruly tangle of his own psychology. “Moon Knight” is nothing if not an extended, hieroglyphics-etched metaphor for owning your shit. And the finale owned.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Major spoilers follow for episode 6 of “Moon Knight.” Turn back now or be trapped in a stuffy sarcophagus of unnecessary plot details and half-baked analysis, for all of eternity.
Sands of Time
Over the Marvel Studios logo is a different sort of accompaniment: the 1958 Earl Grant song “The End.” It is both upbeat and ominous and the title sets the stage for the season’s conclusion. The first thing we see after the logo is Marc dead in the tomb, a pair of bloody bullet holes in his chest. Harrow stands over him, he’s got the Ammit statue. Harrow places the scarab (which serves as a magical compass) on Marc’s chest. Layla (May Calamawy) hides and listens and maybe takes down one of Harrow’s thugs. Who knows. Honestly, it’s very dark in that tomb!
Harrow addresses his devotees. “Who wants to heal the world?” Harrow asks. That purplish light pulses outward and his cane is transformed, now there’s a fearsome crocodile head on one end and an axe on the other. Ammit means business.
Layla cries over Marc’s body and places it back in the water.
Harrow and his posse drive onto a road going into Cairo. He’s stopped by some kind of police force. (Layla, it’s worth mentioning, is disguised as part of the aforementioned posse.) A police offer says that Harrow needs to show the officer his passport. “No, I don’t,” Harrow says. “You need to show us your soul.” Harrow’s power, the one that judges people, is now amplified. A purplish pulse goes out and most of the officers die. Layla creeps up on Harrow with a life. One of the dead police officers looks up at Layla and tries to warn her – it’s Taweret (voiced by Antonia Salib) the hippopotamus-headed god, who is also currently trying to help Marc navigate the land of the dead. Taweret tells Layla that she needs to unleash Khonshu. It could be enough to bring Marc/Steven back.
Outside of the great pyramid Harrow and his goon squad are trying to get in. He does more of his purple magic and the outside of the pyramid starts to open. Inside, one of the avatars says, “Someone is trying to release Ammit.” GEE, I WONDER WHO IT COULD BE.
Once inside, Harrow kills all of the avatars and unleashes Ammit (Sofia Danu). Layla sneaks around the pyramid and finds the cute lil’ Khonshu statue. She breaks it, unleashing him. Khonshu tries to con her into becoming his avatar. She refuses. And with good reason, she says, he’s helped make his mind an even more horrifying place to me.
Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Marc is in the sea of reeds. He’s lost Steven and he’s nearing the end (just like the song at the beginning of the episode). “Your journey is over,” Taweret says. Marc wants to go back to find Steven. He can’t leave him there. Taweret says it’s too dangerous, but you know Marc – always diving headfirst into adventure. (Back in the pyramid, Khonshu calls Ammit a “sinner.” They exchange words and blows.)
Marc tells Steven, now a petrified sandman, how much he meant to him. “You saved me,” Marc says. “You were the only superpower I ever had.” The sands start to take their effect on Marc too. He puts the stone heart (the one that is supposed to be perfectly balanced, between them) in his hand. The stone heart starts to glow. Sudden, the gate back to the land of the living is opened, but it also triggers some kind of massive sandstorm. Thankfully Taweret comes back in her sail barge and blocks the sand out so that Marc and Steven can run through the gates of the living.
It might be time to pause and say that all of this happens in a very condensed amount of screen time and it becomes something of a jumble. This problem comes up repeatedly in the episode, which sometimes feels way too rushed and like too many major plot points are being skimmed over or crash into one another, causing a sort of narrative pileup. Were executives worrying about the episode feeling excessively long? Were the visual effects, of which there are many, becoming too costly? Whatever the reason, this occasionally dampens the rollicking fun of the episode. Coherence should always be put at a premium over what some could considering pacing issues. This thing needed to breathe. Consider that all of this afterlife stuff is happening at the same time as two immortal beings are wrestling around inside of the ancient pyramid.
Anyway, lots more stuff happens!
Moon Knight Returns
Marc comes to in the tomb. He stands up and the bullets fall out, kind of like Neo at the end of the first “Matrix.” His suit comes back. Marc sees Khonshu and Marc and Steven try to negotiate. As they do this, a visual flourish that comes back repeatedly in the episode is first introduced, of Mr. Knight and Moon Knight switching back and forth effortlessly. It’s very cool. Finally Khonshu agrees to let them go after they defeat Harrow. But Harrow is very far away. How will they get there in time? “I’m the god of the night sky!” Khonshu reminds them. Marc-as-Moon Knight takes off.
Layla is told by Taweret that they need to imprison Ammit in a human body in order to vanquish her. Harrow attempts to destroy the inside of the pyramid. Layla becomes Taweret’s avatar. Before taking over, Taweret tells her that she’s got her own cool costume.
Marc-as-Moon Knight flies to find Harrow on the pyramid. He’s started judging all of Cairo. It’s like that sequence in the first episode where he judges the old woman in the Alps. But all over. Purple bolts of energy shoot up to the sky, eventually feeding Ammit who becomes huge.
Layla emerges from the rubble in her new costume, which is really very cool and has some impressive metallic wings. (Imagine the highly publicized “Wonder Woman 1984” costume but much, much better.) There’s a lot of fighting – Harrow and Marc/Steven (again, they’re switching back and forth now) fight on the ground while Khonshu and Ammit fight above Cairo; they’re now both the size of Godzilla and King Kong. All of this is, admittedly, pretty cool, even if it sometimes becomes a blur. There are nice moments throughout, though, including one where a young girl, impressed by Layla saving a bus full of strangers, says, “Are you an Egyptian superhero,” and Layla responds, just as impressed, “I am.”
One really incredible shot has Harrow walking up to Marc/Steven while Ammit gets the upper hand over Khonshu in the background. Compositionally, it’s very striking. And the enormity of what Marc/Steven is up against is made brilliantly clear. There’s another skirmish and then Marc blacks out, like Harry Potter in “The Prisoner of Azkaban.”
Three’s Company
When Marc wakes up, Harrow’s own crocodile-headed staff is buried in his forehead. He’s not dead but he’s taken a good axing. When Marc looks around he sees scores of Harrow’s goons dead on the ground. The horrifying realization sets in: it wasn’t Marc or Steven who did this. Layla is confused. And concerned. “I blacked out,” Marc tells her.
They bring Harrow’s body into the pyramid to do the binding spell. It works! Ammit goes into Harrow’s body. Khonshu urges Marc to kill Harrow. “While he lives, so does she,” Khonshu bellows. “You want them dead, do it yourself,” Marc snaps back.
Just then, Steven wakes up in “Dr. Harrow’s” office, the white, antiseptic psychiatry office that was a part of Marc/Steven’s afterlife freak-out. Harrow tries to convince him (once again) that none of this is real. But then Marc shows up. He knows what’s going on. Harrow leaves bloody footprints behind, a reference to the very first scene in the very first episode, where Harrow crushes a small glass and puts the shards in his sandals, as penance or self-flagellation or something. This hallucination isn’t going to fool them this time.
Marc wakes up in Steven’s crummy London flat. There are now two fish in the fish tank, symbolizing Marc and Steven’s new cohabitation of the body. Marc makes a crack about how messy Steven’s apartment is. He gets out of bed and faceplants on the floor, thanks to Steven’s precautionary measures.
We cut to black and get the beginning of the credits sequence. But this is a Marvel Studios project! There’s got to be more!
And there is.
That Credits Scene
The mid-credits scene starts with a cup of sand. It turns into water. And it’s Harrow now, in a facility like the one Marc/Steven conjured as a kind of spiritual waystation. Only this one seems very real and very crummy. Harrow seems heavily medicated. He’s in a wheelchair. A man in dark blue comes up behind him and starts pushing his wheelchair. Eventually he wheels him outside, to a stretch Rolls Royce limousine. He’s seated in the back. Across from Harrow? Khonshu.
Khonshu laughs about Marc/Steven thinking that he’s rid of him. “He has no idea how troubled he is,” Khonshu snickers. “Meet my friend Jake Lockley.”
Now here is where we finally meet the third personality, one that has been implied almost from the beginning of the season but more steadily and explicitly as the episodes have gone on (like the third sarcophagus in episode 4 and now him blacking out in this episode). In the comic books, Moon Knight historically has three identities – Marc Spector, Steven Grant and Jake Lockley, who in the comics is usually a taxicab driver. Him driving the limousine is a clear callback to the comic book, but the scene also illuminates a potential character detail about one of the other personalities: the license plate on the limousine reads a variation on “Spector.” In the comic books, Marc Spector is a billionaire, much like that other Knight Bruce Wayne. Maybe it’ll be revealed next season (and it sure feels like there’ll be a next season) that Spector really is a billionaire and Jake is his driver.
Whatever the case may be, at least this mid-credits sequence was an illuminating moment related to one of the characters and not just an opportunity for, I don’t know, one of the Eternals to show up and borrow a cup of sugar or something.
“Moon Knight” has been remarkably self-contained. In the same week when “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is opening, a movie that somehow manages to be the sequel to at least two other films (2016’s original “Doctor Strange” and last year’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home”) and a television series (“WandaVision”), “Moon Knight’s” relative simplicity, even if this finale was filled with a bunch of nonsense, is very much appreciated.
That said, after such a fun season that deftly missed superhero heroics with genuine psychological depth, we can’t wait to see whatever the characters do next. It’s hard not to be over the moon.