Disney Plus' Moon Knight gets off to a promising start
The Marvel TV show's premiere episode finds an ace Oscar Isaac in capital-L loser mode
When crafting the pilot episode for Moon Knight, a Marvel show focused on a lesser-known character who has yet to be introduced in the MCU, the driving question is, "What's happening to Steven Grant?" No more, as you might have assumed, "Who is Moon Knight, anyway?"
That's not to say that the latter question doesn't structure this first entry in Disney+'s latest Marvel effort. The final scene, after all, is as thunderous north as you'd like, a moment that punctuates an episode of television that deliberately obscures some of its most action-packed plotlines. Car chases happen, yes. And henchmen are kicking to the curb, too. But in the throes of being an exercise in prevention, the blood-splattering fights that happen when Steven Grant (Oscar Isaacs) loses consciousness and finds himself in danger are left to our imaginations.
As a storytelling strategy, these Blindspots already give Moon Knight a different narrative rhythm from the MCU properties that preceded it (both big and small on screen). The focus of this premiere is not with the superpowers for whom the show is named and his impressive fighting prowess no doubt, but with the hapless gift shop worker who spends entire days and nights lost in oblivion, here Even after sleeping with ankle restraints on. In the hope that he will not once again wake up in the middle of the field, with armed gunmen aiming their rifles.
Which begs the question: What's up with Steven Grant? The socially awkward Londoner knows she has a problem (remove the bedside ankle straps). Still he tries to live his life as normal as possible. He keeps his mother abreast of the little things going on with his life (including his one-fingered pet fish) and mostly just keeps himself busy. Sure, he misses his bus all the time and keeps having really vivid nightmares. But he still shows up at work at a museum gift shop, where his vast knowledge of Egypt is overlooked by his supervisor, who instead just sells snacks to children and is left to two gods. It stops bothering him about it. From marketing materials to exhibition banners of institutions.
Oscar Isaac, who has slowly made a name for himself as one of the most effortlessly hottie-leading men in Hollywood, would have lost himself in the trap of mop-haired capital-L losers (but oh, what a hair!) Is. As for Grant, Isaac's body is a kinky contortion. He bows out of respect for the world around him, is too self-conscious to take up any space, even when you can already tell there's a presence about him that remains. Has happened, perhaps, everything is incomprehensible for him to understand. With a very distracting accent, Isaac nonetheless makes us feel for Grant. We are in his shoes the whole time. Something is clearly going wrong and by god we need to find out what is going on, lest we lose the plot.
The joy of this pilot is how Grant's bubbling personality becomes our introduction to the secret world of Moon Knight. Like Jason Bourne, it's clear that Grant is more than meets the eye. (And why would some very angry men go after her and the golden scarab she didn't know was on her?) Oh, and then there's the loud voice inside her head that keeps calling her a parasite and laying her eggs . Go yourself ("Get back to sleep, worm!" they listen helplessly as a meek Steven). Yes, something is terribly wrong with Steven - and it's before he finds a hidden phone in his apartment with a missed call from a certain Layla and he realizes that his fish has grown a new fin.
This is how you tease the arrival of a new superpower. Always marginalizing danger (what is that shadowy figure haunting Steven's apartment building, or the monster that hangs around with the museum?) more impressive—and, yes, frightening.
Which brings us to the other main character who really closes the episode: Ethan Hawke's Arthur Harrow. Where Isaac's Steven is all weird limbo, Hawke's Arthur is a study in conservatism and the reasons all the more dangerous. Clearly tapping into a supernatural power (his scales tattoo may channel goddess Ammit, we learn), Arthur is a welcome foil for Steven. The only time I saw the two face-to-face at the museum in the third act of the premiere did I realize that Moon Knight was already gifting us two things that a lot of MCU assets were struggling with: thrilling. , seductive villains (Loki and Hela aside, naturally) and leads that are just as exciting as their caped transformation characters.
By the end of the episode, I was shocked, and one line of the song that opened up the whole thing (Bob Dylan's "Every Grain of Sand") now echoes in my head as I brace for what's to come. Just as Arthur is confident in a higher power that will guide him well on the path ahead, I hope that Moon Knight can fulfill the promise he demonstrates here. As Dylan sings, I find myself wanting to trust this story so that I can similarly claim, "I'm hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan."
Stray observation
- I want to thank everyone involved with Moon Knight for not one but two examples of Oscar Isaac's humbly and sincere "later getters!" distributed on the line.
- Talking about the internet's favorite boyfriend, here we have to praise his physicality. If you've seen him dance in X-Machine or stroll with confidence in the latest Star Wars trilogy, you know that Oscar knows how to deploy a loaded physicality into every role he plays. That's certainly the case here, as his Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde moments (especially when Steven comes face-to-face with Mark Spector reflected in the museum bathroom encounter) are able to telegraph a sudden mood shift in split-second gestures. No small feat!
- Given that we've only got one seamless action set-piece, I'm very curious to see how Moon Knight's fighting sequences stack up against those we've seen in the MCU before. We're totally in horror territory (and with the arrival of Morbius and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there's no denying that we're going to spend some time in the genre) and hopefully that makes sense. That's a lot of jump scares and dark fights ahead.
- How do we feel about needle drops in this episode? Sure, watching Steven hear "every day I start, then I cry my heart out" ("A Man Without Love") might feel a bit on the nose, uh, wake up, but sometimes you just These obvious signs bow down, no?
- Oh, and yes, we should be asking all the big questions we've been left here (on top of "Who's Moon Knight?"). Namely: Who is Laila? Why is there an American accent in Steven's reflective ego? And, more importantly, will Steven's love life get better as he embraces this deep being within himself?