“Moon Knight” Episode 4 R&R: Your Existential Crisis Is All in Your Head
by Rob LoAlbo
All photos courtesy Marvel Studios and Disney Plus
Well, that escalated quickly.
What started off as a sorta manageable Scorpion King ripoff (minus The Rock, which really begs the question, why?), has now gone full-blown fever dream with Keyser Söze as a hippo. It’s a turn that’s brought new life into what was getting to be a tiredly Marvelized bipolar Daredevil, who instead of lacking sight lacks social awareness cues. Can Oscar Isaac and Oscar Isaac successfully bring us out of the embalming doldrums and into the dustless vacuum of the spirit world?
Let’s break out our straightjackets and spoiler hats and find out!
It’s a Khonshu-free episode, which I actually found to be a relief. Taking him out of the equation led to more grounded storytelling for me. The episode decides to got the Allan Quartermain route getting jiggy with Egyptian puzzles and thousand year old buffet tables. Khonshu’s gone by-bye, and apparently he’s not the first, something we notice when his statue is put up on the fallen gods' trophy shelf: there are at least 9 others that we can see. But he’s sidelined for goofier asylum antics and a growling spleen obsessed mummy god.
With the location of the secret hidden Ammit base discovered, Steven and Layla head into the rocks without healing protection or fancy white suits. Marc follows the jealousy route in being suspicious that Steven is moving in on his territory, which is apparently justified as she’s down to smooch and Steven’s ready to receive. (It’s not cheating if it’s your twin, right?) But Marc won’t stand for that and tosses Stevie around as if Lily Tomlin were in there. Unaware of what bobby traps and dangers await, they find that some of Harrow’s people have mysteriously disappeared, as evidenced by the blood trails.
After a lot of hieroglyphary and puzzling out the passages (yawn and double yawn), they run afoul of an ancient otherworldly creature that is all about pickling and canning human organs. Clicking more madly than that girl from Hereditary, it creeps and crawls its way to some weekend warrior spelunking, but when his ½ hour session is over, he grabs Layla to harvest her internal goodness. Overpowering him, she then faces Harrow down on a ledge, and he’s armed with secrets about her father. He knows how daddy went out, and that Marc was at the center of it.
Meanwhile, back in the hall of pharaohs, Steven finds Alexander the Great, an avatar of Ammit, (who apparently died choking on a stone idol?), but Layla wants to confront Marc about his apparent patricide. Yeah, he was there, and yeah, he caused it to happen, but honestly: he didn’t pull the trigger. (Again, not cheating.) Even worse, the only reason Marc and Layla met was because Marc sought her out after her dad’s murder. (Not a great foundation for a marriage.) Harrow interrupts their lovefest and puts two bullets into Marc’s chest.
And then the show finally gets interesting.
After fading out in a pool of blood and puddle water, Marc wakes up in what looks like God’s waiting room (no, not Florida), looking like he’s flown over the cuckoo’s nest one too many times. Surrounded by all of the actors that we’ve seen from the show thus far, we are led to believe that the entire show has been in his head or is some sort of deranged delusion. Marc might just be off his rocker, imagining life as Indiana Jones the whole time, cupcakes and all. Drugged out of his mind in a collection of his own drool, he’s a mental patient, and Layla’s in there, too (which oddly enough, was the first time I really liked her! More cuckoo for cocoa puffs Layla, please!). She’s bursting with fruit flavor as she arranges cards on a whiteboard that resemble the closing credits, and lines of dialogue from the show’s past are recycled through everyone around him.
There are a ton of clever references, from a Moon Knight action figure to the low budget VHS movie that Marc has rewatched endlessly - Tomb Buster with main character Dr. Steven Grant. Dr. Harrow is now his psychiatrist, someone who is keeping him there and “treating” him for his issues. He stresses “context and perspective,” citing that depending upon how you look at things, “we can only make indirect inferences about the nature of reality.” (My reality so far with this show has been a bit boring, so maybe now that reality is broken, it will liven up the place.) It’s only when he breaks out of that room that things go all wonky.
Running down the hall, the place violently rocks worse than Nickelback, until he comes across an Egyptian sarcophagus (Egyptian themed mental hospital?) which houses Steven! Reunited but outside of their body (bodies?), it's the ultimate team-up! (Even a third personality wants in, but we’re not letting him out of the box just yet.) Now that Steven and Marc just became best friends, and just when you thought the weirdness might end, in walks a hippo in a pharaoh costume to get this party started. It’s Taweret, the goddess of children and fertility, which was the stuffed hippo from the gift shop. She’s part of a group of gods who have watched over humanity since the beginning (sort of like the Eternals, but just not as moody). Why is she there? She’s clearly friendly, so maybe she will lead them out? up? to the right planet? through? The madness is just getting warmed up.
It’s a great ending, but can the show sustain it? Is this just a brief side journey until Marc and Steven get back to Egypt and some good ol’ fashioned tomb raiding? I’m hoping that they never go back, but I find that scenario unlikely. If they spend the 5th episode inside of the afterlife psychotic break, it might be fun and could liven up the mood, but I suppose that all good things must come to an end. Let’s just be grateful that we’re given a break from the ordinary.
With the show getting really bogged down by Egyptian pseudo-mythology, it’s nice that they want to head out and mess with our heads. I’m still not all-in the way I was with Hawkeye, which always managed to be fun, or WandaVision, which was unique and original, but at least they are now doing some things to differentiate themselves from the direct-to-video Tomb Buster pack.
I’m still not sure what the show is thematically about (identity? reality? ideology? marine reptiles?), but I’m hoping it will reveal its hand in these last two episodes. When they screened the show for critics, they didn’t show those last two episodes, most likely to play their cards close to the vest, so we literally know next to nothing about them, which could pose as a pleasant surprise. Or not. Or maybe it will tie in with the next Dr. Strange film, since that movie opens a day after this season finale. Or maybe it will suck our internal organs out through our collective noses. Either way, Marvel has so many things in the pipeline that if it doesn’t stick the landing, we’ll forget about it in a couple of weeks.
Next week: Mad Marc Beyond Hippodrome - two men enter, three men leave!
Star City Rating: 3½ out of 5