Moon Knight episode 5

Under the guidance of Taweret, Marc and Steven are transported on their journey to the afterlife following Arthur Harrow's shooting. Now that they're no longer ...

Could the series surprise viewers and find a way to bring back Steven? One viewer certainly hopes so, tweeting: "No no I refuse to believe Steven is gone, he will return in the next episode Moon Knight." Perhaps there's a third personality involved? We also got to see the moment Khonshu chose Marc as his avatar as he lay dying in the desert. Taweret sadly confirms their souls will now be claimed by the creatures of the Duat, to freeze them on the desert planes. Under the guidance of Taweret, Marc and Steven are transported on their journey to the afterlife following Arthur Harrow’s shooting. Through a series of flashbacks and visions, we learn of the heartbreaking way Marc’s brother dies, as well as his abusive relationship with his mother. The hippo god urges Marc to try and balance his scales, by looking back into his past.

The series' penultimate episode finally deals with Marc Spector's mental illness in a surprisingly delicate and respectful fashion. moon-knight-oscar-isaac ...

He is a scathing and unkind portrait of a psychologist — which, not great representation, coming from someone who regularly sees a psychologist, but I digress — and it is through him, ironically, that Steven comes to accept the death of his and Marc’s mother, and that Marc reconciles with Steven as a part of himself. Perhaps there is a much deeper meaning to be discovered in the field of reeds Marc finds himself in — and after all, Marvel is known for its history of unexpected twists. This episode gives Marc and Steven the respect they deserve as characters, honoring their history and Marc’s mental illness in a way that, frankly, I never expected out of a Marvel television show. Within all of these memories, we also finally get visual and verbal confirmation of Marc’s Jewish heritage, a core part of his identity in the comics that many fans were afraid would be wiped out entirely, particularly given that Isaac is not, in fact, Jewish himself. We are also walked through memories of Marc’s time as a mercenary, confirming that his old military pal Bushman — a character many have been hoping to hear from — was responsible for the death of Layla’s (Calamawy) father. She’s just as cute and cuddly as she seems, revealing to Marc and Steven that they are, in fact, dead, and that the all-white psychiatric ward they’ve found themselves in isn’t a dream, as some viewers theorized.

The Disney Plus Marvel Cinematic Universe show dives deeper into Marc Spector's mind.

- Young Marc says, "Laters, gators" to his mom, just as Steven did in his imagined phone conversation with her. Marc's grieving mom kept reminding Marc of his role in the accident, and we jump from Marc's 10th birthday to his 12th. Marc wasn't able to face going into her mom's shiva, the seven-day Jewish mourning period, and surrendered completely to Steven in his grief. Mirroring his comic book origin, he tried to stop Bushman from killing a bunch of hostages, which included Layla's dad, but that failed and he was fatally shot. Taweret is referring to the dimension from Wakandan beliefs, as seen inBlack Panther. They convince Taweret to help them return to the world of the living so Marc can free Khonshu and heal his gunshot wound. Seems like the scales would've been thoroughly unbalanced. Failing to balance their souls will condemn them to eternity frozen in the sands of the Duat. It apparently continued into his teenage years, and he left home. Before that, they must balance the scales so they can return through the gate of Osiris. In the latter period, young Marc runs into a room and his adult self stops Steven from seeing what happened in there. It's all part of Harrow's plan to release trapped death goddess Ammit upon the world.

Moon Knight episode 5 ending explained — Is that major character really dead? And how does this all set up the final episode?

And this in turn makes us think that Steven definitely isn't gone forever. It's possible that Steven's supposed "death" could represent Marc letting go of the pain that's consumed him up until now. And come to think of it, why did Steven's crystallisation balance those scales in the first place? He tries to chase the ship, but it's not long before the Mary Poppins wannabe Chim Chim Cher-ee's off this mortal plane and transforms into a crystallised statue. In this penultimate hour, the Oscar Isaac dream team ventures through an asylum full of shared memories where we discover the origins behind Steven Grant and that accent. Still, that's nothing compared to the last five minutes of this episode.

Moon Knight episode 5 has arrived on Disney Plus. And, as you wipe the tears from your eyes – if you've seen it, you'll know why – you may have forgotten about ...

The Ancestral Plane played a key role in the 2018 MCU flick, with T'Challa and Killmonger able to talk to their fathers and other ancestors in this parallel dimension. With Tawaret namedropping the Ancestral Plane in Moon Knight's fifth entry, it's clear that the latest Marvel Phase 4 project has closer ties to the MCU than we initially realized. We could elaborate on that further, but it'll take a while to explain, so let's just move on to the Marvel Easter egg that Moon Knight episode 5 contains. As Tawaret begins to explain that Marc and Steven are traveling to the afterlife via the Egyptian underworld, Marc asks if the psychiatric ward is a stand-in for said underworld. Instead, it's a figment of their imagination and they're actually on their way to the Egyptian afterlife – aka the Field of Reeds. We're about to dig into where you can find this Moon Knight episode 5 Easter egg and how it links to former and future MCU superhero flicks.

Episode Five of Moon Knight journeys deep into Egyptian mythology, with Marc and Steven learning that they are not in a hospital, but rather Duat.

Marc and Steven are in Duat to have their hearts weighed, but Tawaret notes that there is something incomplete about their hearts. Duat is the realm of the dead in Ancient Egyptian mythology, often represented in hieroglyphs as a star inside of a circle. Various other gods live in Duat alongside Osiris, often appearing to the dead as they journey through.

Moon Knight scores big with a trippy flashback episode, of sorts, featuring Oscar Isaac at his finest.

The first time was full of heartache because it was Marc's 12th birthday and he created Steven in anticipation of a beating. The combination of the Hospital/Duat setting allowed for it to feel bizarre enough to fit with the rest of the series while also portraying an embattled mind, seeking both shelter and relief. It feels too soon to fully mourn Steven, who appears to fully perish in the sands of the Duat at the end, since an actual personality seems like something that can be brought back. The stuff about the scales and incomplete hearts works okay in the context of Moon Knight mythology, but it feels like even more of an extreme example of "make-em-ups" in the midst of Marc's very human story. But even if there isn't more to mine here, the psychological point was devastating. Again, Isaac was a triumph here, delivering deep dramatic moments, for both Marc and Steven, as they had to confront their shared past (and Steven finally learning that he was created by Marc to shield the body from abuse from their mother). Marc didn't want to go back and re-live trauma. Ultimately, there wasn't much that was revelatory about "Asylum" -- since a lot of it was Steven learning things we'd already been told, or could piece together -- but Isaac's ace acting was enough to easily carry this trippy, effects-filled chapter, as he often only shared the screen with himself or CGI characters and still turned in a masterful showing. When the series started, it very much felt like a story in need of a full-episode, or in the very least extended, flashback. When we finally returned to the moment when Marc was drinking out on the street, and learned it was because he couldn't bring himself to join his mother's shiva ( read all about how Moon Knight's Judaism enriches the story here), it was uncannily powerful. Adding to this splendidly surreal swirl -- which involved a giant barge transporting Marc and Steven through cosmic sand dunes, captained by the plucky goddess Taweret -- was the already-established psych ward layer (said now to be Putnam Medical Facility in Chicago), and "Dr." Harrow insisting that Marc's mind was simply a pendulum swinging back and forth between sense and nonsense. Back in "The Friendly Type," we watched Layla finally take notice of Marc shifting into Steven, and the wonderment in her eyes. We assume he was switching to Steven, but what if it was something else?

The Disney Plus series Moon Knight has never really had much in common with the rest of the catalog of Marvel television shows. It didn't tie into the fight ...

It wants to take a deep dive into the world of Marc Spector and show why he became the way he did. That it took an episode and a half to get to this place, in a show that did remind its audience that there is real danger in the real world, it seems to be a time killer that didn't need to take nearly that long. Of course, Moon Knight has made it very clear that it wants to be a different kind of superhero show. It turns out they also think they are on board the ship of Taweret. Taweret was the Egyptian goddess of women and children and it turns out that at least part of the episode is about Marc and Steven attempting to balance the scales so they can travel through the Egyptian underworld of Duat. The coping and sorting out of just who is real and why there are multiple personalities also involves what has been the show's big vilian in the form of Arthur Harrow. However, this version of the character is that of a psychiatrist who is trying to get Marc to understand why he has created the persona of Steven and to try and work through things. Instead of the hero getting ready for a big fight, this episode of Moon Knight was all about Marc and Steven working through the events that caused them to exist alongside one another.

In Episode 5 of Disney+'s "Moon Knight," Marc and Steven are forced to confront a dark, pivotal moment from the past. Plus: Hello, Jake?

As Steven surveys Harrow’s “doctor” set-up — with the framed diploma, “Ned Flanders” mustache and all — Harrow explains that Marc brought himself to the hospital after his mother died. Sensing a disturbance, Marc and Steven race back to the deck of the ship, where Taweret reports that unbalanced souls are being judged prematurely and en masse (presumably by Harrow/Ammit). Marc and Steven beg Taweret to find a way to help them free/reconnect with Khonshu, help Layla and thwart Harrow’s plan. The lad’s eyes then roll back and he turns into “Dr. Steven Grant,” as in the British hero of the Tomb Buster movie whose poster is on his wall. When young Marc races to his bedroom, adult Steven tries to follow, but adult Marc anxiously grabs him and the men are next seen on a city street, where teenage Marc is walking out on his father and their fractured family. Heading inside to the ward, and as Marc worries that Layla is out there somewhere about to embark on a suicide missing against Harrow, the men roam door to door, peeking inside the window of each at memories of Moon Knight slaying the jackal at the museum… Following a brief snippet of a watery cave, a boy’s cry and a woman growling, “It’s all your fault!,” we find ourselves in a different version of last week’s asylum, where Dr. Harrow is trying to explain to Marc that he did not “shoot” him, but instead the patient’s mind is vacillating between sense and nonsense.

'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.

Moon Knight episode 5, "Asylum," dives into the backstory of Oscar Isaac's dual roles, Marc Spector and Steven Grant. In the process, Steven reveals his ...

These two things aren’t mutually exclusive — something lost in the modern ’80s homages of shows like Stranger Things is how ’80s classics like E.T. delivered stories where the genuine fun is paired with genuine terror, peril, and inner turmoil, all of which were difficult for kids (both onscreen and in the audience) to process. (The zombies are all the people Marc has killed in his mercenary life.) In this, Moon Knight feels caught between two masters: The challenging, morally gray story about a man dealing with mental illness and his own capacity for horror, and the Marvel Studios brand of action movie the whole family can watch. It all builds to the origin of Moon Knight, as Spector’s crew is hired to raid an archeological dig. As Marc gets older, the wall between himself and Steven gets higher, with Marc bearing all the pain. However, the balance of the scales are in flux, as they were when Harrow tried to use his own powers to weigh the two men’s guilt. Even with the MCU’s light geopolitics and frequent friendly gestures toward the military-industrial complex, at the end of the day, the franchise is carefully designed to remain firmly family-friendly, with mostly bloodless violence and nothing too frightening or intense.