Moon Knight Episode 5

Moon Knight Episode 5 may have the biggest cliffhanger yet, so here's a breakdown of what might be going on.

Of course, there is the possibility that Marc has actually ended up in the afterlife, and will be forced to find a way back to the land of the living. From possibly being responsible for killing several enemies in various episodes to punching Steven in the face in Episode 4, Lockley has clearly been left to rattle in his tomb for a reason. A darker path that Moon Knight could take is the idea that Marc and Steven's delving into the Duat could be an extended delusion created by themselves while they are in the asylum. Since then, Harrow has held great interest in Marc's dissociative identity disorder, questioning Steven about it and using it as evidence against Khonshu when addressing the Ennead. Perhaps Harrow may have realized that Steven is what makes Marc strong and vice versa, so sought to drive a wedge between the two in order to weaken the only person capable of stopping him. Steven Grant is revealed to be a personality created to protect Marc from the abuse he suffered from his mother. Even with Steven steering the ship to lend him a hand, Marc is quickly overwhelmed by enemy forces.

Marc and Steven Grant, no longer sharing the same body, must travel the Underworld known as the Duat with the deity Taweret's guidance. During their journey, ...

Steven reminds Marc that all the horrible things their mother said to him was wrong; none of it was his fault. Gently, Steven reassures him that Marc was just a child; it was not his fault. Marc retorts that they’re insane to a deflated Steven, frustrated that his reality now involves a talking hippo, a talking dead bird, Steven outside of his body, and now the afterlife. Harrow apologizes revealing that he was the one who told Marc to open up to Steven, and asks how their conversation went. If the younger Marc chooses life instead of death, he will be bound to Khonshu, swearing to protect the travelers of the night and bringing his vengeance to evil-doers who would do harm. The young Marc and Randall walk through the woods reenacting a scene from Tomb Buster with Marc portraying Dr. Steven Grant and Randall as Grant’s ward. Instead of wasting his life, the stone statue reveals himself to be the god Khonshu in need of a warrior, and asks if Marc will be his hands, his eyes, his vengeance. However, the drunk Wendy saunters over to the dining room table to berate Marc believing Marc has always been jealous of his younger brother ever since he was born, and that she should have known he would have done something like this. Speaking privately to Steven, Marc refuses to go to the Duat or the Field of Reeds. He proposes they kill the hippo and steal her boat. As Billy and Bobbi arrive, Harrow doesn’t want them to lose all the progress they made today, reminding him that he’s not the enemy as the staff sedates Marc for his outburst. Back at the Egyptian mental hospital, Taweret informs both Marc and Steven that they are indeed quite dead. Marc concedes that on the pendulum, that notion swings to the end of nonsense.

This week's chapter saw Marc and Steven discover more about their part in stopping Arthur Harrow's plan to resurrect Ammit. But even if that's the case, ...

Throughout the whole series, there has been a lot of mystery about how Marc and Steven came to be. Steven then confronts Marc to show him what happened to him and his mother to achieve their goal. Marc confirms that his mother’s death was the starting point when Steven’s personality started to gain control of his body as a coping mechanism for his grief. With Marc and Steven confronting their troubled past, the scales containing their hearts have finally balanced. The psychiatrist starts to interrogate him and asks him to open up about his past. Unfortunately, Steven falls off the ship trying to save Marc. He becomes a solid block of sand as Marc tries his best to come back for him. Meanwhile, Marc enters a different door and finds Steven inside reliving the funeral of his brother. The usually calm Steven starts to panic as the water inside the cave starts to rise. As he screams, the scene returns to Marc and Steven talking to Tawaret, who then tells the pair that they’re actually dead. Tawaret then pulls out a pair of white hearts from Marc and Steven and places them on a balance to determine where they will end up. In this case, Marc suspects that the psychiatric ward’s setting leads to the conclusion that he has gone insane. Marc then grabs a glass pyramid and threatens Harrow, only for the security to arrive and sedate him.

The threats to Moon Knight's life keep coming in episode 5 of the Marvel Studios original series and we're here to break it down for you.

(Shades of “Severance” here and the “innie” and “outie.”) “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” opens the same week as the “Moon Knight” finale. He’s lost in the sands of time (or whatever it is). He tries to make his way back to the barge. It was rocking back and forth (like somebody was in it) and speaks to the prevalent theory online that there’s a third personality in that body, just like there was in the comic books. Can we pause and say how strange it was that this episode doesn’t address the third sarcophagus that Steven and Marc saw in the psych ward at the end of the last episode. And that’s when he hears the booming voice of Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham, who seems to be in some #MeToo hot water but he’s still here at least). He tells the dying Marc that he’s “in search of a warrior” and Marc would be a great fit. He was a mercenary who tried to kill a doctor and his daughter (in the comics it’s Dr. Peter Alraune and Marlene Alraune ). Moon Knight of course catches up with him and kills him in a very grisly way. But then Steven notices a little kid in the back of the room. The protector of the night? It’s Taweret. She asks if Marc is “always so intense.” (Remember, in this realm, Marc and Steven are very much two different people.) She explains that “You’re actually quite dead.” They have entered the real of the Egyptian underworld. Marc retorts, “You’re not a real doctor.” “Doctor” Harrow says that he enjoys his story about the talking hippopotamus. Now that the episode has streamed, we know that where it’s going is back – back through the shared trauma of Marc and Steven and into a place of, if not understanding, at least acceptance.

Moon Knight has consistently proven itself a jaw-dropper. The fifth and penultimate episode was no different. But what does it all mean?

The character helped Marc come to terms with his traumatic childhood, and that could be a sign that he was ready to let him go. It resulted in Marc being transported to the peaceful field Taweret hoped he would, suggesting that he had found paradise. And the fifth episode certainly didn’t hold back either, which is to be expected considering we are talking about the show’s penultimate episode here.

Oscar Isaac's mind-bending Marvel series is the life of the party in streaming land. Here's what happened in 'Moon Knight' episode 5.

With the revelations finally coming to a head (with the heartbreaking moment Steven confronts Marc with his own trauma “You were just a child. In Marc’s head, the moment also coincides with a memory (made up?) of the time he sold his soul to Khonshu after the same bloody desert battle that killed Layla’s archaeologist dad. Unable to process it, he skips back to the hippo in the hallway and meets Taweret (Antonia Salib) with Steven back by his side.

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 is one of the darkest episodes to come out of a Marvel series since WandaVision. Here, we learn about how Steven Grant came about.

One thing’s for sure – it’s going to be incredibly epic, and possibly, just like episode 5, really heavy. The reveal was crushing not only to Grant – who for a long time believed he was the “original” personality – but also to viewers as Marvel rarely delves into dark topics such as loss, trauma, and abuse. Above all else, Marvel ensured that DID was being represented authentically, taking care not to trivialize the disorder in its portrayal nor shy away from its reality. Ever since then, Spector suffered from child abuse at the hands of his mother. If the scales balance out, they will spend eternity in the Field of Reeds. However, the scales won’t balance because their hearts are incomplete. We see Spector and Grant go through doors of memories, with one, in particular, explaining the origins of the ‘Steven Grant’ personality.

The episode, titled “Asylum,” took us deep into Marc Spector's (Oscar Isaac) psyche and showed us a whole lot of the skeletons that he keeps in his closet. It ...

You better believe that Marc Spector, the world’s #1 (and possibly only) Tomb Buster super fan has a poster from the film hanging in his bedroom. In the comics, Bushman is the Bushman — as in bush man, as in a man from the wilderness of Australia or New Zealand. The way Marc pronounces it, though, is as if it was a surname like Goldman or Rushman or Hoffman. In the comics, Bushman’s real name is Raul Bushman — but “Bushman” wasn’t revealed as his last name until 2006. In order to balance their scales and prevent themselves from entering into eternal torment, Marc tells Steven everything — and that includes his history as a mercenary. This is also one of the very few explicit connections to other Marvel Cinematic Universe properties that we’ve seen so far, following that GRC banner on the side of a bus and the offhand mention of Madripoor. That’s definitely the vibe coming out of this week’s penultimate episode of Moon Knight. The episode, titled “Asylum,” took us deep into Marc Spector’s (Oscar Isaac) psyche and showed us a whole lot of the skeletons that he keeps in his closet. At the beginning of the episode, we find out that Marc’s breakout moment at the end of Episode 4 was another delusion (except it wasn’t, really?) and he’s actually still in Dr. Harrow’s office.

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' heats up in its penultimate episode, with Marc and Steven exploring the afterlife. But is this the end of the line for one of them?

In this case, Marc was not ready to meet his demise and enter the realm of the dead. From the beginning of Steven’s existence, Marc used Steven to take on the trauma and painful memories he was unable or unprepared to deal with. Throughout the episode, Marc must contend with the grief of losing his brother, the abuse his mother dealt him, and his work as a mercenary. They almost succeed before Steven takes matters into his own hands and sends the ship veering in another direction, freeing his alter ego. But that move toward acceptance does not balance the scales, and zombie-like forms of Marc’s past victims emerge out of the sand to drag Marc down with them. However, the scales refuse to balance, forcing Marc to show Steven his memories.

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 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.

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.

What's really going on with Marc Spector and Steven Grant at the end of Moon Knight episode 5? And is there another personality or identity at work?

The big plot of the episode is that the goddess Taweret can bring Marc and Steven to the Field of Reeds (a form of Heaven) if their hearts are found to be balanced on a magic scale. Instead of running off, he picked up an impromptu weapon and prepared to attack Harrow. As he started to come off as a pissed-off Robert De Niro, “Marc” was held down and injected in the neck with a sedative. The thing is…how real is the real world in this story? Steve steps up and saves Marc, but at the cost of falling into the Duat and becoming eternally frozen. This whole development had been foreshadowed in the second episode when Layla appeared confused at Steven claiming to be in contact with his mother. Marc was part of the military, but having a double life didn’t exactly gel with that kind of situation, so he was discharged. Steven has always been imagining these conversations and even uses the “later, gator” farewell his mother used to give him as a kid. Marc ignored the warnings and they continued their adventure, only for the rain to pick up into a storm and flood the cave. Marc experienced the truth when it came to his mother, but Steven got to live the lie that his mother loved him. Then there’s the third world, where Marc and Steven are trying to comprehend the afterlife. The penultimate episode of Moon Knight certainly borrows a lot from fellow Disney+ Marvel show WandaVision. Our protagonist is forced to confront their past and the secrets to their fractured mental state through mystical means. What's really going on with Marc Spector and Steven Grant at the end of Moon Knight episode 5?

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.

In the penultimate episode of the season, the show asks: How can we do good when we're broken?

Isaac, of course, volleys quite well with himself (and with Salib) but it was lovely watching Steven and Marc really wrestling with who they are to one another before, well, we found out exactly the answer to such a question. In the meantime let’s find some requisite peace in the field of reeds where a lulling tune lures us into thinking we’ve come, as the song that plays at the end suggests, to the home we know on the other side of the sun. As a narrative conceit, though, squarely placing Marc and Steven in a psych ward where their memories are stored and where they must wrestle with their shared pain and shame if they hope to be returned to the land of the living in time to stop Harrow and save Layla, is actually quite ingenious. - Just as I praised F. Murray Abraham’s voice work for Khonshu, I should set aside some time to stress how refreshing it was getting Antonia Salib’s Taweret in the mix. Moon Knight, in between Harrow’s philosophical musings about Ammit and Marc’s tortured relationship with Khonshu and Steven, has paved a story for itself that hinges on our notions of justice and ties it to issues of mental health. And you have to give it to the show, the gamble pays off.