Steven Grant faces the aftermath of the fight in the last episode, where his late ego Marc Spencer took control to fight off the Egyptian creatures sent by Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke). While still in the dark about who Spencer is and how is he gaining control of him, he investigates him and finds out a storeroom with his hidden weapons. His partner Layla arrives and mistakes Grant for Spencer.
The second episode of Marvel’s Moon Knight, where Oscar Isaac plays the double role of Marc and Steven took its time to set the pace for the upcoming episodes. A little low on the action quotient, the episode makes up for it with the suspense surrounding the Egyptian Gods, the introduction of Layla and the constant conflict between Marc and Steven.
The episode begins with Grant being fired from his museum job following the fight tha occurred the previous night. Back at his apartment, he finds a hidden phone and a key that leads him to Marc’s hideout, where he finds his arsenal. On Marc’s phone, he also notices several calls and messages from a lady named Layla. Despite Marc’s warnings, he tries to complain to the authorities about the illegal stash of weapons.
Through his reflection, Marc reveals to Steven that he is the avatar of the Egyptian God Khonshu and those who serve him, deliver his justice to the vulnerable.
Not willing to listen to Marc, he escapes with his bag but is haunted by Khonshu. While running in the streets, he crashes into Layla, who recognises him as Marc and calls him her wife.
Grant tries to convince her that he is unaware of Marc but Layla finds it hard to believe. It is revealed that the couple used to fight side by side for Konshu. In his apartment, he finds Marc’s bag and discovers the golden scarab that leads to Ammit’s grave and hides with it as they are interrupted by FBI agents who are later revealed to be Harrow’s people.
Harrow, however, decides to show him around and introduce him to his cult. He gets to know about Ammit and her way of delivering justice- to kill a person even before they have committed a crime so that the crime is avoided at any cost. Grant, of course, does not agree with his ideology and tries to reason with him. However, Layla arrives with the scarab and the duo flees. Unable to fend them off, Layla urges Steven to summon the suit. He does not let Marc take over and he has no idea what the suit is, so he uses his imagination and summons his version of the superhero costume and we witness Mr Knight, Steven Grant’s version of Khonshu’s avatar.
The last episode gave the viewers a glimpse of Moon Knight but in episode two, we see Mr Knight. The traditional ceremonial armour from Khosnhu’s temple is replaced with a dapper suit and Grant takes on the villains in his own style.
Though the action scenes failed to make an impact, they had Marvel’s signature humour. Grant threw some punches along with some hilarious punchlines. However, despite all the struggle, Harrow manages to escape with the scarab. The episode ends with Marc explaining to Grant that he has to protect Layla as Khonshu plans on making her his next avatar. The two men land in Egypt to find Harrow before he finds Ammit.
With Moon Knight, Marvel is going towards a more inclusive road and bringing in more diverse characters from the comics. Although the second episode could not match the standard set by the first, it had its moments and highlights, one of the major ones being the background score of the episode and the end credit song.
Another major hook of the series is Steven’s dissociative personality disorder because, as viewers, it becomes difficult to understand whether we are looking at the absolute truth or Steven’s version of it. We are kept in dark as much as our protagonist and the answer to the above question will only be known in the upcoming episodes.
Directed by Mohamed Diab, Moon Knight is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
