Moon Knight

 

Awkward British museum gift shop worker Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) and hardnosed American former mercenary Marc Spector (Isaac again) have a dilemma: they are two personalities vying for control over one body. Spector has been working off a debt to the Egyptian moon god Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham), donning his ceremonial armor and serving as his vengeful, evil-punishing avatar Moon Knight. He’s fled to England to keep his archaeologist wife Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy) out of harm’s way, but she won’t be deterred that easily. Meanwhile, it is Steven who seems to have gotten the pair in the most trouble, stumbling across a plot by charismatic cult leader Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) to release the goddess Ammit and exact terrible judgment upon humanity.

 

Though he has graced comic books pages for decades, insofar as Moon Knight is known at all, it is as an Internet meme or Marvel’s Batman equivalent with multiple personalities and a mystical flair. The character’s obscurity actually played to writer Jeremy Slater and director Mohamed Diab’s advantage as it gave them considerable latitude in developing a short-run Disney Plus adaptation. Their vision is an eclectic one, and though the resulting show’s tonal whiplash may disorient some viewers, it makes for a refreshingly fun ride.

 

A broad-strokes distillation, Moon Knight makes a number of changes to the source material that are ultimately for the best. Comic book Steven was a suave, rich Bruce Wayne/Lamont Cranston type, but show Steven is a working-class blunderer. This quality, in the face of pending doom, gives the show a good bit of humor, especially when contrasted with Mark’s cool competence. It’s to Isaac’s credit that he handles both personas – and accents – with conviction. Layla is also a stronger and better-developed character than her comic equivalent, Marlene. While her status as an Egyptian heroine is obnoxiously trumpeted as Representation with a capital R (ironic given the casting of a non-Jewish actor as the definitely Jewish Marc), Calamawy nevertheless shows both toughness and heart. Hawke’s Harrow is an amalgamation of several different villains, and he exudes a creepy soft-spoken empathy despite his fanaticism.

 

From the streets of London to the streets of Cairo and from an Egyptian tomb to a mental hospital to the afterlife, the show’s settings change quickly. While these episode-to-episode shifts can be disorienting (albeit not to the extent of Legion), Diab’s direction is surefooted and energetic, and Slater, whose Fantastic Four (2015) script was largely butchered by Josh Trank, gains a measure of redemption here. Between Diab’s inclusion of modern Cairo and Hesham Nazi’s score, Moon Knight serves as an aesthetic corrective to a popular conception of Egypt rooted thousands of years in the past.

 

Moon Knight is, like previous Disney Plus Marvel series WandaVision, a show whose quirkiness masks powerful acting and an exploration of the extremes that grief and loss can push us toward. The pull of individual episodes may vary, but the series as a whole is more often than not compelling.