Debuting on Wednesday, Marvel’s Moon Knight gets all of the good stuff out of the way by the first episode.
Debuting on Wednesday morning, Marvel’s Moon Knight may be the first real miss of the Disney+ MCU television era. I’ve had issues with how several these shows ended, but this one barely starts well. Critics were sent four out of a total six episodes, and I can only hope that the final two installments can at least give this redundant and often generic superhero show a finale worthy of its opening. The first episode is quite good, but it also unloads much of what makes this show theoretically different from its superhero brethren. By the time episode one ends, it’s clear that the horror iconography, mentally ill protagonist and frightening understated cult leader baddie are just window-dressing for the same old story. Created by Jeremy Slater, with episodes directed by Mohammed Diab and the directing duo behind The Endless and Synchronic (Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead), Moon Knight begins on a moody, off-kilter prologue highlighting its baddie (Ethan Hawke) before shifting to our unlikely protagonist (Oscar Isaac). Stephen Grant is introduced to us as a bumbling, insecure but unquestionably intelligent man who yearns to use his archeological knowledge for more than just working at the museum gift shop. The story kicks into gear when Stephen’s apparent dissociative identity disorder puts him in contact with a mysterious cult leader (Hawke) in the Alps, with no memory of how he got there or what he was doing there. The first episode makes the most of Stephen’s blackouts. We get a disconcerting yo-yo effect for the show’s first big action scene, as Stephen reacts in terror to a literal voice in his head (F.
