Moon Knight's finale is just a week away, here's what the penultimate episode could mean for the show's future.
The penultimate episode of Moon Knight has arrived and, we'll be completely honest: Things are not looking great for Marc and Steven. We spent this episode trapped inside what seemed potentially like a dream last week but was actually revealed to be the underworld because, yes, Harrow's shot did kill them, it turns out. Now they have to make the scales of their life balance by forcibly reconciling their fractured memories, a process which is unsurprisingly traumatic for both of them.
That's right, it's a backstory episode, complete with dark secrets being brought to light and some extremely tragic deaths. The journey not only helps fill in the gaps of Marc and Steven's confusing origins but also colors in the empty spaces of Steven's existence as a separate entity and entirely different person from Marc (spoilers: Steven is not, in fact, a separate entity or a different person at all.)
Of course, as we go into the finale next week, there are some big things to take note of, as well as some lingering questions we'd love to see answered before the story draws to a close. We've collected our thoughts here to better help you build up your own theories and ideas for where things are headed and how the greater MCU will be impacted.
1. Putnam Medical
Harrow tries to reassure Marc that he's actually safe inside the Putnam Medical Facility, further pressuring him to believe that he is insane and that his experiences with Khonshu are a delusion. This name is a nod to the Putnam Psychiatric Hospital which was where Marc was housed in the Moon Knight comics by Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood.
2. Origins (part 1)
This week we learned that Marc's dissociative disorder was caused by a major trauma in his childhood involving the accidental death of his younger brother and the subsequent abuse he faced at the hands of his mother. Marc created the Steven Grant identity as an escape and the two parts of his mind never actually began to overlap in the way we see in the show until his mother died several months before the show began.
In the comics, a similar childhood trauma sparked Marc's dissociative disorder but it was actually an encounter with a Nazi serial killer that sparked it. His brother survived to adulthood and went on to become a villain Marc eventually had to fight.
3. Origins (part 2)
Meanwhile, the evolution of Marc from mercenary to Moon Knight is a very close translation of the comics--both the newly revamped stories and the original, which posited Marc as a lost and wounded adventurer who was revived by the power of Khonshu, saving his life and allowing him to fight crime. The visuals in this episode are, unsurprisingly, very closely related to the Lemire/Smallwood version of the story from 2017.
4. The Ancestral Plain
Tarweret explains that the Field of Reeds is similar to the Ancestral Plain, a lovely place--and one that we've seen before in the Black Panther movie. It seems that all kinds of afterlives exist in the MCU.
5. Marc's faith
Marc Spector is actually one of Marvel's Jewish heroes. His father in the comics was a rabbi. This week featured Marc wearing a kippah, briefly, when he found himself unable to bring himself to attend his mother's funeral.
6. Still no Jake
We've been eagerly waiting for the possible reveal of another alter-ego within Marc's brain, potentially Jake Lockley, who is another identity he uses from the comics. Remember back two weeks ago when both Steven and Marc blacked out only to return to consciousness with a thug dead and neither of them able to account for their actions? Yeah. We still haven't uncovered that mystery. And, despite having access to the whole of their combined memories in the afterlife this week, there has been no sign of Jake (or any other potential alter-ego) making this a major loose end to be tied up next week, or a possible red herring pointing towards a different reveal we haven't been able to anticipate quite yet.
7. Steven's fate
At the end of the episode, Steven is tragically hurled over the side of the boat and absorbed by the sands, a fate that, according to Tarweret, functionally destroys your soul and prevents you from ever reading the Field of Reeds. But, given the way that Steven was never actually his own soul to begin with, it's unclear what will actually happen to him, or if Marc can simply recreate him.
8. Marc's body
Tarweret explains that she can put Marc back in his body on Earth but doing so won't heal him of the fatal gunshot wound he suffered--this is going to make things very, very tricky in terms of reviving him, but, as we saw in this episode, is also a possible bit of foreshadowing for Khonshu's involvement in the finale. Afterall, this certainly wouldn't be the first time Marc was bleeding out and able to be saved by literal divine intervention.
9. Harrow's plan
Also at the end of the episode, we see that Harrow's plan with Amet has begun, and that souls are being sent to the afterlife pre-judgement. It's unclear just how many people have been killed thus far or how Marc and Khonshu will be able to do anything about this--honestly, it almost seems like this could be a Snap-level catastrophe if left unchecked, except instead of literally dividing life in half, it would be a monster making the final call about who lives or dies. Rough.
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