Moon knight

Moon Knight brings Oscar Isaac into the MCU and it’s all the better for it, however it also brings a whole lot of inconsistency. Reflecting on this show, if Oscar Isaac wasn’t in the lead role, it genuinely wouldn’t work as well as it does. A similar sentiment can be expressed about the cast as a whole, with a wonderfully creepy performance from Ethan Hawke and an equally great performance from May Calamawy. Along with the cast, the show also has one of the best scores of the D+ shows, the Moon Knight theme is extraordinary.

If the show hinges on its cast trying to elevate the story though, it just makes for a lacklustre experience. The story is all over the place throughout the series and as a distinct piece of content, it doesn’t have a satisfactory overarching story that makes the experience worth it. Akin to other D+ shows that have came before it, Moon Knight struggles heavily in its pacing. With the first 4 episodes treading shallow water for so long that it becomes stagnant, then suddenly launching into the deep end in the final 2 episodes. Yet this isn’t enough time to wrap up the story they set up in an impactful way as most of the plot points are rushed.

Even worse is that they even leave some plot points they set up earlier in the series completely untouched. As a distinct piece of content, this show doesn’t feel satisfying as a lot of the central mysteries aren’t addressed. Everything with Jake was so poorly handled. Building the intrigue around a 3rd personality for the majority of the season, to then have a perfect opportunity to showcase him in the finale, only to fall back to skipping the violence and not showing him was so disappointing.

Often the restrictions of a PG-13 rating don’t infringe on the storytelling of Marvel projects but you could really feel the restrictions on this show. The show is trying to tackle mental illness and violence that’s meant to be brutal and frightening, and while the action was serviceable, albeit not violent, these themes just didn’t merge well with the MCU tone. 

This also comes down to the series feeling far smarter than it actually is. The whole idea of the asylum was really fun in the moment but the way it concludes kinda just makes it redundant, and all the hints at this reality not being real ended up just being misdirects, but not in a way that way smart.

There were some really interesting high concept ideas explored throughout the series, most of it surface level however, that added a new side to the MCU. All the Egyptian mythology added another dimension which was refreshing, especially the Gods and how that played into Marc’s story. They, for the most part, looked amazing too which explains why the CGI throughout the series looked so bad.

When it comes down to it what makes the MCU special is how rewatchable a lot of the content is, yet thinking about rewatching this show feels tedious. The payoff isn’t that satisfying and the journey the show goes on for the amount of time spent with these characters feels wasted.

★★★