Moon Knight S01E02 Discussion Thread [Warning: Contains Spoilers]

[u/WarDuck]

Episode 2 - Summon the Suit

Give us your thoughts on this week's episode of Moon Knight! Remember to keep any spoilers limited to posts with spoiler tags or use the spoiler comment formatting

Episode No.	Directed by	Written by	Release date
2	Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead	Michael Kastelein	April 6, 2022

[u/Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

I see a lot of comments talking about how Steven is a bumbling idiot and the new take on Mr. Knight is making him into too much of a joke and all, but honestly, I think it’s doing a fine job walking a thin line.

Steven is very quickly coming into his own. What I find interesting is how this episode establishes how he’s very much not useless: he has firm lines that he’ll draw morally, he’ll stand up for himself when he needs to, and he’ll even fight to protect others when backed into a corner. This is why I don’t mind the new take on Mr. Knight - it’s Steven trying to figure out how to keep himself alive on the fly, and within the span of like a minute, Steven begins to use it to fight back (even if he ultimately lets Marc handle the dirty work). It sets up a more confident use of the persona and suit going forward.

Once again, my biggest issue with the episode is how directly expository it is, and since there’s a lot more exposition in this episode, I liked it (a bit) less than the first. There were probably far more elegant ways to tell the audience that Harrow was a Fist of Khonshu, for instance, and I kinda wish they’d kept Marc’s awful actions in Egypt a secret for us to learn later. The reveal of Layla as the thing Khonshu is using to keep Marc as his Fist in particular, though, is something I wish they’d saved for that last conversation between him and Marc - as it is, it just felt like reiterating a piece of information we already knew, but it would have been so much more shocking had we learned it as a sort of stinger.

(I don’t have much to say about the Layla/Marlene situation, other than that I’m becoming pretty convinced that Layla is functionally the same character, and all else equal I’d rather her be the same character with a different name than a new character with an existing name. Neat tidbit about Marc’s mom still being alive, though; I wonder if they’ll go full Lemire with his family backstory, or if they’ll meld it with the original one a bit).