Welcome to Screen Crush I’m your host Erik Voss and what the hell is going on with the ending of Moon Knight Episode 4. It’s one of the biggest mind f**ks we’ve had in the MCU since Wandavision and there’s so much going on with it that we need to break down.
The episode takes a turn at breakneck speed like Gwen Stacy and after Marc is apparently shot we dive into a movie called Tomb Buster before joining him in a psychiatric ward similar to 12 monkeys. In case you haven’t seen it that movie stars Bruce Willis as a time traveller who goes back to stop a killer virus from being unleashed. Unfortunately, he travels back way too far and due to his craaazy stories about the future he’s sent to an insane asylum.
Throughout the first act of the movie, you’re very much questioning whether the time travel storyline is actually real or if it’s just the hallucinations of a Madman. That’s definitely the vibe that I get from this episode’s twists and this entire situation actually pulls directly from the comics. In almost every episode breakdown we’ve talked about something from the seminal Jeff Lemire run which featured Marc in a Psychiatric Hospital along with his other side characters such as Crawley who makes an appearance as a bingo caller.
Now you probably wanna know what happens in the book in order to understand what’s going on here so for the first part of the video I’m just gonna dive right into it. I know in my breakdowns that I typically tend to do it in chronological order but this ending is so off the wall that even Michael Jackson would say it’s bad to make you wait until the break of dawn for it.
Pffft
Sorry, those were the only Michael Jackson songs that worked in that sentence. If you don’t want things possibly ruined then I will leave timecodes below you can skip to but there are a couple of big changes they do in the show that means they probably aren’t following it completely.
In The Asylum
Anyway, Marc is holed up in an asylum which is overseen by a Doctor named Dr Emmett who is actually revealed to be Ammit. Her orderlies are called Billy and Bobby which just so happens to be the name of the two policemen that we were introduced to in Episode 2 who also happen to show up here. These two were revealed to be jackals which could have been referenced in the two jackals that have popped up in the series.
Now Ammit kept trying to convince Marc that his entire life as Moon Knight was just a fantasy and that he’d been there since he was twelve years old. However, Visions of Khonshu came to him and told him that he had to remember who he was in order to piece together his fractured psyche. Donning a pillowcase as a mask and a sheet as a costume he fought his way out of the Asylum which was revealed to in fact be an illusion. Located in a reality outside of time and space known as the Othervoid he’d been held prisoner there but Marc managed to escape.
His personalities then jumped through several realities that all kinda played with our expectations. Steven Grant was a tv show producer that thought he was working on a series called Moon Knight. This show also featured Midnight Man on it and it would switch completely when he became Jake. Jake was a cab driver who was suspected of murder and there was also the Moon Knight personality.
This was a sci-fi story featuring an astronaut called Moon Knight and we watched as he jumped between all of these whilst getting to the bottom of who was behind it all. In the end, it was revealed that Khonshu was the one who had orchestrated the entire thing and he’d done this so that he could fracture Marc’s mind and take over his body. We discovered that he’d been watching him since he was a kid and Marc’s personalities all came together to crush his skull once and for all.
Now I think the series will differ from this quite a lot as Khonshu is trapped in stone whilst all this is going on and we have Taweret popping up at the end. She never appeared in any of the issues and the book was very much just about escaping the other void. In the series, I think we’ll have Marc get out of it but he then has to stop Harrow so I can’t see us finding out that Khonshu Khonstructed all of this.
Thanks, I’m here all week.
Instead, next time I think we’ll likely follow Marc as he delves into his psyche and here we’ll encounter flashbacks to when he got his powers and we’ll also finally meet his parents. We know both have been cast so yeah that’s where I can see things going.
Khonshu did say to Steven.
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So yeah I can see that being a task that Marc has to do in order to get his suit back. The reason he doesn’t wear it throughout this episode at any point is that it’s very much linked to Khonshu and if he’s not there then Marc can’t become Moon Knight.
Rolling Back the Sky
Now the entry picks up immediately after the events of last week which saw Steven and Khonshu rolling back the night sky to the day that Ammit was imprisoned. The Avatars of the Gods have trapped him and he’s placed amongst 9 others. This is in the great Pyramid Of Gisa which we were told had nothing inside of it in the first episode.
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However, this was wrong and it might have even belonged to an Avatar of Ammit who we learned in the comics used a Pharoah at one point. There are ten gods who are trapped in stone with potentially Taweret being one of them as her Avatar didn’t appear at the meeting last week. There has been a lot of back and forth about how many of the Gods there are with Marc originally saying there were 9 but that the museum posters got it wrong and that they lost two.
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This potentially is Ammit and Khonshu who we know are outcasts however the other 9 being locked up here either means one of two things. The first one is that there are more Gods we didn’t know about or that the Avatars have locked up all their Gods. Kinda leaning more towards the former but let me know below if you think something different cos yeah, one of those things I’m really not sure about.
Cut to the title sequence which now has dramatic music over the top of it.
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This is completely different to the pop songs and fanfare that we’ve had on the other episodes. I really love how the series is somewhat something you can divide up into three parts due to its six-episode length. The first two episodes were set in London, three and four are set in Egypt and it looks like five and six might be set in the other void or Marc’s mind.
They also carry certain aesthetics to them too with the first two entries being a lot like Memento and Fight Club, three and four are like Indiana Jone and The Mummy and five and six…pfft. Who knows.
Now we see a scarab in the desert climbing up a dune. Scarabs are very important as there was of course the golden scarab and In episode 3 we learned that Layla’s father nicknamed her his little scarab.
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We discover more about him in this episode and learn that he used to wear a cloth that covered his face which had them all over it, showing how much he loved his daughter and her nickname.
Layla Saves The Day
Now it’s not too long before Harrow’s men arrive at the scene and with Marc being out of it she has to take them down. Get a lot of action scenes with her in this episode and it’s nice that she gets some character development too. One of the best parts of the Mummy was Evie played by Rachel Weisz and I get a lot of vibes from her here in the Layla character.
Throughout the episode, she’s constantly being resourceful and there are more flares in it than a seventy’s disco.
Not only does she throw it on the bullets to blow up the truck but she later drops it against the undead Mummy in Alexander’s Tomb.
Honestly, when I was watching this episode I didn’t really make that many notes for stuff for about the first half-hour because it was all pretty straightforward. There are not that many easter eggs but we do continue the Marc/Steven costume design of having him wearing something all white with a hood.
This of course is riffing on the Moon Knight costume and it is a really nice touch. We also get a great exchange with Steven and Marc in the jeep with Layla in which the former refuses to hand over the body. We learn that Marc very much abandoned her and actually gets a lot of the backstory for this filled in throughout the entry.
Now we learn that Layla’s father was amongst the dead archaeologists that were brought up in Episode 2 by Bobbi and Billy. They were taken out by a mercenary who we learn was a partner of Marc. This pulls directly from the comics and in the source material Marc flew out to a dig site that had unearthed Khonshus temple with his partner Raoul Bushman. Upon arriving at the dig, Bushman realised how rich he could get by selling the buried treasure and he killed all the archaeologists there. Marc tried to stop him and Bushman beat the crap out of him before he fled with the gold.
Marc was at death’s door but he was found by the locals there that worshipped Khonshu. They took him before the shrine of the God and the pair made a deal together. In exchange for healing him and bringing him back from the brink, Marc would become Khonshu’s avatar and the rest is history. Now we do get a shot in the new tv spots that looks like this moment in which Marc is resurrected and given the suit. There’s also the possibility that we will see Bushman at some point and though a Season 2 of the show hasn’t been announced I can imagine him showing up in a post-credits scene or something.
Bushman
Bushman is a major Moon Knight villain and there are heavy hints towards him throughout this entry. He of course murdered Layla’s father so it makes sense that the next big arc would feature him. Now interestingly in the comics, Layla or rather Marlene, was at the dig site when her dad was killed. However, they completely removed that plot element here and I think it’s because it adds some dramatic tension with Marc keeping a secret from Layla about the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.
Now as they move through the caverns they come across me and also see a dig site led by Harrow. It’s completely abandoned and we get another great exchange with Marc and Steven in the reflection of a table. There’s kinda some debate over whether Steven has Marc’s abilities too and some nice sexual tension between Steven and Laya. Does it count as cheating?
I dunno but Stevie boy sticks to some bro code and tells Layla that Marc is trying to keep her safe because Khonshu threatened to take her as his avatar.
Eventually, the pair kiss and Marc takes over to punch Steven in the face which Will Smith should’ve done for laughing at that GI Jane joke.
Have we completely milked that topic until the point it’s not even funny anymore, yup, and that’s why my views and likes have been down this month.
Yaaaaay Heavy Spoilers fell off.
As they make their way through the tombs we get some classic exploration scenes that feel like they were ripped out of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider and Uncharted. They find bullets on the ground which tease the zombies later on.
Upon walking around it enough times, Steven realises that the entire structure is based on the eye of Horus.
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The eye of Horus is something that pops up in a lot of Egyptian mythology and typically it represents well-being, healing, and protection.
It was believed that Horus and Set fought each other to become the rulers of the God after Osiris perished. Set apparently gouged out Horus’ eye and the latter attempted to use it to bring his dad Osiris back from the dead.
Tracing the tongue on the eye they make their way to the avatar who we learn is Alexander The Great.
Alexander the great is viewed as one of the greatest military minds in history and he ended up building an empire that spanned from Macedonia to Egypt and from Greece to India. There are quotes about him saying that when he saw the breadth of his kingdom that he wept because there was nowhere else left to conquer and him being an avatar makes a lot of sense. He’d pretty much be invincible and I love when they tie in comic book lore with real history.
We also find how Ammit is bound
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This could tie in with how they free Khonshu and just in the same way that they unleash Ammit, they might do the same.
Zombie Pharoah
Now eventually their journey is interrupted by one of the Pharoah’s servants carrying out mummification on one of Harrow’s men. Difficult to make out who this is but it could be Fitzgerald though yeah, as I said, difficult to really tell and I don’t want anyone mentioning it in the comments, otherwise I’m f**king kicking off.
Now the servants are creepy as hell and they have some terrifying clicks that they use to see what’s going on in their environment. This is known as echolocation and it’s seen in Bats who rely on sound to make their way in the dark. It was also used by the clickers in the Last Of Us and I’m getting a lot of vibes of that here as Layla ducks and hides whilst it clicks above her head.
Blind they rely on noise to track their prey and there are lots of horror vibes as it stalks Layla through the area.
Now, this somewhat pulls from the Jeff Lemire run and after Marc escaped the asylum he ended up being chased by Mummys in the next part of the other void.
After she jabs a flare in the head of it she sends it flying over the edge and it’s a great scene laced with lots of horror imagery.
Inside the Tomb, Marc finds several artefacts.
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Macedonian of course is our first clue it’s alexander the great and elsewhere Layla and Harrow come face to face.
Harrow talks about her father and he brings up his nickname for her.
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Turns out he theorised that Egyptian Gods lived amongst them and Harrow learned of Marc’s past through the scales showing him elements of his past in episode 1.
Steven reaches into Alexander’s throat as he was known as the voice and it all comes to a head when Layla reunites with him. Marc finally takes control after she confronts him over her father’s death and as we explained before, going off the comics, he’s telling the truth about what happened with him.
Turns out he went to Layla to tell her but they just ended up banging instead, nice moves.
Marc Gets Shot
Anyway Harrows men arrive and Marc grabs the Pharaoh’s Axe which looks very similar to the one that he used as a grappling hook in the comics.
He puts up a good fight but Harrow shoots him and without the armour, he seemingly dies.
Now it’s at this point that things get wilder than a Downing Street Party as he descends into another realm potentially located in his own mind or the other void. Firstly though we get the film Tomb Buster starring Steven Grant, a suave swashbuckling explorer who raids a tomb. The Tomb Buster logo is very similar to Indiana Jones and the name is of course playing on Tomb Raider.
Now there are lots of things going on at this moment. Firstly this is a film in which Steven Grant is a character. The Jeff Lemire Run had Steven as an actor and everything from his perspective played out like a TV show rather than what was really happening.
Marc Spector also produced a series on his life in the 2011 Moon Knight run which this could be riffing on.
Beyond that though, what we see might have been real and Marc could have grown up watching this as a kid. When his DID began he may have ended up inventing Steven as a persona based on this which would tie into his obsessions with archaeology. They also have a cockney accent.
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In addition to this last week had what looked like a green screen in it. I actually got sent the four episodes early and when I watched that I thought it was just an unfinished VFX but now knowing what we know I think it works really well to add to the theory that that might have been a tv set.
Also yeah before you start, every time I say I got the episodes early someone kicks off saying that I’m just lying about my theories but I tell you what punk, I watched these episodes one by one week by week after they were released so I could do theories on them. Disney yeah, Micky that lad, he knows what I’ve watched and accessed and do you not think he’d be sending the goons around if I was breaking embargo and just throwing spoilers out willy nilly. Shut the f**k up.
We’re yet to find out what triggered Marc’s DID but in the comics, his mother died when he was very young and I believe that next week we’ll watch this play out as we explore his psyche more.
From here we pull out to see Crawley calling Bingo numbers and in the comics, he too joined Marc in the asylum.
Nice to see him out of his living statue costume and he’s way more in line with what we typically see in the source material.
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B-22
Now Crawley calls out the number B-22 which we’ve spent the last day scrambling behind the scenes trying to find a meaning for. Marvel posted this on their Twitter as well so it does seem like it has some significance though we can’t figure out exactly what it is. However, we have our theories and potentially it’s linked to Moon knight Volume 1 22 which had a really famous cover of all the personalities in mirrors. This mirror has been somewhat referenced in the series so far and it also had a major appearance by Jake Lockley.
Now I also spoke to Ryan Arey, yes, we are friends behind the scenes and he said he thinks that it has meaning because the bingo card itself doesn’t have any letters or the number 22 on it. Therefore it could be showing that the entire situation is fake because the number being called out doesn’t exist. I’m sure one of you guys knows the answer though so if you’ve figured it out then drop it below.
Now beyond this, we have a man playing with a Rubix cube and Marc also did this in Episode 1.
The orderlies are Bobby and Billy much like in the comics and Donna sits there with a cuddly scarab from the Gift Shop that was too seen in the first entry. There’s also a woman that draws a picture of a bird with Khonshus head and though I thought that this might be the passport maker from Episode 3, I don’t think it is.
Lastly, we cut to Marc who is sitting beside a Goldfish and there are also some photos of the images from his postcards on the whiteboard.
Layla comes forward and says that she won Bingo and after Marc fails to get a response from the mirror he falls out of his wheelchair, dropping a moon knight figure that looks like a handmade Legends one that you’ll probably be getting for Christmas cos everyone is about to be broke as f**k.
Yaaaay the 20s have been great.
Now it’s theory time, theory time, theory time,
So in these scenes, we might get the potential confirmation that Layla will end up becoming the Scarlett scarab.
In the comics, he was called Abdul Faoul and Layla’s full name is Layla Abdallah El-Faouly which might be a nod to that.
Layla’s nickname was of course little scarab and if you look at her in these scenes she also has a fimble on her little finger. This has a red scarab on it so yeah…Scarlett scarab confirmed and that’s the end of theory time, theory time, theory time.
Marc is also strapped to the chair like how he’s strapped to the bed in the comics and he’s taken before Harrow. As we mentioned in the comics it was Dr Emmet was Ammit but with Harrow being his avatar it makes sense that they’d change it up.
Now he also drops a quote by Carl Yung.
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This very much summarises what Marc himself is going through as he’s descended into whatever this is. There are also images of Germany, Harrow’s table is the one HR used in Episode 2, there are his sandals which we catch in the mirror.
The walls are white almost like the texture of Moon Knight’s costume and he also brings up Steven.
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Finally, Marc breaks and remembers what really happened.
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Marc, Steven and Jake?
Marc escapes the rooms and he runs through the white hallways which begin to twist and alter around him almost like the dreams in Inception when someone realises that they’re in one.
He runs into a room and finds Steven. Now the fact that they are together shows us that this is very much in Marc’s mind and the pair will likely come together.
Beyond this, we also get a hint at Jake Lockley as there’s another sarcophagus that they don’t open.
In case you’re unaware, in the comics, Marc actually has three personalities and these are himself, Steven and Jake.
So far Jake has been absent from the show but there have been several clues about him.
Now firstly I don’t think that Marc would’ve organised a date with another woman if he was still married to Layla. Marc also clearly tried to buy a one finned goldfish so that Steven wouldn’t be suspicious the next day. He’s clearly trying to hide that he exists whereas Jake is just going about organising dates at steakhouses and so on.
There was also the bit in episode 3 where someone has been going on a killing spree and neither Marc nor Steven admit to doing it. Beyond this, there was the accent change up too potentially showing Jake was there.
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Huge shoutout to Youtube user Random character for also saying that they think Jake is the only one who can take over the body without permission. I absolutely love that theory and it makes sense with the blackout from episode 3.
Now the episode ends with them coming across the goddess of fertility Taweret who was given a nod to in episode 1 when Donna asked Steven to hand the hippo plushies to him.
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It’s a great way to end the episode and it just leaves everyone like wtf.
So going forward I think that she will perhaps make them her avatar so that they can escape and they might even team up with Jake. I do feel like the next episode will answer a lot of questions about Marc’s past and it’ll sort of explain his origin story and we might even get a hint at Bushman.
We could also have the blanks filled in such as what happened in the cupcake scene and the missing day that Steven had.
Lots of things that they can do with it, and I feel like the show is getting better and better every single week. There have not really been any low points and I think that each entry improves on the last. I actually read a Twitter thread the other week that went through what makes you a good reviewer and they said that you have to include the negatives too but I must be absolutely crap because I don’t really have any criticisms. The show is easily my favourite MCU one so far and though each one of them has had its strong points I feel that this has been consistently great throughout.
All in all another banger of an episode and I’d, of course, love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me know you punk.
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