Moon Knight Episode 5 just dropped and there’s a tonne of easter eggs, hidden details and things you missed in it that we’re gonna be breaking down in this spoiler-filled recap.
It’s somewhat of a trip down memory lane that fills in some of the blanks about the character, and with us talking about what happens in the comics you should hopefully start to get more of an appreciation for what’s going on in the show.
Last week saw Marc waking up in a psychiatric hospital that was filled with things from throughout the season. After coming across Steven in a sarcophagus we got a hint that there was Jake Lockley Lockley-ed up in one and we met the goddess Taweret. I love the subtle little detail as they screamed of Steven being terrified but if you look at his hand he’s actually trying to wave back.
Now her appearance was first hinted at all the way back in episode 1 when Donna brought her up to Steven.
Asylum – What Does it Mean Here?
This episode is titled Asylum and this has many meanings. Not only does it typically pertain to a hospital, like the one we saw last week, but it’s also a word used to describe when someone is put under protection.
We begin with a flashback to Marc screaming and also his mother saying that it’s all his fault. There is a slight waterfall effect to this which could be linking back to the HR desk from episode 2.
This is later revealed to be the apparent death of Marc’s brother but we’ll talk later on about how this character could return.
From here we seemingly pick up where we left off but Harrow pulls Marc back into the room by saying that it’s all a fantasy and that he has difficulty grasping what’s happening with reality. It’s such a mind f**k and I love the way that the show constantly keeps tricking us as to what’s going on.
This is all located in Putnam which also pulls from the comics.
Harrow of course denies shooting Marc and it is possible that the reason he shot him two times was to kill both Marc and Steven. He says that he refuses to look within which this episode is very much about.
Now the ending of four and this opening have slight nods to movies like Shutter Island and 12 Monkeys.
The latter featured Bruce Willis as a time traveller who went back to the 90s to stop a killer virus from being released that meant everyone would have to sit in the house all day watching Tiger King. However, he went back too early and after arriving in the early part of the decade he was arrested and put into an insane asylum. It was difficult to tell for about the first hour of the film whether he was really a time traveller or just imagining the whole thing which I think this episode could definitely also be doing.
Is the Asylum Real?
Now earlier in the week I made a video discussing how there were several clues in the season that showed he’d been in the asylum the entire time. This seemingly gets debunked in this entry and we learn that last week was as many suspected, just his mind trying to piece things together. There are mentions of this being carried out when people are trying to organise their thoughts and thus they create a Khon-struct for the entire thing.
Harrow wants Steven to break down the walls between Marc and Steven and he acts as his psychiatrist, actually trying to help him. I love the way that it kinda leaves things in the air a bit and you could genuinely look at things like they are all in his mind.
Marc even says at one point that they’re insane.
Upon being injected he returns to the corridor with Steven and Tawret which is pretty damning. I love it when a show does something like this and just in the same way that we can say this is all playing out, you could argue that it’s just a fantasy Marc is using to deal with his Psychosis.
Now throughout the season, Harrow has acted as somewhat of a psychiatrist to not only Marc but also Layla.
Huge shoutouts to David Lee who pointed out how when Steven met Harrow that it was basically when happens when a patient is introduced to a new care facility.
He was handcuffed by the orderlies, taken in and then let go when he met the doctor who then slowly walked him through the compound, appearing as a friend. People were sitting on meditation pillows, several watching calming nature videos and Harrow also took Steven to get some food from a line that everyone was eating from. This is done to show that the food is safe to eat and when Layla arrived things got even crazier. We now know Harrow’s office was also the room that Steven went up to in episode 2 and it features the same columns and recesses that that place does. Beyond that, there’s also the Ennead who work much in the same way that a council at a hospital does too. Whenever a patient accuses a doctor of abuse or neglect they’re called before a group of doctors much like what we saw in Episode 3. Now 9 times out of 10 the doctor is believed over the patient who tends to bring up their mental illness to downplay what’s going on.
So going off this conversation you can kinda see that Marc might be imagining the entire thing, especially with the jumping back and forth…or…I could just be sitting in my own hospital right now, refusing to let go of the fan theories…my beautiful…beautiful fan theories.
Meeting Taweret
Anyway, the injection sets him off again and we meet the goddess Taweret who says they’re dead. As Shakira said…hippos…don’t lie….dear me that’s a bad one. She also informs them they’re in Duat, the underworld in Egyptian Mythology. There is also the mention of the Ancestral plane from Black Panther which she calls gorgeous. She very much repeats notings of what Harrow said and informs them that it’s too difficult for the human mind to perceive so things are put in place to resemble a familiar environment.
Going down the rabbit hole that this is all real, there have been several things in the series that popped up in the hospital.
I totally forgot to mention that Donna said this in episode 1. “If you don’t stop nattering at me, I swear I’ll shove you in a sarcophagus.” Steven, of course. was later found in a sarcophagus so ey, it’s all Khonnected ey.
What Does Taweret Represent?
Now Tawret is the goddess of fertility and childbirth. She’s also married to the God of Luck and has seen many children and women. Interestingly she was also charged with guiding the souls of people that had died which kinda ties into what’s going on here.
Typically people used to believe that when one died that their heart would be weighed in the afterlife. If they were bad, then they get eaten by the crocodile called Ammit. And this also ties in with why Tawret has the scales. The Egyptians believed that death was not the end. And then it was simply a transition into another part of an eternal journey that field the reeds was very much the idealized version of someone’s life.
That was a paradise they gain access to after passing through the hall of truth.
This episode is all about balancing the scales, but unfortunately, by the end, that means that Steven has to die.
Granted grand dead. And I must admit I had some tears in my eyes at this moment. I’ve really grown fond of the guy of the last 5 weeks And I hope this isn’t the end.
What’s Next?
Now it does sort of follow similar beats to the end of Loki. In episode five, the titular character was also seemingly killed, though, we don’t get a post-credit scene. I do think Steven will be back as there’s not really a way for a personality to die in someone’s mind, typically in did all this end up either emerging or going, which I can kind of see happening here.
This, however, also leaves the door open for Jake Lockley, who gets hinted at, in the entry. Again, we’ve had several clues to him throughout the season and with him being more of a killer than Marc and Steven, the former may turn to him to help. Now, Jake was never really an assassin in the comics, but Steven was never really a bumbling Cockney, either so much in the same way that they’ve changed Steven out.
They could change Jacob too and make him a Hitman of something. That’s going to be very valuable. Marc is probably going to get a welcome by the country. Hula seems to be going to free to get help in the comics. He’s brought Marc back to life at several points, but we’ll talk about that later in the video.
Clues in the Clothes
I forgot to point out last week but notice how Marc is wearing white whereas Steven is wearing dark colours. The pair are somewhat opposites to each other which is reflected in this bit of costume design. The show has done a really good job of tying in the clothes with the characters and their personalities and the series has been laced with Marc/Steven wearing white hoodies at several points.
Steven also wore this top in episode 1 and typically darkness, of course, represents death, whereas white represents light, potentially foreshadowing the outcome of this entry…or potentially it’s a reaaaach.
Journey to the Field of Reeds
After trying to rationalise the situation Marc makes it even worse by opening the doorway to reveal where they really are.
This is a giant boat riding through the dunes surrounded by statues. The ancient Egyptians did believe that when they died that they’d be ferried across the River Styx by Charron so this is sort of riffing on that.
Now, this boat of course appeared in Steven’s fish tank all the way back in the first episode. It adds a really trippy aesthetic to the whole thing and it also pulls from the comics. Moon Knight has never actually ridden one to the best of my knowledge however it did show up in the Heroic Age Prince of Power with Loki and Thor. The pair ended up climbing aboard it to get to a sarcophagus which might have inspired the show.
Comic Book Inspo
This whole episode is based massively on the Jeff Lemire run which seemingly takes place in an asylum before it’s revealed to be the Othervoid. It’s a book we’ve milked more than Squid Game videos but if this is your first time watching one of our breakdowns then I think we kinda have to go over it.
Huge shoutout to our editor Matt who got all of the bingo numbers from last week and found a pretty cool easter egg with them. Crawley called out all the numbers in the background of the scene and if you added these up it took you to 174. The Marvel Legacy Numbering started at #188 and if we took a step back to what would be issue 174 we ended up with Lemire Issue 1 aka the asylum story.
The first part of the book deals with Marc in Mercy Hospital for the mentally ill which he’s apparently been in there since he was 12. Overseen by Dr Emmett she says that he’s been there since he was 12 and that the entire Moon Knight character is all a fantasy. This is backed up by the characters that join him there such as Crawley and Marlene.
Marlene was the love interest for Marc in the comics and we had it confirmed earlier in the week by Mohamed Diab that she was originally in the script for the show. However, he pushed for her to be changed to an Egyptian character and after some changes to the backstory, Layla was born.
Now Marc dreamed he was dying and he had a vision of Khonshu who told him that this was all an illusion in a vessel called the Othervoid that existed outside of time and space. It was revealed that Emmit was actually Ammit and her orderlies Bobby and Billy were Jackals.
Marc ended up dressing in bed sheets and pillow cases and along with the other people from his life he escaped into the basement of the hospital. Down here he ran into Mummies and eventually after he escaped this his personalities split and they all kinda went off into their own adventure.
Steven was a movie producer who was working on a set for a production of Moon Knight man which featured both him and Midnight Man. Jake Lockley was a cabbie who was suspected of murder, there was also a space pilot called Moon Knight and we jumped from scenario to scenario throughout the book seeing things from their perspective as we unravelled the mystery.
Now though Ammit took the blame for it, in the end, it was revealed that it was actually Khonshu who created the entire scenario because he wanted to break Marc’s mind so that he could take over his body. We jumped into his past and learned more about his childhood, namely how he created his imaginary friend Steven who helped him through things when they got tough.
This is something that sort of happens in this episode but on top of it the comics revealed that Khonshu had actually been there his entire life and that he wasn’t just someone who’d popped up when Marc made the deal with him.
In the issue in which we spent a lot of time with Marc’s father, Khonshu actually said that he was his real dad and we’re gonna, gonna have to get on the Maury show for that. Should’ve used a Khon-dom…ey, Khonshu-dom ey.
Kids are watching so we’ll clean it up.
Now he’d Khonstructed everything around him, ey, clean as a plot to grab his body and over the years he’d slowly chipped away at his mind to take over him.
The book ended with all the personalities coming together and joining as one they killed Khonshu.
Now I don’t think this will happen in the show as Khonshu seems more like he’s trying to stop Ammit but it is an important twist in the comics to bear in mind.
Now along with Marc’s childhood, the book also featured sections about his transformation into Moon Knight which we’ll get into in just a bit.
The Scales Will Decide
Taweret pulls their hearts out which appear almost like marble. This is what a heart looks like with no blood in it. I don’t know whether that’s just because they couldn’t show bloody hearts, or if it’s a clue to them being dead, or it not being real, but it’s worth noting. They end up putting the sales in a chaotic rocking back and forth much like what happened with Harrow’s tattoo in episode 1.
Now the scales themselves didn’t feature in the Jeff Lemire run but there was a similar choice made to what he does at the end. Marc had to give up Crawley who was taken by Anubis into the Othervoid and to get him back, he had to rescue the God’s wife who had been locked down there.
Normally Taweret didn’t really have anything to do with this but they’ve kinda combined her being a guide with also the judge. It could also lead to the Gods that we saw all trapped at the start of episode 4 and potentially she’s having to do both jobs because they’re imprisoned.
A version of this that’s more in line with how it appeared in mythology also showed up in the comics, namely the book Helstrom: Son Of Satan. This appeared more like what we typically see in the legends with Anubis being the one who judged and there was Ammit ready to eat your heart out if your soul was heavier than a feather. Anubis does however appear on the scale itself but the character is completely missing from the entry.
Dealing with the Past
Taweret says that they have to show each other the truth before they reach the field of reeds.
Now episode 1 mentioned this when the girl talked about him getting rejected from the field of reeds, potentially setting this up. Steven questioned whether he was dead and yeah, really nice foreshadowing.
They want to break out and save Layla but they must confront their past first and the trauma that got them there. We get flashes of the bathroom fight, the night sky being turned back and also another QR code.
If you’ve been keeping up with the series then you’ll know that you get a free comic if you scan these and grabbing this one takes you to Moon Knight Issue 1 from 1980.
Beside this door, we see a version of the character standing drinking with a taxi in the background. I did think this might be Jake but it’s Marc, who can’t bear the weight of his soul. Later it’s revealed this is his mother’s Shiva which is the period of mourning after a funeral. I think it’s sort of the equivalent to a wake but I’ll be honest I’m not fully versed up on this stuff and I don’t wanna seem disrespectful so if it’s got a different name please leave the correction in the comments below.
They end up entering a cafe filled with dead bodies and these are revealed to be Marc’s victims. There were slight hints to the bodies being in this hospital…if it is a hospital back in episode 2 in Harrow’s office. Khonshu took out these people for being predators, murderers and people who didn’t hit the thumbs up button and it clearly weighs on Marc’s soul. However, after confronting them the scales start to balance out a bit.
Lovely little detail here as well as one of the corpses has a cap that says Odin…who is also dead. Yaaaay.
The peace is broken though when a mysterious child shows up who leads Steven into Marc’s past.
Marc’s Family
Now at this point, we catch his mother running the barbecue and we also meet his little brother Ro-Ro. This is clearly Randall Spector who you’ll be well aware of if you’re familiar with the comics.
Like his brother, he joined the CIA and became a cold-blooded assassin. Whereas Marc became Moon Knight, Randall ended up becoming the villain Hatchet Man before he turned into Shadow Night. He’s a terrifying character and there is potential that he shows up down the line as a villain in the future even with the death scene. I think it would be a big twist to have him come back and with it being the thing that started to fracture Marc’s mind, very cool twist.
Now we also catch him drawing a goldfish with one fin which Steven of course kept as a pet.
Marc also says the phrase Laters Gators to say goodbye which Steven of course said in episode 1.
Now we did theorise that Steven’s mother was dead and we get it confirmed in this entry. Though Layla brought her up in episode 2, it’s clear Marc lied about it to seem somewhat normal. The postcards were also likely from him and we did see them actually up at Steven’s work at one point. It’s something we theorised a while back and ey, though we’ve had some misses, nice to get one right!
Steven being nice to her could be Marc trying to repair the guilt that he felt over causing his brother’s death which she blames him for.
Together the boys play as Dr Grant and Rosser, the characters we met in last week’s Tomb Buster. Steven also steps on the skeleton of a hummingbird which has a similar head to Khonshu. This is of course what one of the patients drew last week and as I’ve been saying – it’s all connected.
At this point, we see the waterfall and his brother sadly dies after the cave they’re in flooded. Elsewhere Marc visits the memory of his brother’s wake which leans heavily into his Jewish heritage.
In the comics, it was his father’s but I do appreciate the change-up which kinda leads to his relationship with his mother being destroyed.
Really nice getting this in the episode as they had kinda shied away from it throughout most of the series though we did see a Star of David necklace on the character at the end of episode 2. We can see this chain around Steven’s neck in this episode and it’s such an important aspect of the character that I’m glad they acknowledged it.
It’s clear that Marc’s mother, Wendy, completely shut down emotionally after the death of his brother and she avoided most of his birthdays. She sank into a deep depression and started drinking heavily which leads to why Marc formed his DID. This is something that is created from childhood trauma and it’s really heartbreaking watching all these scenes.
Marc ends up leaving and we cut to the desert to see one of the darkest parts of his life.
Marc in the Comics
Now in the comics, Marc was part of the marines but after he was kicked out he ended up becoming a mercenary. Marc partnered up with another merc called Raoul Bushman who had a death’s head tattooed over his face to terrify those he was going into battle with.
Bushman was a complete psychopath and the two went together to a dig site that had unearthed a temple for the Moon God Khonshu. Realising he could get rich he ended up killing all the archaeologists there, just leaving behind the daughter of the head one Marlene.
Marc tried to stop this but Bushman ended up beating him so badly that he was left in Hippo-critical condition because Tawret wasn’t there. Ey Hippocritical.
S**t joke.
Anyway, Marlene and the locals in the area that worshipped the God took Marc before the Shrine and after he made a deal with Khonshu to become his avatar on Earth he ended up transforming into Moon Knight. Now whereas here we see Marc actually transform into the character like how he has in the show, in the comics he just grabbed the cloak from the statue and put it around him. Moon Knight started off as a pretty straightforward character that was basically just Batman but over the years they’ve added in more of the supernatural stuff. Khonshu himself has also gone through several redesigns as well and initially, he just started off as a normal statue-like what we see here which kinda evolved into the bird’s head. Egyptian Gods typically tend to have animal traits to them so I can kinda see why they decided to change things up.
Moon Knight went and got revenge on Bushman and the pair have had many battles over the years. Marc even cut his face off at one point which brought a whole new meaning to the skull tattoo that he had.
Now Bushman gets teased in this entry and he may appear fully at some point in an upcoming show or film. Every time I bring up Oscar Isaac returning someone in the comments points out that he’s said this is a one-and-done but meh, still lots of stories to tell and I doubt he’d turn it down if Mickey showed up to the house with 1 million dollars, cash…cool hard cash.
Layla’s Father
Now amongst this area, we catch Layla’s father who is wearing a scarlet scarf much like what harrow said he had on in Episode 4. We can also see the Scarab markings on it and this clearly weighs heavily on Marc’s soul.
Now they may be setting Layla up to become the Scarlett Scarab. Throughout the series, she’s been referred to as one at several points due to the nickname her dad gave her as a child.
Beyond this though her full name is Layla Abdullah El-Faouly and the Scarlett Scarab in the comics is called Abdul Faoul. In the hospital, she also has a thimble on her finger which when we zoom in on has a little scarlet scarab on it. In the comics, he fought against Captain America and co and Layla might even end up taking up the mantle come to the end of the show.
Now together they walk towards the temple of Khonshu which is ripped right out of the comics. This is even down to the way it’s lit but they change the moon up from a full one to a crescent one so it’s more in line with Moon Knights symbol.
Whereas Marc was carried before the shrine, where he’s clearly surviving gunshot wounds from his battle with Bushman. Before he ends his life Khonshu calls out to him and the pair makes a deal. Marc very much sells his soul and this is somewhat a deal with the devil. The bird from before could tease that he’s been with him since a kid, and who knows, his control of the elements could’ve meant that he killed his brother.
Might be a big reveal next week and that’s the shortest ever theory time.
Judgment Time
Now they travel back to the boat and we see purple glows raining down. This pulls from the dark dimension and it signals that Harrow is freeing Ammit who is condemning souls en masse.
Taweret starts to steer towards the gate of Osiris and the pair try desperately to balance the scales.
Marc gets heated and refuses to go back which is when he cuts back to Harrow’s office in another complete mind f**k. He says they can’t involuntarily sedate patients but ey, but I seent it.
With his Ned Flanders moustache, he ponderdidly onders whether Marc created Steven to hide from all of the horrors he’d committed or if Steven created Marc to punish the world for their mother’s actions.
After looking at his reflection in a glass of water we cut to the two Tomb Buster figures. They lean heavily into the comics as well and Marc’s room is extremely similar to how it is in that. You can also catch the framed image of the Goldfish and we learn that his Mother very much is perceived as having another personality by Marc.
He says she’s not his mother and she brutally beats and abuses him which is absolutely heartbreaking.
He shifts into Steven’s body in front of the mirror to hide from his mother and we see not only the scales but also a poster for Tomb Buster. In the comics, this was an Indiana Jones one in his room but they clearly changed it up to show why he adopted the Steven Grant persona.
Marc reveals the truth and he brings up his mother’s shiva which is the week-long mourning period in Judaism.
At this point, Steven shifts to the office and what a f**king mind f**k.
I don’t think anyone can 100% confirm what’s real and what’s not, which I really love. Harrow states that after his mother passed that they checked into the hospital and Harrow calls Dylan which is the name of the girl that Steven organised a date with in Episode 1.
She gets his mother’s number but before they even speak he accepts his mother’s death and we also cut to her shiva. We learn that this is when their lives started bleeding together and Steven tells him it wasn’t his fault, which kinda helps the character’s soul.
They reach the gates but they’re closed and with the scales being unbalanced they’re unable to open up. Thus the dead start to climb aboard and attack them which is when Steven throws himself at one and he’s sent overboard.
Steven dies in the dunes which balance the scales and Marc is taken to the field of reeds. Over the top of this, we hear the song Mas Alla Del Sol which translates to somewhere over the sun. Here Marc remains which closes out the episode.
Predictions for the Next Episode
Now as for next week I think that things are kind gonna go a bit by the numbers cos ey, it’s a Disney Plus show and outside of Loki they’ve all kinda wrapped things up in a pretty standard way. From the teasers we have shots of Moon Knight and Marc jumping towards one another whilst the moon is full which sort of brings things full circle from how it was in the jackal chase.
I think that Marc will meet another avatar here and after he escapes he’ll make it back to the surface.
Like I said earlier I do think that Steven will be back in some form or another and they might even get Jake involved too as he’s been teased so heavily. They kinda need the trifecta to pull it off and Layla is gonna be instrumental in getting Khonshu and then resurrecting Marc. He’s done this so many times in the comics before and due to the suit’s regenerative qualities, it could be what brings him back from the brink after the God is freed. Huge shoutouts to MCUGeekThe on Twitter for going back and forth with me over these theories and in the end I can see him defeating Harrow, embracing all the personas in his life and getting the girl.
However, I think that they might do something to kinda tease that this is all still in his head and potentially they might end on either the B-22 bingo ball or something like the Moon Knight figure. I really think they’ll go ambiguous with it so we can argue forever until we find something to do with our meaningless lives but as we mentioned earlier there are a lot of clues that this whole thing is in Marc’s head. I kinda hope they end like that just to keep us talking about the show but there’s also the possibility that they tease Midnight Suns. Again Isaac hasn’t confirmed that he’s coming back but when you have Dane Whitman and Blade in one part of London at a museum, it makes sense to get the other character in the city involved with them. In case you don’t know they’re basically a team that fights supernatural beings in the Marvel Universe and we could also get characters like Ghostrider involved with them.
Lots of things to look forward to and the series just feels like it’s building up really well and kinda capitalising on a lot of comics and interesting aspects of Moon Knight’s history to tell us a rich story.
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