Moon Knight plays to its strengths in “Asylum”

The penultimate episode of Moon Knight is here! After waking up in a mental institution and coming face-to-face with the hippo-headed goddess Taweret (Antonia Salib), Marc and Steven (Oscar Isaac) are forced to go on a journey of self-discovery that unearths the traumas of their collective past. There’s a lot to unpack here, so we’re going to get right into it.

As always, there will be SPOILERS for this week’s episode of Moon Knight ahead.

Moon Knight episode 5 review

We’re nearly at the end of the Moon Knight limited series, which means that we’re finally getting answers to some of the show’s bigger questions, like the origin of Marc Spector’s dissociative identity disorder and the details on how he entered into Khonshu’s service. After last week’s somewhat rocky episode, “Asylum” had a lot of ground to make-up, and thankfully it does.

This was the most self-contained episode of Moon Knight yet, with the entire episode focusing on Marc and Steven’s journey through the Duat, reliving various memories in order to help balance their scales and set their soul at peace so that they can ascend to the Field of Reeds. And despite the fact that the overall plot of the show didn’t move forward much, that was a really excellent choice. So far, the two elements of Moon Knight that have been consistently strong are Oscar Isaac’s multilayered performance and the depiction of Egyptian mythology. This episode drills down on those aspects and is the better for it.

It also helps that the writing was much stronger this week. Aside from one brief moment of wondering where exactly young Marc and his family lived (they were seemingly in Chicago but had a large, floodable cave within walking distance of their house?), “Asylum” was largely free of the small inconsistencies that plagued “The Tomb.” It made for a much more immersive episode.

Unearthing the past

We’re back to the Marvel theme music this week, as if to remind us that the series is still a part of the MCU. And indeed, despite the fact that Moon Knight has had basically no ties to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, this episode did have a small nod to the greater franchise when Taweret talked about the beauty of the Ancestral Plane, which is the afterlife that T’challa visits in Black Panther. The Wakandans worship Bast, who is part of the Egyptian pantheon, so that was a nice touch.

Beyond that, “Asylum” is all about Marc and Steven delving into their past. As they ride across the endless sands of the Duat aboard the Khufu ship, Taweret informs the duo that in order for them to avoid being stuck in the underworld, they have to balance their scales, aka bring peace to their soul. The ship isn’t a hallucination, and Marc actually was killed by Harrow during last week’s episode. The inside of the ship can appear as something familiar, which is why it appears as an asylum to Marc. They go through the ship uncovering various secrets; it’s a heavy emotional ride into the depths of the character.

We come across a room filled with the people Marc has killed, as well as numerous scenes from his childhood. It’s a point in Moon Knight’s favor that it was able to delay revealing the origin of Marc’s dissociative identity disorder for this long; the reveal hits hard now that we’ve been wondering for weeks. When he was a child, Marc and his younger brother were trapped in a cave that flooded, which led to his brother’s death. Afterward, their mother spiraled, beating Marc and blaming him for his brother’s death. In order to cope, Marc developed the alternate personality of Steven…who as it turns out was rooted in an adventure story he and his brother loved as kids: Tomb Buster. Doctor Steven Grant was the main character, thus the name of Marc’s alternate identity.

We also finally get to see how Marc entered into Khonshu’s service. As Marc and Steven walk through a camp filled with the corpses of Archeologists, including Layla’s father, the scene shifts to Marc dragging himself along the floor of a temple. It turns out he was betrayed by his previous partner, Bushman, who decided to kill the entire camp and leave Marc for dead in order to avoid anyone witnessing his crimes. Bushman’s goals are a little fuzzy, but honestly it doesn’t matter too much. What does matter is that while Marc is contemplating killing himself because of his guilt, Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham) speaks to him and offers him another path filled with vengeance and retribution for those who deserve it.

Moon Knight threw us into the thick of the narrative at the start of the series and gradually unraveled the origins of Marc’s pact with Khonshu. While trips through a character’s past can sometimes feel a little heavy-handed, Moon Knight managed to pull it off exceptionally well.

Rushing toward the finish

After their journey of discovery, Marc and Steven find themselves back on the deck of the Khufu ship. Unfortunately, everything they’ve seen isn’t enough to balance their scales, and spirits of the dead (wearing the form of those Marc has killed) attack the ship to try and drag Marc overboard. Steven realizes he and Marc are the same, and maybe he has some of the same strength, so he defends his alternate personality. The end result is that Steven falls overboard and turns to stone/sand as the ship sails away and Marc screams his name. The loss of Steven balances Marc’s scales, however, and he suddenly finds himself in the Field of Reeds, which is where souls at peace go to their rest.

The episode ends there. It feels like next week will have a lot of ground to cover considering that Marc is still dead. Due to the arrival of some souls judged ahead of their time, we know that Arthur Harrow’s plan has presumably worked and Ammit is free. There’s a hint that whether Marc can come back to life will depend on Layla freeing Khonshu, but since he has no way to get word to her, it’ll be up to her to realize that is their best hope.

“Asylum” earned back enough good will after last week’s jumbled episode that I’m much more confident Moon Knight will be able to stick the landing.

Bullet Points

• I’m starting to feel like Jake Lockley is the Lady Stoneheart of this show. The hints that he exists were stronger than ever this week, but once again we’ve reached the end of an episode without him coming to the forefront. During one of the scenes in Harrow’s office, Marc suddenly breaks into a different accent and tries to hurt himself. And during the scene where Marc tries to attend his mother’s shiva, there are cabs driving around in the background (Jake was a cabbie in the comics). There have been quite a few nods to Jake, so I guess the big question is whether they were all just teases, if he’ll be a central part of the finale (which feels unlikely), or if he’s going to be a season-ending stinger of some kind.
• Why is Taweret weighing hearts in the underworld? In Egyptian mythology it’s Anubis who weighs hearts against a feather, yet the show has shown both Taweret and Ammit taking on those sorts of duties. This begs the question: where is Anubis? Is he one of the gods imprisoned in those stone statues alongside Khonshu? And if so, what’s going on with the Egyptian pantheon?
• When he was following child-Marc and his brother into the cave, Steven stepped on a bird skeleton with a skull reminiscent of Khonshu. Did the moon god have anything to do with the sudden flooding of the cave and death of Marc’s brother, perhaps as a long-game way of steering Marc into his service years later?
• Can we just point out that throughout the show, Steven has been calling and leaving his mom phone messages…because he didn’t know she was dead. And apparently Layla doesn’t know either, because when she found out Steven was calling his mom, she asked if that meant they were “talking again.” Great foreshadowing there.
• It’s really interesting that despite Arthur Harrow being the show’s villain, in this afterlife Marc is manifesting him as a benevolent force. At first it feels like Harrow is messing with him, but as the episode goes on it becomes clear that he is helping Marc and Steven to confront the demons of their past. As always, Ethan Hawke and Oscar Isaac are brilliant and their scenes together are a highlight.
• The fact that Steven believed he was the original personality is kind of heartbreaking. Comic readers and the internet at large have known Marc Spector is the original Moon Knight, but to see the realization crash down on Steven, when Marc shouts “You’re not supposed to see [our mother beating us], that’s the whole point of you,” is just heartbreaking.

Verdict

“Asylum” returns Moon Knight to form after a rough episode last week by leaning into its strengths. Oscar Isaac has said that Moon Knight is the first real character study that Marvel has done since Iron Man, and after this episode it’s hard to dispute it. There was basically no movement in the overarching plot this week, but it wasn’t missed at all because of how gripping Marc and Steven’s backstory was. It was a promising set up for the season finale.

Grade: A-

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