After the first episode did much of the place-setting to introduce the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest superhero and those around him, yesterday’s second installment of Moon Knight doubled down on the world-building.
We got some important backstory for both Steven Grant and Marc Spector, an explanation as to how Arthur Harrow fits into things, and the connection the hero and villain each share with Egyptian deity Khonshu. All in all, it was a stellar sophomore outing for Oscar Isaac’s protagonist, even if the battle for his psyche continues to rage in the background.
Mohamed Diab helmed the opener, but it was freshly-minted Loki season 2 directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead who took the reins on the second. In an interview with ComicBookMovie, the filmmaking duo broke down and explained the waking nightmare Steven now finds himself in after embracing Marc as part of his personality.
“The reason we focus so much on Steven in the first few episodes is that he is our fish out of water, audience surrogate, in a way. Of course, he has no idea what’s going on, and what’s happening to him is a nightmare. It could seem like the coolest thing in the world, you wake up, and suddenly you’re a superhero.
I mean, that’s the wish-fulfillment that Marvel’s been delivering on since they started, but what the two of us and Mohamed really wanted to do was actually treat both the condition that he has, but also just the idea of the absolute horror of people trying to kill you and having a life that you can’t hold together. No matter how hard you try, to treat that is actually a waking nightmare and, so we felt a lot of empathy for him, and he’s the person who’s so vulnerable and the human vulnerability of Steven was something that was very easy to penetrate, you feel it almost immediately for him.
Whereas, if you start with Marc Spector, especially with the comic from the comic books, he’s somebody who’s so gruff on the outside, he’s so hardened, so emotionally unavailable, his vulnerability takes a little bit longer to get to. So, you find the vulnerability by exposing it through this brotherly relationship he has with Steven.”
Regardless of whether it’s Steven, Marc, or any other of the personalities we could be set to meet over the next four weeks, Moon Knight is well on his way to becoming one of the most fascinatingly complicated and complex protagonists we’ve ever seen in the MCU, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.
