As a general rule, a show premiering exclusively on a streaming service tends to push the boundaries of whatever the rating may be a little further than you’d typically get away with on network television. Until Deadpool 3 finally comes along the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an entirely PG-13 operation, but Moon Knight could be causing some headaches for the Disney hierarchy.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier wasn’t a particularly gruesome or hard-hitting show, but it still ended up getting slapped with the equivalent of an R-rating in some overseas markets, and Marc Spector’s story is a lot nearer the knuckle than Sam Wilson battling against John Walker and a nation’s prejudice to become Captain America.
According to our sources – the same ones who told us Ben Affleck was returning as Batman in The Flash long before it was confirmed – the Mouse House are reportedly concerned about how far Moon Knight is leaning into the darkness, violence and antihero status of the titular cult favorite, who also happens to suffer from dissociative identity disorder and has never been shy in taking things down a graphical and very much R-rated path in the pages of Marvel Comics.
Of course, the House that Walt Built will no doubt win in the end and have Moon Knight sanded down to the hardest possible iteration of a PG-13 show, but it’s at least encouraging to hear that the creative team behind the project and star Oscar Isaac are intent to maintain some degree of reverence to the source material, because the nocturnal vigilante is a million miles away from being a sunshine and rainbows kind of superhero.
