The first four Marvel Cinematic Universe shows to stream exclusively on Disney Plus were directed entirely by a single filmmaker, an approach that established the franchise’s episodic offerings as markedly different to the standard TV model, in addition to favoring the term ‘lead writer’ in favor of ‘showrunner’.
Matt Shakman’s WandaVision, Kari Skogland’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Kate Herron’s Loki, and Bryan Andrews’ What If…? won plenty of acclaim from fans and critics, but sometimes you need more than one set of eyes to bring the best out of a certain project.
Rhys Thomas and Bert & Bertie split duties on Hawkeye, with Moon Knight set to continue in that vein by recruiting Mohamed Diab to helm several installments, alongside independent wunderkinds Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Speaking to The Playlist, the latter duo teased how their own back catalogue will influence Oscar Isaac’s MCU debut.
“It’s stuff that’s kind of like what we already do. Archive 81 definitely shares DNA with [our previous films] The Endless and Resolution. You’ll see with same with Moon Knight.”
If you haven’t seen them, then you should know that The Endless follows two brothers returning to the alien-obsessed death cult they’d escaped from a decade previously, Resolution revolves around eerie goings-on in a cabin where a man handcuffs his drug-addicted friend for his own safety, while Archive 81 is a time and reality-bending tale of murder, obsession, and demonic entities.
With that in mind, our hopes for Benson and Moorhead’s episodes of Moon Knight just got that little bit higher.