Everything We Know About 'Moon Knight'

Marvel Studios’ highly anticipated Moon Knight series is finally here, and I’m here to breakdown everything we know ahead of the series, which is based on one of my top five favorite Marvel superheroes. So who is Moon Knight? For starters, he’s Marc Spector, an ex-mercenary whom the ancient Egyptian god Khonshu revives after his death. Suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Spector’s other non-costumed personalities include rich playboy Steven Grant and taxi driver Jake Lockley. Thanks to the trailer, the series looks like it’ll focus on Steven Grant, now a museum employee, and the aforementioned mercenary.

Here’s the full plot description from Disney:

“The series follows Steven Grant, a mild-mannered gift-shop employee, who becomes plagued with blackouts and memories of another life. Steven discovers he has dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with mercenary Marc Spector. As Steven/Marc’s enemies converge upon them, they must navigate their complex identities while thrust into a deadly mystery among the powerful gods of Egypt.”

Additionally, during the Super Bowl, Marvel Studios unveiled yet another look at the upcoming series. The TV spot focuses on Steven Grant, in a deeply unsettled state in regards to his mind and well-being. Meanwhile, the mysterious and villainous Arthur Harrow (played by Ethan Hawke) encouraging Grant to embrace the chaos. And we get to see Moon Knight fully suited up and in action. Moon Knight himself will be played by the immensely talented, Oscar Isaac. Joining the Star Wars star in the series is May Calamawy, who will be playing Layla El-Faouly, and reports say that she will be playing a key role.

Ethan Hawke, who was stealing hearts a healthy decade and a half ahead of Oscar Isaac, will be playing the series’ villain, Arthur Harrow. Hawke appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on August 12, 2021, live via Zoom from filming in Budapest. While he couldn’t say too much (though he didn’t mention the apparently omnipresent Marvel snipers), Hawke did give a couple pieces of information. First is that Oscar Isaac approached Hawke about the series at a coffee shop near where they both live in Brooklyn, NY. Second, as Meyers deftly surmised, Hawke modeled his character’s look directly on real-life cult leader David Koresh.

Meanwhile, F. Murray Abraham will voice Khonshu, who comes face to face with Steven Grant in the latest trailer, and TV spots which have followed. Egyptian writer-director Mohamed Diab directed the six-episode series, while Jeremy Slater serveed as head writer. Both are also executive producers, along with Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Grant Curtis, Brad Winderbaum, and Oscar Isaac. Moon Knight is a very complex character whose personas each have a varying level of darkness to them. Mr. Knight, the version we see in a poster and briefly in a TV spot whose wearing a white suit, is cocky and VERY violent. His anger management is on par with Homelander of The Boys, and he plays worse with others than Iron Man. Moon Knight also faces off against all kinds of monsters, so in the comics Marvel doesn’t hole back and we see some brutal moments where Moon Knight gives into his darkness, and beats people/monsters to a pulp.

“I want to bring some horror into the MCU and some scary monsters, and really push that envelope as far as we can,” Slater told Variety.

Who Is Moon Knight?

Here’s a brief history on the character in the comics. Like many Marvel superheroes, Moon Knight got his start in the comics as a guest in another character’s title series: Werewolf by Night. Written by Doug Moench with art from Don Perlin, 1975’s Werewolf by Night No. 32 was the first part of a two-issue story arc that pitted the comic’s titular Werewolf against a mercenary who wore boots and gauntlets made of silver, a hooded white cloak, and a crescent moon symbol on his chest. (Because what better opponent could there be for a creature transformed by the full moon than a guy decked out in moon gear?) From his first appearance, Moon Knight was an antihero. Initially, he’s the alter ego of a man named Marc Spector, who’s paid by a shady group of businessmen called The Committee to bring in Werewolf by Night so they can use him for their evil schemes.

Spector’s backstory is rather vaguely outlined through some exposition provided by a Committee member, who explains that Spector is a mercenary and a war veteran who has some experience working with the CIA (among other things that are meant to let you know this Spector guy is pretty impressive). As for the moon-inspired getup, there really isn’t much reasoning behind it at first—the Committee just has a taste for the theatrical, I guess. In the years after his debut in Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight appeared in the occasional team-up with heroes such as Spider-Man and Daredevil, and was featured in a Marvel Spotlight story, all of which painted Moon Knight as more of a heroic figure than he was originally designed to be. It wasn’t until 1980 that Moon Knight got his own solo series, with Moench and artist Bill Sienkiewicz headlining the comic’s creative team, and the character would go on to become on of Marvel Comics’ most popular, yet, unknown character.

Marc Spector’s new roots extend to the deserts of Egypt, where he dies at the hands of another mercenary and eventual nemesis, Raoul Bushman (whose rumored to be setup in the series), after attempting to save an archaeologist at the dig site that their crew is about to ransack. But Spector is resurrected in the tomb of Khonshu, the Egyptian moon god, and he awakens with a new purpose, borrowing a white cloak from the tomb to become the Fist of Khonshu—a knight for the vengeful god. Along with the Moon Knight persona, Spector also adopts a couple of other identities to help serve his new god and defend the innocent: millionaire Steven Grant and cab driver Jake Lockley.

His Key Power Is His Mental Illness

One of the Moon Knight comics that best portrays the character’s psyche is Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood’s 14-issue series from 2016. While other comics have used Spector’s dissociative identity disorder (DID) as more of a gimmick, including Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s 2011 run, which swapped out his usual alters for those of Captain America, Wolverine, and Spider-Man, Lemire and Smallwood’s series crafted its entire story around Spector’s history of mental illness, weaving in varied styles of art for each of his personalities and bringing the character to a place where he’s able to accept and live with his DID.

Moon Knight has often been compared to another, more popular caped crusader in comics, Batman. After all, if you swap out the moon for a bat, the character shares a lot of similar DNA: Moon Knight has an alter ego who is a rich playboy like Bruce Wayne; he strikes terror into the hearts of any criminal who attempts to prey on the innocent at night; he wears a utility belt full of fancy, moon-themed gadgets; and he flies around in a moon-shaped plane. (Moon Knight even has a thing for vengeance, too.) But Moon Knight is unique in that his origins are rooted in Egyptian mythology and his DID is one of his defining characteristics. And while the Dark Knight dresses in all black to hide in the shadows of Gotham City, Moon Knight wears all white because he wants his enemies to see him coming.

Is Marvel Studios Ready For Mature Content?

Aside from being Marvel Studios’ first Disney+ series to focus on a new superhero, Moon Knight is set to be darker and far more violent than its predecessors. So far, MCU TV has offered a sitcom-infused mystery box, a dramatic action adventure, a multiversal sci-fi journey, an animated anthology, and a six-part Christmas special; later this year, the streamer will add a seemingly “CW-like” teen drama series and a half-hour legal comedy. Given its subject matter concerning mental illness and the elements of horror woven into the show’s storytelling, Isaac says it’ll be unlike anything we’ve seen in the MCU before:

“What makes our show different from other MCU movies is that you’re not sitting back and just watching the story unfold,” Isaac told Vanity Fair. “You are within the eyes of Steven and experiencing these unpredictable events that are happening to him. It’s terrifying and true to the psychological horror of not knowing what’s happening, and the slow revelations of the truth.”

Moon Knight is looking like the closest analogue in the Marvel Studios stable to the various TV shows in Netflix’s Defenders Saga, which features mature enough content that it called for Disney+ to update its parental controls when it was added to its streaming library earlier this month. And while I still can’t imagine that Moon Knight will go quite as far as the likes of Daredevil or Jessica Jones (the latter of which featured its leading antihero breaking a villain’s neck), according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, the series doesn’t pull its punches for the benefit of its family-friendly streaming home. “It’s been fun to work with Disney+ and see the boundaries shifting on what we’re able to do,” Feige told Empire. “There are moments [in the series] when Moon Knight is wailing on another character, and it is loud and brutal, and the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘We’re gonna pull back on this, right?’ No. We’re not pulling back. There’s a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.”

Midnight Sons? Hearts of Darkness? Marvel Knights?!

While Moon Knight isn’t too fond of teaming up with other superheroes, he is pals with: Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider, the Punisher, Blade, Black Knight, and Doctor Strange. It’s been rumored, well, more fan speculation than anything, that a team-up between the darker and more mature characters in the MCU could be on the horizon. These characters all team-up dozens of times to stop supernatural threats from Lilith, to Mephisto. With Marhershal Ali’s Blade being heard speaking to Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman in an end credits scene in 2021’s Eternals, it is highly possible that the Feige and company could be gearing us up for a massive team-up movie or series. Feige has said in the past that he loves Ghost Rider and hopes to use him soon, and Walking Dead mainstay Norman Reedus has voiced his love of the character and admiration of playing him for nearly a decade now. With The Punisher series now being on Disney+, anything is possible!

Through a six-part adventure that will dive into the supernatural, Moon Knight has a chance to lead the MCU into exciting new territory that feels distinct from that of the dozens of Marvel superhero stories to come before it. We’ll find out what that new direction will look like, and just how far Marvel Studios is prepared to go, when the first MCU project of 2022 arrives on Wednesday.