Moon Knight Ep. 3 reclaims a post-colonial Egypt.
It also blandly renders the wider Egyptian pantheon.
The Short Take:
Disappointed by its use of Egyptian gods, I see Moon Knight’s plot faltering a bit. Otherwise, Episode 3 is fun because it goes full Indiana Jones, and in a way that reclaims Egypt from the colonial legacy of globetrotting adventure fiction. Layla is the best.
Image Credit: The Ringer
[SPOILER WARNING: We’re halfway through this series, which means I’m writing this for folks who have seen the episode. If you need some help deciding whether or not Moon Knight may be for you, glide on the winds of your crescent cape to my Episode 1 review.]
The Long Take:
I used to watch A LOT of Stargate SG-1, a series that had a long run from 1997 to 2007. I also watched the spin-off series, Stargate Atlantis, which would probably be lost to television history entirely were it not such a stepping stone in Jason Mamoa’s career. Where do you think he got all that practice pretending to live underwater before auditioning for Aquaman?
Image Credit: Pop Sugar
I digress. I’m opening with this somewhat embarrassing confession of love for a campy sci fi adventure of the week series because despite the cheesy dialogue, the over-reliance on machine gun fire, and a fast and loose approach to global cultures and mythologies, Stargate at least presented Egyptian gods with majesty and wonder, which is more than I can say for Moon Knight so far.
Image Credit: TV Guide
I feel as though a comparison to Stargate is fair because the premise of the franchise is very similar to what the MCU has been doing with pantheons from different cultures. In Stargate, Egyptian gods are real, but they are actually an advanced alien race that seem like gods to insignificant humans. Episodes of the show draw from mythology (which, in later seasons, is not exclusively Egyptian), but then take creative license to run with those ideas without worrying too much about historical or cultural accuracy. Doesn’t that sound like the somewhat convoluted set-up for Eternals? Or what Marvel has done for much longer with Thor and friends in Asgard? (I doubt Norse folklorists anticipated seeing their God of Thunder in outer space, wearing a leather biker jacket.) Or even Shang-Chi’s legend, to a lesser degree? I would, based on this episode alone, place Moon Knight more on the self-serious, joyless Eternals end of the spectrum than on the weird and fun Thor: Ragnarok end.
Before I give the impression that I didn’t enjoy this week’s episode of Moon Knight, I want to be clear that I was happy overall and am still very much along for the ride. But, for the first time since the show began, this episode made me wonder if it really has it together. The unveiling of more Egyptian gods should have been completely thrilling; instead it muddled a story that I was otherwise excited to unravel. I went from being shocked and excited that we were going to get to meet Osiris or Isis (I didn’t think they would do that this early), contextualizing Khonshu as one small part of a vast pantheon, to disappointed in their underwhelming characterization. We only see their avatars, and the pyramid courtroom scene at the center of this episode fell pretty flat for me.
I understand that, at least from a budget standpoint, doing the kind of visual effects they’re doing for Khonshu (whom I’ve enjoyed so far! that guy cracks me up) multiplied by seven would have been a lot. I think the issue I have, though, is more with the writing of the gods and their avatars. None of them seemed to have much personality, and the big appeal of reading stories about gods, for me, is that they have such big personalities, egos, and hang-ups. Give me petty drama! Give me millennia-old beefs! Kieren Gillen’s Image Comics series, The Wicked + the Divine, captures this dynamic perfectly. If you are a mythology nerd like me and need some summer reading, I’d highly recommend it.
From a plot perspective, this deity tribunal didn’t make much sense either. Khonshu levels accusations against Harrow, and then Harrow shows up to plead innocent. With his manipulative silver-tongue, he deflects attention from himself to Khonshu’s potential abuse of Marc and Marc’s Dissociative Identity Disorder as — very problematically — some kind of character slander. The gods simply accept this at face value.
And considering that Khonshu later violates the terms of his exile and ends up in statuette prison anyway makes me question what the purpose of the courtroom scene really was. Most of the Khonshu/Egyptian god section of the episode seems like a zero sum game for the story because they didn’t get any closer to stopping Harrow by the end. I also wasn’t a fan of Marc yelling awkwardly to indicate that Khonshu was speaking directly through him. When the other gods possess their avatars to speak, this doesn’t happen — they all speak in measured voices. It’s not clear why. I want more narrative precision and control over the world-building than this.
Outside of this sequence, I found the rest of the episode to be a very fun homage to archeologically-driven action adventures like the Indiana Jones series and The Mummy. Marc gets into scrappy street fights on rooftops, he and Layla infiltrate a wealthy man’s compound to chase down an ancient artifact, they recruit Steven to piece together clues from it, and all face the wrath of supernatural forces in doing so. I might as well be describing the plot of The Last Crusade (my favorite Indiana Jones film) or Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was enthralled with the scarab grabs, the race to the tomb, the sarcophagus, and the scraps of clues it contained. Khonshu and Steven literally moving the night sky back 2,000 years so they could piece together an ancient star chart and find Ammit’s secret prison was the kind of epic, cool grandeur I was hoping to see inside the pyramid.
I feel at ease enjoying this archaeological adventure because Moon Knight attempts to authentically represent the home country of the artifacts in question — Egypt. This matters a lot because, as I’ve alluded to in previous reviews, Moon Knight unavoidably operates as a part of a longer history of imperialist adventures that play upon xenophobic anxieties and paternalistic racial stereotypes.
I can trace Indiana Jones’ lineage back to Victorian fiction, as the British Empire — at its most expansive — inspired many stories that use various colonies as a source of mystery, suspense, and horror. I could arguably go all the way back to Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone in 1868, as there are obvious parallels between Moon Knight’s scarab and the title gemstone of Collins’ novel. The protagonist, Rachel Verinder, inherits a diamond that her uncle plundered from India, and three Hindu priests travel to England to recover it. There is only peace when the Moonstone returns to its rightful place on a statue in India, but the novel would have, in its day, heightened anxieties about the East invading domestic spaces in the West. The scarab in Moon Knight seems to have a similar “cursed” quality, leaving a body count in its wake. I do not mean to conflate India and Egypt here, but these popular stories often do, swapping out one corner of the Empire, one exotic locale and non-white people for another in the same adventure formula. They’re all a part of this larger imperialist imagination.
The template for Indiana Jones specifically forms in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, which debuted adventurer Allan Quartermain in 1885. This started the “lost world” genre, otherwise known as the “white man travels to a non-white country in search of treasure at the peril of exotic peoples and places with dark, mystical powers” genre. The representation of Africans and Egyptians in these stories are at best patronizing and at worst horrifically racist.
Moon Knight, fortunately, tries to break with this tradition. After I finished the episode earlier this week, I did a quick check-in on Twitter to see how fans and critics responded. The most common type of post I saw was one of gratitude, thanking the creators of the show for representing Egypt as a real, modern and urban place as opposed to a generic desert with a generic sandstorm and everyone dressed like they’re from Lawrence of Arabia.
Image Credit: The Ringer
I agree that Egypt felt more like a real place where real people live; there’s an authenticity here that I would not necessarily have expected. The big fight scene in which Marc’s Moon Knight endures multiple spear impalings features a real-life cultural ritual called El-Mermah — it’s the oldest fencing competition in the history of Egypt. Meanwhile, the use of Arabic pop music makes it clear that even though Moon Knight’s characters are preoccupied with ancient Egypt, its story takes place in modern Egypt. Could this be the result of an earnest effort by Disney/Marvel, considering they hired an Egyptian director, Mohamed Diab, and a few Egyptian actors, including female lead May Calamawy, who plays Layla?
Image Credit: Screen Rant
I haven’t had a chance to talk about how great Layla is yet. She’s great. So capable, resourceful, no-nonsense, caring, and with a touch of vivacious larceny. I love that she’s a post-colonial vigilante, actively trying to reclaim Egypt’s cultural artifacts to repair centuries of imperialist damage. Like the titular gem in The Moonstone, the havoc surrounding the scarab will likely end once it returns to Layla’s family. This would be a nice role reversal from Collins’ novel: instead of an Indian artifact terrorizing Rachel, the Egyptian scarab may help make Layla — an Egyptian — whole again.
I had openly hoped in my Episode 1 review that the show would give Layla a way to explicitly acknowledge colonial theft as Killmonger did in Black Panther, and I got my wish. Forging a passport that will allow her to return to her home country, she says, “They [the artifacts] were already stolen to begin with. People forget that.” I also appreciated the backstory we get for her character in this scene, especially the reveal that her father was murdered and that they had been blacklisted from Egypt. Everything I learn about her makes me want to get to know her more. And her vulnerability with Marc as he rejects her attempts to reconnect makes me care about what happens to her more than anyone else. Again, not on Team Marc… “No, you don’t know me.” What a jerk.
There may be, however, a third identity who may be even more of a jerk than Marc. This episode strongly implies that the most violent acts that Marc and Steven’s body commit in the episode were not actually committed by them. This third person, who seems to have no qualms about murder, will clearly become a threat to both Marc and Steven, but I have no idea how. Almost every podcast I’ve listened to, including The Ringerverse and The Colbycast, have noted that the show makes a point to show that Marc decides to open his hand rather than punch the teenaged boy during the rooftop fight. I agree that the purpose of this is to show that while Marc is more comfortable with violence than Steven, he does still draw a line somewhere. The third mystery identity, however, does not.
Those familiar with Moon Knight in the comics speculate that the mystery identity is cab driver Jake Lockley. But, again, I wonder how this would serve the larger plot of Harrow trying to free Ammit and Khonshu using Marc and Steven to try to stop him. I would think it would just introduce more chaos and distract us from all the balls already in the air.
Image Credit: The Wrap
This, plus the pyramid courtroom scene I complained about earlier, is enough to make me doubt but not entirely dismiss the show. l still love the premise, adore the entire cast, appreciate the engagement with the genre’s imperialist history, and really want it to succeed. The plot is on notice right now, but I’m hoping it just needs a little more time to gel.