Last week, Marvel’s latest Disney Plus series, Moon Knight, concluded, leaving many viewers wondering how exactly it fits into the larger MCU. Usually, Marvel properties are so tightly connected that it’s hard to understand what’s going on unless you’ve seen a dozen other films and series first. Usually, cameos and crossovers abound. Stories end on cliffhangers that are picked up in completely separate projects. Moon Knight is an enigma, though. It’s so self-contained that it’s hard to figure out how it connects to the events going on across the rest of the Marvel universe.
So where does Moon Knight fit into the MCU—and does he really need to fit in at all? Here’s what you need to know.
An Intentionally Self-Contained Story
In Moon Knight, Steven Grant, a hapless museum gift shop employee, suffers from blackouts and sleep problems. He gradually discovers that he’s sharing a body with an American mercenary named Marc Spector, who’s dedicated himself to the Egyptian god of the moon, Khonshu. As Khonshu’s avatar, Marc becomes Moon Knight, killing evildoers in a magical suit that gives him superhuman fighting abilities and allows him to heal from fatal wounds. Together, Steven and Marc must stop cult leader Arthur Harrow from unleashing the goddess Ammit, who wants to execute billions of people for crimes they may commit, sometime in the future.
In an interview with Variety, director Mohamed Diab revealed that Moon Knight was originally supposed to have two crossover scenes with characters from other Marvel projects. Producer Jeremy Slater recently revealed that one of those crossovers would have involved one or more of the Eternals fighting alongside Khonshu’s avatar in ancient Egypt. However, in the end, Marvel decided to honor Diab’s idea to make Moon Knight a more intimate character study. Here’s what Diab had to say:
I want to tell you the very first scene, there was a crossover, and the very end scene, there was a crossover. But as the story developed and we kept changing the scripts, we felt like, “We don’t need that.” It was a collective decision. And then I kept thinking: It’s a rule. There has to be a scene at the end that connects us to the MCU. But I think they decided, “You know what, the surprise is that there isn’t, and what’s going to make this show unique is it doesn’t need anything else.”
This lack of tie-ins makes Moon Knight unique in the Marvel universe. The series even shies away from chances to make passing references to other Marvel stories. For instance, when Arthur Harrow is listing famously bad people from history who should have been executed by Ammit, he mentions Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, but neglects to mention Thanos, perpetrator of the biggest genocide in the history of the universe.
The lack of crossovers in Season 1 doesn’t mean that we’ll never see Marc and Steven interact with the rest of the MCU, though. When Collider asked Diab if he’d be willing to direct a possible second season, he replied with a resounding yes:
Absolutely. I helped build that world with them, and I feel like it’s my world, and I want to expand it and have ideas already of how to see the world. Someone was asking me, “What’s your dream superhero?” And I told him, “I got it.” What else would I want? He has everything that I wish for as a director. We know each other, and we are a team. One day, I wish I could be a part of the expansion of that world, for sure.
The Global Repatriation Council
The intimate nature of Steven and Marc’s story doesn’t mean that Moon Knight is completely cut off from the rest of the MCU. Thanks to a minor Easter egg, we can date the series to shortly after the end of the Blip.
Early in the series, Marc is fighting off Harrow’s minions when a bus passes behind him. On the side of the bus is an ad for the Global Repatriation Council, the organization tasked with resettling refugees who came back from the Blip to find themselves homeless. The fact that the organization is active enough to be putting out ads means that Moon Knight takes place around the same time as other Phase 4 projects, while the dust is still settling after the events of Endgame.
Other than that placement on the timeline, though, the GRC reference doesn’t affect the story at all.
What About Jake Lockley?
At the end of the series, Marc and Steven tell Khonshu that they don’t want to serve as his avatar anymore, and Khonshu lets them go. However, the reason he’s so willing to give them up is because Marc and Steven don’t know about their third alter, Jake, who’s still in Khonshu’s service. Will Jake be the key to continuing Moon Knight’s adventures in the MCU?
It’s hard to say at this point. Jake is a violent loner, which means that he’s not a great fit for the kind of hero Earth-616 will need to protect it from the multiversal war that the MCU is building up to. It’s hard to imagine Jake making the same kind of heroic sacrifices as Tony Stark or Vision.
Plus, he takes his marching orders from Khonshu, and Khonshu seems to have his own agenda. Jake joining any kind of team-up would depend on Khonshu loaning him out. It could happen! It would just be an odd arrangement. Marc and Steven are much more likely candidates for the next Avengers-level event, but they’d have to find their way back into the superhero lifestyle first.
The Scarlet Scarab
One of the most exciting outcomes of Moon Knight is Layla’s debut as Taweret’s avatar, unofficially known as the Scarlet Scarab. When Layla agrees to serve as Taweret’s avatar, she insists that the arrangement is temporary. However, when a young girl sees her in action and asks if she’s an Egyptian superhero, it’s hard to miss the excitement in Layla’s voice when she answers that yes, she is. It looks like Layla might be developing a taste for superheroism—and Taweret seems like she’ll be a much more amenable deity than the demanding Khonshu. Layla might have the freedom to roam the MCU, looking for adventure and teaming up with other heroes.
All episodes of Moon Knight are now streaming on Disney Plus!
(featured image: Marvel)
Published: May 12, 2022 03:32 pm