An Investigation Into How Moon Knight Got His Snazzy Suit, and Also, Can I Have One?
(Tim Gunn voice) Moon Knight, make it work!
(This post contains minor spoilers for Moon Knight season 1.)
The first episode of Moon Knight, Marvel’s new limited series on Disney Plus, gave us a lot of information (while keeping a lot of mystery). We met Steven Grant, a mild-mannered museum gift shop employee who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. Steven is prone to blackouts and sleep deprivation—which are gradually revealed to be his alter, Marc Spector, taking over his body to conduct secret missions as a mercenary. It’s only at the very end of the episode that we get our first glimpse of Moon Knight himself, the warrior priest of the Egyptian god, Khonshu. What little we see of the transformation sequence is thrilling to watch, but it begs the question: where did Marc get that suit? And also, can I get one of those suits? I mean, that’s probably not the main question people are asking, re: me. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
The Suit in the Comics Versus the MCU Series
In the original Moon Knight comics, the suit is a synthetic creation that Marc, Steven, and their other alters modify and upgrade according to their needs. The original suit is made of kevlar armor and includes a radio. Later, Marc upgrades the suit to include Adamantium armor, dart launchers, and other features.
Marvel is clearly going for a more mystical origin in the new series, though. In the final scene of episode one, when the beast unleashed by Arthur Harrow is coming for Steven and Marc, Steven allows Marc to take control of their body. Instantly, white strips begin to wrap themselves around Marc, calling to mind the bandages of an Egyptian mummy (because that’s the one thing everyone knows about Egypt, right? Okay, snarky aside over, sorry). The camera cuts away just as the beast overtakes them, but in the next shot, we see a fully suited-up Moon Knight finishing the thing off.
What can we take away from this shot? First off, that suit looks way fancier than kevlar. It’s clear that instead of having to do their own suit maintenance, Steven and Marc will be getting a lot of help from Khonshu and the powers he has at his disposal as a god.
Secondly, if the series explains the suit’s origin, it’ll do so in a flashback instead of real-time. Marc has clearly already been operating as Moon Knight for at least a little while before the series begins. (Remember that Layla says she’s been trying to reach him “for months.”) Moon Knight is shaping up to be something that both will—and won’t be—an origin story, as Steven finds out what his alter has been up to in his absence.
But there’s another element to the mystery of the suit: the golden scarab.
What Does the Scarab Do?
Steven spends much of the first episode on the run from Arthur Harrow, who’s hounding him for a golden scarab figurine that Steven realizes he’s been carrying around with him. In the first episode, the scarab doesn’t actually do anything. However, in a promo clip Disney Plus released a few weeks ago, we get a much bigger clue to its importance.
In the clip, Layla thrusts the scarab into Steven’s hands and tells him to “summon the suit.” This indicates that the scarab may be the key to activating Moon Knight’s powers. Does the suit live in the scarab? Does the scarab merely enable the transformation? It’s not clear yet, but keep your eye on that insect, because we’ll definitely learn more in future episodes.
Mr. Knight’s Suit
Of course, Moon Knight’s full-on superhero outfit isn’t the only suit in town. One poster for the series has also hinted at the presence of Mr. Knight, a more dressed-down alter who, in the comics, serves as a consultant to the police.
Leah Marilla Thomas at Cosmopolitan shares some interesting tidbits about Mr. Knight. “Marc’s super suit is the more traditional superhero outfit with the cape,” she writes, “while Steven uses an alternate suit that turns him into Mr. Knight.”
If that’s true, then that points to another way that the series is deviating from the comics. In the comics, there are five alters who make up the Moon Knight system: Steven, Marc, Jake Lockley, Mr. Knight, and Moon Knight himself. If Marc only turns into Moon Knight while Steven only turns into Mr. Knight, though, then that signals that certain alters will have closer connections to each other than others.
We’ll be learning plenty more about Moon Knight, his alters, his suit, and his powers in the coming weeks! Though, it seems unlikely that we will learn more from someone delivering a magical, Moon Knight suit to me—if it happens though, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, enjoy the first episode, now streaming on Disney Plus.
(featured image: MARZ VFX/Marvel Entertainment)
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