Moon Knight episode 2 review: Half moons and two full Knights

Rating: 4/5

Story:
Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) opts for a more nuanced approach to get Ammit’s scarab from Steven Grant/Marc Spector (Oscar Issac), by attempting to convince Grant about his cult of Ammit followers.

Grant, on the other hand, is confronted by Layla (May Calamawy), the partner-in-crime and wife of his alter ego Marc, who refuses to believe that Steve and Marc are two different personalities in the same body. However, they have much larger concerns as Harrow and his forces get closer to gaining possession of the scarab.

Review:
Several of the new Disney+ Original Marvel TV shows have been guilty of strong opening episodes, with the exception of Hawkeye which was poor from start to finish, to wither out at the end of the season, as in the case of WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But Moon Knight offers its viewers a sense of reassurance that the series will only get better with each passing episode — the follow-up to the pilot episode all but confirms this belief.

The episode, titled Summon the Suit, delves deeper into the lore of the relatively lesser-known character from the comics. While the showrunners have taken a few liberties for this adaptation of Moon Knight, the property’s relative obscurity protects the series from social media fandoms. The fact that the changes made to the fictional biography of the titular character have lifted the series to a higher standard has also kept the wolves at bay, for the time being at least.

Summon the Suit, has both literal and metaphorical significance, as Steven Grant finally gains a better understanding of his predicament. When he, along with Layla, are backed into a corner by Harrow and his followers, his alter-ego, Marc Spector, and Layla urge Steven to summon the ‘suit’. Unfortunately, Steven has limited to no understanding of the ‘suit’ or how Moon Knight is summoned. Inadvertently, he is able to summon the superhero, but instead of a caped superhero, Steven is transformed into a variation of Moon Knight, who, quite ironically, wears a pure white conventional suit.

Those familiar with this variation of the character from the comics would identify him as Mr Knight, the suave and subtle detective persona of Moon Knight. However, the TV series has altered Mr Knight’s persona, and has turned him into a reflection of Steven Grant’s idea of a superhero — essentially it is Steven Grant underneath the mask, similar to how Marc Spector is the man donning the mask of Moon Knight. Therefore Mr Knight is neither suave nor subtle, he is just the soft-spoken Englishman Steven Grant with superhuman abilities. This will most definitely irk a few of the fans of the source material expecting the ‘real’ Mr Knight, but this version of the character fits the story the TV series is trying to tell.

Both Oscar Issac and Ethan Hawke excel in their roles, with Issac in particular effortlessly switching between the Englishman Steve Grant and the American mercenary Marc Spector. The narrative has also added subtle layers of Orwellian conundrums through Steven Grant’s innocent yet blunt questions to Arthur Harrow. These questions pertained to the latter’s vision of a world rid of crime, by eliminating any potential criminal years or even decades before a crime has been committed, essentially shattering Harrow’s idea of a utopia conceived out of genocide.

Verdict:
The second episode has all the right ingredients for what one would consider the perfect recipe for a superhero adaptation — an engrossing storyline, a fast-paced narrative, a grounded reimagination of characters, and frames that could rival a graphic novel.