Moon Knight premiered on Disney+ with “The Goldfish Problem.” Steven Grant is at a dead end job at a museum, where his boss is not interested in helping him climb the career ladder. But his main issue is that he’s not the most reliable person, due to his sleep walking. Well, it’s more than that.
Steven wants more than anything to have a normal life, a job that he loves, and maybe a girlfriend to share a meal with. Unfortunately, he can’t exactly tell anyone that he has to chain himself to his bed, so he doesn’t wake up somewhere he doesn’t recognize. And even with the chains, Steven still finds himself awake in a field having no recollection of how he got there. A voice is telling him to go back to sleep, and the voice keeps referring to him as “the idiot.” Charming.
In this village, he gets the first glimpse of Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow. Arthur is judging the townspeople with some sort of talisman. These people worship him and are happy to give themselves over to him. When a woman was deemed bad, it looked like she was drained of life. No one else seemed to find this odd except for poor Steven who has no idea what he just walked into. When Arthur asks Steven to hand over the scarab in his pocket, Steven is more than willing to oblige. But, the voice is taking over, not letting him give over the scarab. Steven blacks out multiple times on this trip back home. This is our first look at the multiple personalities that live inside of Steven.
Steven keeps blacking out, but eventually wakes up back at home. He’s getting ready for his date, but Steven doesn’t realize that he lost two days. I guess this is why his boss isn’t interested in letting him advance in his job. Back at the museum, Arthur Harrow shows up, but he isn’t alone. He tells Steven that there is chaos in him before unleashing a monster to go after Steven. Arthur is trying to bring back Ammit, the world’s first bogeyman. Don’t worry, she’s only a bogeyman for bad people. Somehow that isn’t of any comfort.
Thankfully, Steven gives himself over to Moon Knight who takes care of the monster. Now, what is going to happen to Steven as Marc Spector and Moon Knight come onto the scene? This first episode was hopefully only a taste for what’s to come. I had really hoped they would have released more than one, as I felt this could have easily been a two part episode. While we were following Steven, we didn’t get to see what was happening when he blacks out. Is that something we are going to see moving forward with Marc Spector?
I did really enjoy that Moon Knight was the big reveal at the end of the episode. The build up made that scene stand out in my opinion. Obviously, we will see more in the coming episodes, but this first episode was a ton of set up. I would have liked to have had another episode ready to watch to further immerse myself into the world. With only one episode out, I can say that both Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke are phenomenal. I can’t wait to see more from both of them.
Moon Knight is set apart from the rest of the MCU. Personally, I like that it’s not a fully integrated story, and maybe this allows Marvel to do more of these types of stories if Moon Knight performs well. Moon Knight releases every Wednesday on Disney+. The limited series is slated for six episodes, and Kevin Feige has promised that they don’t hold back. What do you think so far?