Stray thoughts from rewatching Moon Knight (part 2) (plus Agatha)

Finished off the Moon Knight rewatch!

With a detour in the middle to watch episodes 1-2 of Agatha All Along. I’ll put those at the end, for easier spoiler-cutting.

MK observations, episodes 4-6:

• Headcanon that Marc was trying really hard to front the whole time they were exploring the tomb, but his part of the brain kept going “nope, this is clearly a cave, we’re not coming out and being stuck in a cave.”
• Probably doesn’t help that Steven (after kissing Marc’s wife) goes “what are you going to do, drown me?” and Marc huffs “I should.” (Fascinating that he can be casually-grumpy about this, in light of the backstory we’re about to see. Although it’s clearly not a real threat — he’d have to be furious and/or manic to say that seriously.)
• There’s a recurring trope in the MCU, where some character/group will be conspicuously bad at their job, and I’ll think “Aha, this is setting up a reveal that they’re sabotaging the heroes on purpose! This is all part of a sinister plan!” …And then it turns out, no, they’re just kinda bad at their job. Bucky’s therapist at the start of FATWS is the first non-MK example that comes to mind.
• So, the five Egyptian gods who dismiss Khonshu’s accusations against Harrow are this. They’re being snowed by Harrow way too easily. Surely they’re conspiring because they want Ammit released, right? Episode 4 only added to the theory — it opens with this gorgeously-ominous shot of Osiris’ Avatar putting sealed-in-stone Khonshu in a little lit-up alcove…and then we zoom out, to reveal a whole wall of alcoves with other gods in ushabti jail. Clearly they’ve been consolidating their power over the centuries, sealing up dissenters one by one…
• …But no. Once Harrow has Ammit’s ushabti, he comes back and murders all the remaining Avatars. Those five gods were just that bad at running a functional god-society.
• The Doctor Harrow who manifests in the Duat…almost fits the trope? On first watch I thought he was produced by Ammit interfering with the Duat somehow, to convince Marc and Steven to give up. (In the comics run this is loosely based on, their “your Moon Knight experiences are a delusion, stop fighting it” therapist is Ammit.) Still think he’s deliberately bad at his job, but it doesn’t seem like there was any clever plan in mind, just “be the generic embodiment of all Marc’s psych-treatment insecurities.”
• Props to the crew for not even trying to make a cliffhanger out of “ooo, maybe the show so far was all Marc being delusional?” They know their target audience has already seen this Buffy episode. And this Doctor Who episode. And this Community episode. And this SGA episode. And this Hello From The Magic Tavern episode. And — you get the idea.
• Lukewarm about how they did try to make a cliffhanger out of “could Marc Spector be Dead For Real this time?” The comics tried to do the same cliffhanger at the end of the last run. As if Marc Spector is ever Dead For Real.
• Kinda disappointed real-Harrow didn’t get a cool magic outfit when he was declared Ammit’s Avatar. I know we’re stretching the CGI budget as it is, but come on, is a menacing croc-skin suit too much to ask?

I swear I’ve posted about this before, but a quick search of the blog didn’t find it, so let’s cover some Cool Duat Choices now. Still not over how, in the pre-cave flashbacks, little Marc is shown in a solid light-blue shirt…

…then in the scenes leading up to “the moment when Steven split” (I kinda figure their dissociation history is more complicated than that, but Marc thinks this is when they split, which is what matters to the narrative right now), the kid is in a checked white/dark-blue shirt…

…then when we see them in the Duat manifesting separately, they’re both in solid-color shirts. One white, one dark-blue.

Separately (didn’t spot this one on my own, but I’m not over it either): the afterlife/headspace sarcophagus Jake is definitely in:

Compared to their memories of their abuser:

Yyyyeah. Put this slide in my TED talk about how, between the headmates, Steven is most influenced by Elias — both in good attributes, like his compassion and preference for nonviolent solutions, and bad ones, like his (initial) denial of the abuse Marc went through — and Jake is most influenced by Wendy.

…uh, to be clear, this is not going in a “what if Jake is the ~*~eeevil~*~ alter” direction. Anyone who thinks that is working off of their own biases/preconceptions, not what’s actually on-screen. Canon never shows Jake doing a single thing to hurt Marc, or Steven, or Layla. (Marc and Steven are way meaner to each other than Jake ever is to them.)

It’s more like: maybe the original inspiration for Jake was their brain going “what if…a scary, angry person, who deals with their trauma by turning it outward, who doesn’t hesitate to hurt other people…was on our side?”

And, okay, this is more than enough MK thoughts for one post.

Except to say, hey, Disney, if you give us a season 2, I will immediately get the family re-subscribed, and never miss an episode.

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( Agatha episodes 1-2, spoilers inside )