On Wednesday, March 30, Marvel debuted its most ambitious comic book adaptation to date, Moon Knight. This highly anticipated series features a hero many Marvel fans are unfamiliar with. In 1975, the character Moon Knight first appeared in the comic Werewolf by Night, written and created by Doug Moench and artist Don Perlin. From 1980 to 1983, Moon Knight was featured in his own comics alongside their TV show adaptation.
The six-episode limited series follows Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant, a gift shop employee at a British museum. Isaac has a history with Disney, having played Poe Dameron in their Star Wars films, as well as having played X-Men supervillain Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016.
In the first episode, we follow along as Grant struggles with dissociative identity disorder, where the audience learns he shares a body with Marc Spector (Moon Knight), a mercenary who calls his powers from the Egyptian god Khonshu. By the end of the first episode, Grant has come to realize that whenever he is unconscious, his body is occupied by Spector. Grant and Spector clash repeatedly with cult leader and series villain Arthur Harrow (played by Ethan Hawke).
Critics got a sneak peek into the series’ first two or four episodes, depending on when their review was published. Here’s what they had to say:
“Moon Knight is an MCU departure in both topic and tone, spicing the superhero formula with a cocktail of comedy-horror and a twist of old-school adventure,” writes James Dyer from Empire Magazine.
“Moon Knight brings us a story unlike any other in the MCU. Its faithfulness to the madness of its comic origin is spot on, but the storytelling brings it to life in a completely unexpected way,” says Flick Fan Nation contributor Austin Burke.
While many praised the show and its captivatingly bizarre storyline, there were critics that did not find interest in the show at all. “The first three quarters of this six-episode season is a vague story that takes a long time to go nowhere. There’s not enough character for a character study and not a clear enough plot for a satisfying thriller,” writes Liam Mathews from TV Guide.
Grace Randolph from Beyond the Trailer said, “The first episode is fantastic, but the quality quickly drops off. Steven is fun but Isaac makes the other personality, Marc, quite boring. Moon Knight and his mythology are sloppily defined, making it hard to get excited about this new addition to the MCU.”
Whether or not critics approve of the show doesn’t matter to writer Jeremy Slater. The aim for his adaptation of Moon Knight was “to make something that established the character as uniquely edgy and complex.” In an interview with The New York Times, he went on further to say, “Millions of people are going to watch this…you may only get one shot to work on something like that. So, our approach in the writers’ room was to push the boundaries of how weird we can make it.”
Like all Disney+ original television series, episodes are released on a weekly basis. You can catch up on the first episode now and watch a new episode every Wednesday.
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