The Mirror Cracks in Moon Knight: “Summon the Suit”

Episode two of Moon Knight, “Summon the Suit,”  is just about as fast-paced as the first! This one was directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead and written by Michael Kastelein, and they deliver exposition as elegantly as possible in among some excellent character moments, the introduction of a new person for Steven to sputter at endearingly, and MOAR JACKALS.

Spoilers ahead!

Recap

While I expected episode two to continue the pilot’s momentum by following Marc-as-Moon-Knight out onto the roofs of London, instead we wake up back with Steven, who jolts out of a “nightmare” and promptly crashes to the floor at the end of his leg restraint.

(I’m not sure how Oscar Isaac is mining even more comedy notes from “I’ve woken up with my face all smushed” but he’s doing it.)

When he gets to work, he sees that areas are being cordoned off, and is at first terrified/relieved that his “nightmare” actually happened, then even more terrified/relieved at the idea that he might be able to see everything on security footage, thus proving to other people that it actually happened. But of course all the footage shows is Steven, huddling away from an invisible jackal, and then Marc, glaring into a security camera after he’s dispensed with said jackal.

But of course Marc and Steven look exactly alike, so Steven is sacked. The HR rep is somewhat sympathetic, and even suggests a hospital that might be able to help him, but I’m still not sure how much he’s told people about his specific issues.

He goes to see his friend The Living Statue, talks through the idea of tracking down the security locker whose key he found in the pilot, and finally hugs the Statue as though the other man suggested it. Where last episode he never acknowledged Steven, this time he shifts his eye to look at Steven, and he doesn’t seem annoyed by the hug.

Steven finds the storage facility, and the attendant knows him and takes him to Unit 43. Once inside, Steven discovers that the space is set up kind of like a military encampment. There’s a cot in one corner, and a duffel bag full of currency, a gun, and Marc’s passport. Once again the show uses natural mirrors brilliantly—the walls of the facility itself are somewhat reflective, so Steven and Marc can talk through them. Marc finally tells Steven who he is—or at least that he’s an avatar of Khonshu—and tries to get him to relinquish control.

Steven, being Steven, grabs the bag and marches straight out the door to take the stuff to the nearest police station. Except Khonshu is not going to allow that, chases him through the flickering hallways and into the street, where he’s almost hit by a motorcycle. And the woman on the motorcycle just happens to be Layla, the woman who left about 800 messages on Marc’s phone.

Layla takes him home, and we quickly learn that a) she’s his wife, er, Marc’s wife, b) Marc wants a divorce, she’s signed the papers, and she has them with her c) she does NOT buy all this “Steven” crap, and d) they were supposed to find that golden scarab together, is this why Marc disappeared, so he could find it for himself???

All this exposition hurtles poor Steven into what I can only describe as a Hugh Grant Event Horizon, and there is an orgy of stammering, attempted explanations, hair-fluffing, and head-ducking. At one point I’m pretty sure he insists he’d never divorce someone like her.

(Goddammit Oscar Isaac.)

Their adorable exposition is interrupted by people knocking on the door, and sweet naive baby Steven assumes they’re the police, come to arrest him about messing up a museum toilet. Luckily Layla swipes the scarab and climbs out the window before they get in. The show uses this moment for another better-than-it-could-have-been exposition volley, as Steven is handcuffed in the backseat of a car while the “officers” look up Marc Spector and narrate a few of his crimes. Steven keeps whimpering that he didn’t do any of that, occasionally catching his reflection in the rearview mirror or the car’s window.

Now obviously these people are not the police, or Scotland Yard, or MI-6. They’re followers of Arthur Harrow, delivering Steven into one of my favorite setpieces in this episode. The two leave Steven alone in the car, Steven and Marc argue, Marc wants to take over, Steven keeps saying no, and suddenly Arthur speaks over a walkie-talkie.

Arthur is the first person who has genuinely listened to Steven. He believes him about Marc, and he knows Khonshu is watching them, even anticipates a few of the god’s lines. He leads Steven into the community he runs—a series of apartment builds and a community center where people grow their own vegetables, keep goats, and are learning three languages each. That’s all before they get to the soup kitchen and Arthur announces he’s also vegan.

I hate to say it, but I’m leaning Ammitward, here.

Oh but WAIT, here comes the inevitable conversation about free will to spoil everything.

(Goddammit free will.)

Arthur explains that he understands Khonshu because he was Khonshu’s former avatar. Where Khonshu deals harsh judgement to evildoers, Ammit plans to get rid of the evildoers before the evildoing actually happens, which will be better for everyone in the long run. Arthur talks about this in an utterly calm, reasonable way. Loving, really. He wants everyone to be good. But he also longs for the day of Ammit’s judgement, when only the good are left standing. And when Steven points out that this plan means murdering children, Arthur sighs the long-suffering sigh of the True Believer, and begins to demand the scarab.

The scarab, it turns out, is the compass that will lead the followers of Ammit to her tomb. They need it so they can free her.

Marc, in the reflection of a soup bowl, yells at Steven not to give Layla up to Arthur—as though Steven would ever do such a thing—and Steven just keeps insisting he doesn’t have it, and Arthur starts talking about his cane and how it contains a fraction of Ammit’s power, and then Layla’s there, somehow, and now Arthur’s gone and summoned another jackal.

And here’s where things get even cooler! The jackal chases them through the compound, they barricade themselves in a room (…it seems to be full of mummies?), Layla yells at Steven to “summon the suit,” Marc yells at Steven to give up his body, and Steven mostly freaks out and keeps saying he can’t. Because, of course he can’t. He’s a terrified former gift shop worker. And in the midst of the chaos and the noise, Layla stops, crouches in front of him, and tells him it’s okay that he can’t.

Arthur is the first person we’ve seen listen to Steven, but Layla is the first one who’s heard him.

Which is nice and all but it doesn’t make the jackal go away. And here’s where shit gets even cooler: The (very real) jackal breaks the door down, but Layla can’t see him. She just sees Steven running away from… nothing. Somewhere in the midst of crashing through a window and falling to the street below, Steven summons the suit!

But it’s not the typical Moon Knight superhero costume we’ve seen, it’s a dapper, multi-layered glowing white suit suit.

Steven catches Marc in another window, and Marc mocks the suit a bit, but it seems to imbue Steven with strength, so they go with it. Steven fights the jackal and does a pretty good job, Layla helps by glassing the jackal in the face, but it’s clear that there are going to be civilian casualties if Marc doesn’t take over. Steven lets him in, Marc leads the jackal across the roofs and kills it.

Meanwhile, Layla watches a homeless man find the scarab that was dropped in the fight. She sees Arthur approach the man, promise him food in exchange for the scarab, and then kill him once it’s handed over. And, unfortunately, Arthur sees her watching him.

I’m sure that won’t turn out to be a problem in a future episode.

Which is when we get the other great scene, where Marc and Steven argue, this time with Steven trapped inside and learning how terrible it feels to be conscious in a corner of Marc’s mind while Marc pilots their body. Marc claims that Khonshu wants Layla for his next avatar, and that that’s why he’s trying to shut her out. The scene plays out as an intense, externalized inner monologue, with Khonshu himself turning up as soon as Marc has attacked the mirror Steven appeared in. This scene, more than any other so far, leans into the idea that these voices never really stop, and that Steven/Marc is in a constant battle with himself.

Khonshu says they have to go after the scarab, Marc asks where they’re going, Khonshu replies, “Where the hell do you think?” which, fair, and we cut to Steven huddling in mirror, watching Marc as he sits on a hotel room floor nursing a bottle of whiskey, looking out at a gorgeous view of the pyramids.

May you be well when you hear this

Once again my comments on this episode can best be summed up with adadfasggfdaggagfdh!!!!!!, but I’ll try to put my thoughts in an order, and, if possible, a language others can read.

How great was that suit summoning???

And how perfect are all the natural mirrors the show uses, either to allow Marc and Steven to talk, or to reinforce the idea of their fractured personality? Reflective walls, puddles, bowls, rearview mirrors, dark windows at night, the glass of Gus’ fish tank—it’s all so beautifully choreographed.

Seriously, I love the way the show is balancing Steven and Marc. Rather than just making Steven bumbling comic relief, and then getting him out of the way so serious mercenary Marc can take over, the writers are finding ways to involve Steven, and they’re giving space to his confusion and fear. (I think this is an especially good move to work with a character that’s not as well known as some of the other Marvel characters—Steven himself gets to be the onramp/audience avatar for people who are new to Moon Knight.) The fact that Arthur, the villain is the one who actually gets Steven, listens to him, and seems to genuinely want to help (kind of) is a really nice touch. As a former avatar of Khonshu, he understands the terror of living with all those voices and demands. If we want to get a little real world here, this felt similar to the tendency of people who have lived with mental illness to go into the mental health field—who can understand a person’a pain better than one who has also lived through it? But of course in this instance, Arthur’s empathy only goes so far. Ammit’s needs will always come first.

Even better is that Layla, seeing that Steven is real and not a put-on, accepts him as he is. How many times have we watched scenes of violence and sensory overload culminate in the hero somehow leveling up, bursting through all the noise and confusion to defeat the enemy? How easy would it have been for Marc to push past Steven’s defenses and come to the rescue? But no. Here Layla understands that Steven is overwhelmed and hits the brakes. Even with the jackal pounding the door down, she pushes her own fear aside and tells Steven they’ll find another way. Here Marc asks Steven to let him take over, but when Steven can’t drop his walls, Marc waits until later in the fight. And the writers work with that to give us a Steven-centric fight scene.

First off, the suit he summons—like, of course! Steven may well live in the Marvel universe, but no one seems to be talking about the Avengers or the Snap or that time Thor let a bunch of mythical animals get loose in London, so when Steven hears the word “suit” he thinks of a nice, well-tailored, dapper suit. But since he is still an avatar of Khonshu, it comes out white as fresh mummy wrapping, with a mask. He doesn’t know how to fight, so he just imitates what he thinks a fight is supposed to be, and punches an invisible jackal in the face. (Meanwhile, let me say it again, Layla glasses that jackal like they’re fighting over the jukebox in a dive bar. I love Layla.) He only cedes control to Marc when he realizes that innocent people are going to be hurt, which is a chef’s kiss character moment, and it also allows us to see the difference when Marc Spector, mercenary/conscious superhero, takes over fighting the mythical beast. We finally get our moonlit rooftop chase, we get Moon Knight using his crescent blades, and we get a skewered jackal who dissolves into sand.

Which, again, leads into Leah’s Second Favorite Scene. Marc and Steven finally get to talk as people, with no looming fight. Steven learns how terrible it is to be locked away while Marc does stuff, and immediately recognizes that this is how Marc spends most of his time. Marc opens up about his fears for Layla, Steven freaks out at the idea that Marc’s killed people, Oscar Isaac plays both parts beautifully, and it all unspools while Steven stands forlorn in a shattered mirror.

But the best scene, I think, is the one Steven shares with Arthur. I’ll get into it a little more below, but the main thing I love is the razor sharp choices the show is making about Arthur’s fanaticism. For a few minutes, he really is the kindest person we’ve met so far. His followers seem happy. He’s doing real, quantifiable good. BUT. It’s all in the service of a fairly terrifying moral ideology. His love has limits, his empathy goes only so far, and ultimately people are just microscopic cogs in Ammit’s catastrophic plan. I love the way the show plays his particular style of religious mania against Steven’s dissociative despair. And then to learn that he was once Khonshu’s avatar? I’m assuming he’s telling the truth about that—his disgust for the god he used to love, but has since rejected for a different, better god, felt way too real. Ethan Hawke is layering an enormous amount of pain and deadpan wit into this performance so far, and his chemistry with Oscar Isaac is the highlight of a highlight-filled show.

Schrader Scale (of Judgement)

Not as much this week! Although I do feel bound to mention: Steven Grant, a gift shop worker, has to be bound to a bed with a leg restraint so he doesn’t wander off in the night. In Paul Schrader’s fourth film as writer/director, Cat People, Irena Gallier, a gift shop worker, has to be bound to a bed with multiple ropes so she doesn’t wander off into the night… as an enormous black leopard that eats people after having sex with them.

There’s also a fascinating conversation about free will embedded in the face off between Arthur and Steven, as Steven explains that while Khonshu’s justice comes only after people have committed evil, Ammit pre-judges, and will pre-emptively destroy all evildoers once she comes to power. This is how he plans to achieve “Heaven on Earth.”

There are a couple of things at work here. First, I’m super amused by Ammit-as-Ancient-Egyptian-Minority-Report, but let’s not drag PKD into this—while he and Paul Schrader certainly agree on some stuff, there are some branches even I am not prepared to wander out on

But what Steven and Arthur are really talking about it free will and the ability to change. Arthur wants Ammit to wipe Evil from the Earth, so the good can live in harmony. But this requires assuming that once a person’s personality is set there’s no hope for them, with, as Steven points out, the very real possibility that Ammit will murder children because she sees evil actions in their futures. Arthur even uses the analogy of getting rid of a diseased limb (which he describes in very ableist language so who’s evil now, Arthur?) which is maybe a nod to that bit in Matthew about casting your hand away if it offends you. But as Steven points out, children aren’t limbs, first of all, and thinking something is not the same as doing it. (Which is where you crash straight into the brick wall of Matthew 5:27–28, and the idea that, yes, thinking a thing is as bad as doing the thing, and that brick wall, of course, is the blank and unrelenting surface onto which most of Paul Schrader’s films are projected.)

But what they’re getting at, in a fun, comic book adaptation kind of way, is whether humans are capable of change. If a human commits evil (it’s too early in the morning to define evil) and then feels terrible about it, regrets it, makes amends in some way, changes their path—are they themselves evil? If a mystical entity can see into a person’s mind and see the potential for evil, should that entity hang back and allow them the possibility to change, to reject whatever the evil act was, to grow?

Is this too much to put on a comic book adaptation? Maybe! Go watch Cat People, it’s ridiculous, the Bowie song is fun, the Morodor score is GREAT, and Ed Begley Jr. gets his arm ripped all the way off by a leopard.

I can not read the hieroglyphs!

Oscar Isaac (to Oscar Isaac): “I don’t care how bloody handsome you are!”

***

Arthur: “I’m curious… do you think Khonshu choose you as his avatar because your mind would be easy to break? Or because it was broken already?”
Steven: “I’m not broken! I just need some help, maybe.”
Arthur: “That’s right. That’s why I’m here.”

***

Steven (pointing): “Goat!”
Arthur: “…yes.”

***

Arthur, on Khonshu: “He often throws temper tantrums. Like a two-year-old! None of the gods respect him. Perhaps that’s why he banished.”

***

Arthur, on Khonshu’s Columbo-like tendencies: “…but with Khonshu it’s always ‘one more thing.’”

***

Steven: “A thought can’t be evil, can it? I think about killing my boss all the time, but I wouldn’t actually do it!”

***

Steven: “I kind of draw a line there at child murder.”

Leah Schnelbach loves it when fights reveal character! Especially when that character is Steven Grant! Come debate free will at the vegan soup kitchen that is Twitter!