Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Moon Knight’ On Disney+, A Marvel Series Where Oscar Isaac Plays A Mercenary With Dueling Personalities

Oscar Isaac has been a Star Wars star, in a gut-wrenching HBO miniseries with newly-minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain, thinky sci-fi like Ex Machina and thinky period pieces like Inside Llewyn Davis. So to say he has range is an understatement. Which is why he doesn’t seem to be an odd fit for what seems like one of the thinkiest MCU series yet, where he plays a soldier who has been so traumatized by war, he has dissociative identity disorder, and one of this personalities is more Llewyn Davis than Poe Dameron.

MOON KNIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: With Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain Of Sand” playing, we see the hands and feet of a man ceremoniously having a drink, breaking the glass, putting she shards in his shoes and putting his bare feet in those shoes.

The Gist: Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) wakes up in a cluttered London flat, not quite knowing how he got there. There’s tape on the door jam to indicate whether he left, and he’s tethered to his bed via an ankle cuff. Steven did all of this himself, because he knows there are times when he’s found himself somewhere and has no idea how he got there.

He works in the museum gift shop and he fancies him as an expert in ancient Egypt, much to the dismay of his boss Donna (Lucy Thackeray). A pretty tour guide comes over and reminds him of their steakhouse date, a date Steven, a vegan, doesn’t remember making.

He leaves that night, talks to a statue in the park, straps himself into bed and tries whatever he can to keep himself awake. But he soon blacks out, and finds himself lying in a field in the Alps, face bloodied. There’s a voice (F. Murray Abraham) that he hears bemoaning the fact that “the idiot is in control.”

He has to run from some thugs chasing him with guns who are looking for a scarab that he found in his hands. Then he encounters a crowd in the town square listening to a zealot named Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), who judges people on whether they’re good or bad; if the scales on his arm tattoo go out of balance, he is forced to snuff out the life of someone he deems evil.

Harrow spots Steven, and during the subsequent chase, Steven blacks out at times, only to wake up and see that he’s somehow killed or otherwise neutralized the people threatening him. He then suddenly wakes up back at the flat, strapped into his bed. He notices that the fish in his tank is different, which leads him to try to see other signs that he’s doing things he doesn’t remember. He goes on the date with the tour guide, and is surprised when she curses him out when he calls; he then finds out he lost two whole days.

He manages to find a burner phone in a loose wall panel; one of the only numbers it’s called is for a woman named Layla (May Calamawy); when he calls it, she calls him “Marc” and wonders where he’s been. He sees a reflection that stares back at him and doesn’t move with him.

When he goes back to the museum, begging to see security footage, he’s confronted by Harrow, who tries to get him to tap into his dark side; he’s surprised when he is “judged” to be good when he grabs Steven’s wrists. Massive monsters are unleashed, and when Steven is backed into the restroom, he meets Marc Spector in the mirror; he looks like Steven, but is American and way more confident. He tells Steven to let him take over if he wants to get out of what seems like a no-win situation.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take a typical dark MCU-related drama with a bit of a sense of humor — Hawkeye comes to mind — and layer in a severe case of dissociative identity disorder a la Sybill, and you’ve got Moon Knight.

Our Take: What we liked about Moon Knight, created by Jeremy Slater based on the Marvel character created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin, is that the show starts with a bit of a switcheroo in a DID-related plot. Yes, we see the mild-mannered Steven throughout the first episode, and we’re led to believe that Steven is the base personality, with Marc and the Moon Knight being the offshoot personalities.

But that’s actually not the case, a notion that becomes stronger by the end of the episode. You don’t learn the skills Marc has if your base personality is the too-nice-for-his-own-good Steven. No, Marc is the base personality, and he’s reluctantly become a mercenary. The meek Steven might be his brain’s way of protecting him from getting himself killed.

Either way, Isaac plays both Steven and Marc beautifully. We know that Isaac has both acting and action bona fides; there aren’t many actors who can pull off being Poe Dameron in the final Star Wars trilogy and the emotionally gut-wrenching series Scenes From A Marriage, but Isaac is one of those who can. He gets to practice both sides of that skillset in Moon Knight; he plays Steven as the passive guy he is, right down to his gentle British accent. We see a little of him as Marc, but that’s when the Poe side of Isaac is evident — confident, even a bit arrogant. We’re yet to see him in action a Moon Knight, but we’re pretty sure that whatever Isaac does that doesn’t involve his stunt double will be convincing.

Director Mohamed Diab keeps things fairly dark in the first episode, but not so dark as you have no idea what’s going on. That was our big criticism of Hawkeye; some scenes were so dark we had no feel for the action. We’re suspecting that as we get to see Marc more and Steven less, the action will be ramped up. There’s already a lot of it in the first episode, but much of it happens during Steven’s blackouts. If we flip things to Marc/Moon Knight’s perspective, we’ll see more of the action in progress. But for now, the format is refreshing given all of the messy clashes we’ve seen from Disney+’s MCU series.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The monsters are thrown out of the bathroom, tossed around like ragdolls. We then pan into the bathroom and see Moon Knight in all his regalia.

Sleeper Star: F. Murray Abraham plays Khonshu, the Egyptian moon god who uses the Moon Knight as his avatar. Abraham, whether in voice or in person, is a scenery chewer par excellence, and he knows how to modulate his pompousness to both dramatic and comedic effect.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Harrow tells Steven about the god betrayed by her avatar, Steven mumbles “Blue people… not the movie…. anime?” Sure, he’s scared, but would he really think about the movie at that point?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Moon Knight rides on Oscar Isaac’s ability to believably inhabit distinct personalities, but that might be more than enough for people to watch this six-episode MCU side story.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.