‘Moon Knight’ Episode 3 Recap: The Gods Must Be Crazy

It’s not easy being a superhero for Moon Knight. I mean, I guess it’s never easy being a superhero, but Moon Knight has it harder than most. With two secret identities who don’t get along with each other and a grumpy Egyptian god riding shotgun, the so-called avatar of Khonshu has to rely either on all his internal voices getting along, or else swapping between them at exactly the right moments to further his quest. Needless to say, this is something of a struggle.

That’s the backbeat for everything that happens in Moon Knight Episode 3 (“The Friendly Type”). Technically it’s about the hero’s quest to stop Arthur Harrow, the embittered former recipient of the Moon Knight powers, from unleashing the vengeful Egyptian sun goddess Ammit. But what it most reminds me of is a video game in which selecting the right weapon at the right time as quickly as possible is the difference between life and death. Only in this game, the weapons are all barking contradictory orders at you, and there’s no guarantee they won’t possess your mind once you grab ahold.

The story is really pretty simple to follow. In Cairo, the hyper-competent Marc Spector starts bracing various goons for information on Harrow’s location, frequently blacking out in mid-fight and waking up someplace else. When all of the goons wind up dead—with a little help from the bad advice of Khonshu, who was oh so sure one of them would talk instead of opting for death—Khonshu creates an artificial eclipse to summon a council of the gods.

This takes place in a bitchin’ looking temple inside the great period of Giza, where fellow avatars like Yatzil (Díana Bermudez), avatar of the love goddess Hathar, and council leader Selim (Khalid Abdalla), avatar of the god of the dead Osiris, hold court. Here, Marc speaks almost solely in Khonshu’s voice—but he’s outmatched by Harrow, who shows up and proclaims his innocence while also casting aspersions on Marc’s mental health. (Fair!)

The gods allow Harrow to leave and conclude their meeting, though not before Yatzil tips Marc off to the existence of a stolen sarcophagus that contains clues as to the location of Ammit’s tomb. Now it’s a race against time, since Harrow has used his magic scarab compass doodad to find the tomb already.

With the help of Layla, an experienced black marketeer, Marc travels to the estate of an illicit antiques dealer named Anton Mogart (Gaspard Ulliel). With a little help from Steven, who reenters their shared body, they begin to piece together the clues hidden in the sarcophagus’s wrapping, but this triggers the suspicion of Mogart and his goons. And when Harrow shows up, taunting Layla about her murdered father, he magically destroys the sarcophagus before Steven/Marc can finish with it.

So a battle ensues, a pretty violent matter involving spears and crescent-moon blades and Moon Knight’s indestructible “healing armor.” (Seriously, they stick the guy so full of spears he looks like a deranged porcupine, but he keeps on ticking.)

Afterwards, though Layla is now doubly suspicious of Marc thanks to a warning from Harrow that he’s hiding something, Steven resurfaces and uses his knowledge to piece together a star chart from the tatters he took from the sarcophagus. Then Khonshu literally rewinds the night sky thousands of years so that the stars will be in exactly the right place, enabling Layla and Steven/Marc/Moon Knight to track down the tomb.

Unfortunately for Khonshu—and for Marc/Steven—this triggers the wrath of the other gods, who use their avatars to imprison Khonshu in a tiny statue. Marc/Steven pass out, Harrow reenters the temple of the gods to gloat and sardonically credit his old frenemy Khonshu for his coming victory.

We’re now fully halfway through Moon Knight’s short six-episode run, and by now it’s pretty clear what the show’s real selling points are: Oscar Isaac as our troubled hero, and F. Murray Abraham as the voice of the surly, petty god who powers him. Isaac plays Mark Spector as a straight-down-the-middle action hero in the Jason Bourne vein…then switches gears to play Steven Grant as a refugee from some unmade British slapstick remake of Night at the Museum. All the while he has Abraham’s booming voice in his ear, making demands and doing freaky shit with the sky. It’s a hoot.

That said, the fight choreography is a mixed bag, especially for a series that sold itself on being sort of a return to the grim and gritty combat of the old Marvel/Netflix shows. It’s not that the rooftop knife fight that opened the episode or the spear battle near its conclusion were bad, per se; I just don’t see them sticking in my memory. This, of course, is a pitfall for nearly all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s products—full of sound and fury, but weightless in the end.

Ah well. Even if I weren’t getting paid to watch it, I’d stick with Moon Knight on the strength of Oscar Isaac’s unusual star turn and the extremely cool-looking superheroic power of his costume. And at a scant six episodes, it’s a very small time investment relatively speaking; fighting aside, one advantage this show has over its lengthier Daredevil-style antecedents is that there will be no room for the dreaded Netflix Bloat. For now, at least, the Fist of Khonshu still has me in its grip.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.