Moon Knight Episode 4 Review: The Tomb

Instead, the creators of the show have taken this opportunity to adapt one of the greatest series in the character’s history: Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood’s Moon Knight, where Marc is locked up in a mental institution and has to find a way out while exploring his own mind. As he does so, he goes on a surreal, cosmic journey that slowly unpacks what is real and what might be a figment of his imagination. As a comic, it’s fantastic and well worth your time. As part of this TV show, it’s a sudden and wild left turn that expects the audience to go along for the ride.

Lemire’s 2016 story could easily hold up an entire season of television by itself, and though I’m as delighted as the next nerd to see it visualized on screen, Moon Knight intends to tackle it with only two episodes left to go! Once again, I find myself in “it’s a bold strategy, Cotton” territory, wondering if the show can ultimately make good on its ambitious narrative. Sprawling as it is, it feels way too constrained by time and format.

Has everything we’ve seen in the first three-and-a-half episodes of Moon Knight just been part of Marc’s fantasy? Is he really a patient in a mental institution who has used elements of his surroundings to create an epic action-adventure story in his mind? These are questions that the show now wants us to ask ourselves, and by slotting this scenario in as a twist some way into the series, some viewers are likely going to be frustrated by it – what was the point in watching all of that if it wasn’t “real”? Others may wonder why they’re even watching the twist play out at this stage if there is indeed an ongoing adventure in Ammit’s tomb that needs to be wrapped up. (We try to answer some of those questions here)

For me, there’s also a Marvel elephant in the room right now. As much as Moon Knight has tried to pull us into the confusing and often upsetting world of Marc Spector’s mental turmoil, it hasn’t been able to get close to the level of skill and intrigue that Noah Hawley’s Marvel series Legion captured some years ago with the character of David Haller, an unreliable narrator misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and possessed by a parasitic mutant.

It’s unfair to compare the two in some respects, but important in others. Marvel Studios has probably spent more money on Moon Knight than Fox did on the first season of Legion, but splashing that cash on additional CG and action set pieces to give people what they expect from an MCU project has rather come at the cost of character development that should be at the heart of the show. And where Legion was given more episodes to linger on world-building and questions of villainy, Moon Knight has restrained itself to just six, pushing the story forward so forcefully and choppily that I can’t help but struggle to root for its lead.