Moon Knight episode four ended on quite a cliffhanger – a hippopotamus-sized cliffhanger. As we delve into what the actual fudge is happening and who that was, we're going to hit Moon Knight spoilers, so be warned!
Moon Knight episode four picks up in the immediate aftermath of episode three, in which Konshu has been imprisoned in stone thanks to his manipulation of the night sky (a big no-no, though one of the more visually interesting moments in the show so far). This means that Marc and Steven are left without powers and without access to the Moon Knight suit.
More frustratingly for Marc, Steve refuses to let him back in control of their body, which presents him and Layla with problems – mainly that Steven is far less experienced when it comes to adventuring than Marc. Of course, episode four is less about the literal physical journey Layla and Steven (and by necessity, Marc) go on and rather the beginning of our journey into Marc's mind.
The show has yet to officially diagnose Marc, though references to him being unwell have been made and the obvious presence of at least one alter personality, that sad date scene in episode one, as well as his comics origin story, all lead to him having Dissociative Identity Disorder. This hasn't been fully explored till now.
In the action-related climax of the episode, Layla and Steven are being hunted by Arthur (Ethan Hawke) and his men in the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great – which, it turns out, is where Ammit's stone statue resides, as Alexander was the 'voice of Ammit' (like Marc is the fist of Khonshu). Steven lets Marc out briefly, only for him to be shot by Arthur and to fall, dramatically, into a pool of water.
When he wakes, Marc is near catatonic, strapped to a wheelchair in a brightly lit, white room in a mental hospital. On the TV, a cheesy Indiana Jones-style rip-off movie is playing, whose titular adventurer hero's name is, you guessed it, Steven Grant.
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A fellow unnamed patient approaches, and as Marc looks up at her we see it is in fact Layla (or at least, a character played by May Calamawy). Also there is Donna, Steven's boss from the British Museum and, most terrifyingly, none other than Arthur Harrow.
Except he isn't Arthur Harrow, he's Marc's psychologist – and Marc is in a mental hospital, presumably for his dissociative identity disorder. Heavily sedated, Marc glances around the office and sees Arthur in sandals (a huge departure from the broken-glass-in-moccasins vibe he rocks throughout the rest of the show), as well as the familiar cane. There are also Egyptian statues all over the office, and a drawing of Khonshu himself.
The doctor approaches Marc with a detached, almost bemused kindness – pity, perhaps. He tells Marc that the high dosage of medication is because of his destructive behaviour and refusal to admit that he is sick and needs help.
"Every time I ask you a direct question, you are triggered, you're overwhelmed," he says to Marc. "And that's normal, right. Many of us, when asked to look into our innermost experiences, into the nucleus of our personality, we close our eyes. it's understandable."
Then he says: "I can't help you if you don't help yourself," a verbatim quote of what he said to Marc before he shot him in Egypt.
Marc manages to escape the office and runs down the meandering, identical hallways until he bursts into a room to find a huge sarcophagus, with someone pounding away inside on the lid begging to be let out. Marc opens it to find none other than his alter personality Steven Grant.
The two hug, and vow to help each other escape. But as they pull the door open to head out to make good on their plan, they're confronted with, well, what can only be described as an anthropomorphic hippopotamus.
While this might at first appear to be a figment of the quite unwell Marc/Steven's imagination, or even a drug-induced hallucination, it's actually Taweret, the Egyptian god of children and fertility, and the protector of mothers and children.
Thanks to the premiere red carpet, we know that this is the case. Taweret voice-actress (though perhaps we'll see her in human form, too) Antonia Salib told Variety: "Personally, it felt like such a collaborative process, which was brilliant for such a big organization. From the moment when I read the scenes when I was auditioning to when I started working with the director Mohamed Diab and the costume team to VFX, it felt like I was given license to create my character and everyone was on board together."
How Taweret factors into Marc/Steven's escape from the mental hospital, if he even *is* really there at all, remains to be seen. Despite the fact that Taweret is a historically accurate deity, there is no Marvel comic character inspired by her, so we have no material upon which to base our guess.
The hospital itself could be a hallucination or, perhaps, an illusion meant to imprison him, and Taweret herself could be part of that illusion. Or some other uncanny bending of reality and the spiritual.
The way the show has begun to bend reality is finally tantalising for audiences, after three and 3/4 episodes of chummy-slapstick comedy, episode four's ending is giving us more meat, more insight, and more horror and surrealism to play with.
Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+, with new episodes every Wednesday.
Gabriella Geisinger is a freelance film critic and journalist, with a focus on J-drama & film, and the Japanese production industry. She was previously Locations Editor at Screen International and Deputy Movies Editor at Digital Spy. Her writing can also befound in Curzon, 1883, and more. A born and raised New Yorker, she loves coffee and the colour black, obviously.
