Last week’s episode of Moon Knight left Steven and Layla stranded in the desert and Khonshu trapped in stone. With Harrow having already reached Ammit’s tomb, things don’t look good for Marc and Layla but at least now they know where they have to go. And in this week’s fourth episode of the series, things get really crazy.
The episode opens with one of the avatars walking the new Khonshu idol to a wall, where he places it on a shelf. He backs away and the camera reveals that Khonshu is now one of many idols on this wall. It appears several other gods have met the same fate as Khonshu.
We rejoin Steven and Layla in the desert. Layla tries to wake Steven, who is unconscious after the ordeal with that resulted in Khonshu’s imprisonment. Before she can wake him though, a truck pulls up and begins shooting at her. She runs and hides in the truck she drove in earlier and eventually outsmarts Harrows men, killing them both. Steven wakes up and stands behind her, looking confused.
Steven and Layla make their war to the newly-found location of Ammit’s tomb. Layla tries to tell Steven they’re going to need Marc, who appears in a reflection and agrees with her. Steven refuses though and tells Layla they made a deal – that once they found Ammit’s tomb, Marc would go away. Marc objects, saying he’s going to get both of them killed. Layla also objects, saying Marc can’t just disappear from her life too.
Steven convinces her that he had already disappeared from her life an eventually she agrees. They leave their truck and begin walking to the tomb. They find Harrow’s camp and dig site, which now appears to be abandoned. The two of them split up and begin looking for any supplies they can take from the camp.
Alone in one of the tents, Steven picks up a flashlight as Marc appears in a reflection to tell him he looks scared. The two argue a bit over who should have control of the body. Before Steven leaves, Marc warns him to keep his hands off Layla.
We get a glimpse of some sort of sharp tool, covered in blood, in the sand, foreshadowing something ominous waiting for the pair inside the tomb. They prepare to repel down into the tomb and Layla leans in for a kiss, but Steven interrupts her by telling her that Marc is trying to protect her from Khonshu. Layla makes it clear that she prefers Steven to Marc these days and he kisses her before she repels down into the tomb. As Steven looks down into the tomb, he suddenly punched himself in the face, clearly the actions of Marc.
Layla gets down into the tomb to find two big statues standing guard. She begins to write something in the sand before Steven crashes down into the tomb as well. He shows his excitement for this adventure before finding what Layla wrote. She explains that it’s for her father who was an archaeologist.
The pair ignore some clicking sounds as they make their way into the tomb and Layla explains that her father died on the job. Steven tries to make her feel better by explaining that he would be proud of what Layla has accomplished here.
They venture into the tomb and find a room that appears to be the start of a maze. Layla finds some bullets on the ground and wonders aloud what Harrow’s men would have been shooting at. Meanwhile, Steven traces a design on a table of some sort in the room and they both recognize it as the eye of Horus. Layla also realizes that the resources it took to build this place mean that this tomb, which holds the last avatar of Ammit, belonged to a Pharaoh.
Steven figures out the puzzle of the eye of Horus, which points them in the right direction. They come to a room that appears to have been used for some sort of ritual sacrifices and find fresh blood on the ground leading toward the exit. Now definitely terrified, Steven decides they should look for another way out. They decide to explore a second level in the room instead, with Steven going up first.
Steven explains that Ammit should be bound to an ushabti, the same sort of statue that we say Khonshu trapped in. He finds another exit but before Layla can make her way up to join him, they hear gunshots followed by that same clicking sound. Some sort of zombie/mummy-like creature drags a bleeding man into the room puts him on the table where it pulls out the same bloody tool we saw earlier. The creature kills the man and begins to ritualistically remove his organs.
Layla hides on the other side of the table and Marc watches from the second level. Eventually, as Layla tries to escape, she makes a noise and the creature starts to look for her. Marc then inadvertently gets its attention and the creature comes for him. Layla distracts hit by throwing something and they make a run for it, in separate directions.
Layla comes to a room with a narrow ledge over a very long fall. As she hears the clicking noise behind her again, she begins to make her way across the ledge. By this point, the show has completely taken on the vibe of a horror movie, as the creepy clicking noises continue to echo in the shadows and a hand reaches out of the wall for Layla.
She makes it across the ledge, only to be grabbed and pulled into a dark crevasse by the mummified hands. She manages to fight her way back out though and one of the creatures attacks her. They fight near the ledge and eventually Layla throws the creature over while also falling herself. However, we see that she grabbed the ledge and manages to pull herself to safety. She lets out a cathartic scream and rolls over to see that Harrow is watching her.
It’s worth mentioning that these kinds of horrific, supernatural creatures have a long history in Moon Knight's lore. In addition to werewolves, Moon Knight has faced all kinds of nightmarish things so, while zombie-mummy-things may seem a bit out of place in the MCU, they fit in very well with this character.
Steven finds the sarcophagus of the mystery pharaoh and can’t contain his excitement. He is interrupted though by Marc’s reflection who points out that he kissed Layla. Steven pushes past his disapproval and continues to move toward the sarcophagus, eventually learning that this is the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great. It makes sense. One of the world’s most successful conquerors had the power of Ammit at his disposal.
Lyla tries to walk away from Harrow after they her some distant gunfire. He stops her in her tracks though when he mentions that her father used to call her his little scarab. He mentions that her father always believed that Egyptian gods walk among them, which of course now has been confirmed. He goes on to tell her that Marc still hasn’t told her the truth and she tells Harrow she’s listening.
Steven reluctantly pushes open the sarcophagus and finds a mummy, not a living one this time, inside. He doesn’t immediately see the ushabti and realizes that is it hidden in the mouth of Alexander the Great. He removes the wrap from the mummy’s face and pulls off the lower jaw so he can reach inside the mouth.
Harrow tells Layla that Marc was one of the mercenaries that killed her father. He says by reading Marc’s scales, he could see that Marc remembers everything from that day and he gives Layla details about her father so that she would believe him. The information has clearly hurt Layla and she begins to walk away as Harrow yell at her to wake up.
Steven finds the ushabti of Ammit just as Layla enters the tomb. She doesn’t share Steven’s excitement and instead demands to talk to Marc about what happened to her father. Marc takes over the body but immediately ignores Layla and tries to get her to leave quickly instead. Layla refuses and demands answers and eventually Marc admits that, while he didn’t kill her father, he was there. He explains that he was shot that day too and should have been killed after his partner got greedy and tried to kill everyone on their dig site.
This is Moon Knight’s origin in the comics. Marc’s partner, Raul Bushman, killed everyone, including Marc. However, Marc was saved by Khonshu when he became his avatar and Bushman went on to become Moon Knight’s primary antagonist, for good reason.
Harrow’s men catch up to Marc and Layla and Marc tells her to run while he holds them off. Harrow and his men surround Marc. Harrow tries to talk Marc into surrendering but he instead attacks his men, killing a few of them before Harrow shoots Marc himself.
Marc falls back into the water on the floor of the tomb and appears to die. The image slowly fades to a boy and a man making their way through a jungle, the aspect ratio now telling us we’re watching something fairly old. The man, who is clearly an adventurer, is revealed to be named Dr. Steven Grant. The camera pulls away from a TV, where the old Steven Grant movie was playing and we turn to see that we are in some kind of institution.
We see all kinds of elements from the show’s story to this point, including Donna, who appears as a patient holding a plush scarab, a woman drawing Khonshu, a goldfish and eventually a guard who was previously one of Harrow’s men. Layla then shows up and also appears to be a patient. She gets excited when the bingo card Marc is holding appears to be a winner and she rushes to a man who has been calling numbers. Oddly, the numbers he calls don’t really line up with the game of Bingo. He even calls a T at one point. It’s strange but I haven’t been able to crack whether or not it means anything.
Marc sees his reflection and begins calling for Seven, though it is clear he is drugged and can barely talk. He stands out of his wheelchair and begins to walk toward his reflection but alls and realizes he is restrained to the chair. He drops a toy from his hand and looks at it to see that it is a Moon Knight action figure.
For those wondering what is going on here, this is heavily based on a comic book run by writer Jeff Lemire, in which Marc wakes up in an asylum just like this and is convinced that his whole story has just been in his head. It is a trippy and fantastic read for anyone interested.
Marc is in a daze as we hear the voice of Harrow who now appears to be Marc’s doctor. Harrow points out that Marc brought the Steven Grant movie and points out the connection it has to the “Lunar God” like the one Marc said he “worked for.”
Marc looks around the room and spots a lot of details that call back to the story we’ve seen, including Harrow’s cane, the canopic jars and he even notices a reflection of Harrow’s feet that reveals the sandals we’ve seen him wearing to this point, which does not reflect the outfit he appears to be wearing now.
Marc remembers that Harrow shot him and he tries to stand and get away form him. Still drugged, he stumbles toward the door before breaking the glass and forcing his way out. Two guards grab him but he fights them off and runs out. After he gets to a hallway where he sees the light fixtures swinging rapidly, he hides in a room and watched the guards run past.
He hears a banging sound and turns to see a sarcophagus. He opens it to find a panicked Steven, who jumps out quickly. They lock eyes and embrace each other before realizing how strange it is that they are both physically there. Steven confirms that the last thing he remembers is that Harrow shot them and Marc, excited by that confirmation, begins to make a run for it.
They head out into the hallway and pass another sarcophagus in a room, shaking and banging as though someone is inside. Could this sarcophagus be holding the third personality that killed those men in last week’s episode? Perhaps Jake Lockley?
They pass the room and continue down the hall before seeing a shadowy figure appear on the other side of some double doors. The doors swing open to reveal a hippopotamus, standing on two feet and dressed in ancient Egyptian garb. The hippo simply raises a hand and says “hi” as Marc and Steven scream as the episode comes to a close.
This Hippo appears to be Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. That doesn’t tell us much about what she would be doing here in this apparent insane asylum but she does appear to be friendly toward Marc and Steven so perhaps they have an unlikely ally in their escape efforts.
This episode just absolutely turned this show on its head. First, it completely embraced the elements of horror in which Moon Knight is so deeply rooted. That was enough to get fans excited for sure but then it went down the path of one of the character’s most popular comic arcs and things got completely bonkers. We are all going to be itching for answers for a week until we get to see next week’s episode.
You can watch Marvel’s Moon Knight on Disney+ now.