Season 1's first episode opens and its last episode closes with Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Way Without Love". It's just a simple love song, but one lyric stands out: "Moonlight to show the way, so we can follow."
Steven has a goldfish for a pet. Goldfish are erroneously characterized as having very short memories, just like Steven has memory problems of his own.
The postcards that Steven receives from his "mom" are on sale at the museum, suggesting that Marc is sending them to Steven while he's fronting to keep up the illusion that his mom is still alive.
Why did the man trying to kill Steven in the Alps reciprocate the wave the former gives him? He likely was previously trying to kill Marc Spector (depending on how injured Marc was before Steven woke up, he may have thought he'd succeeded!), only to be confused when an oblivious Steven Grant started fronting and acted friendly to him.
The stuttering that denotes Marc taking control over Steven's body and bailing him out of dangerous situations only starts occurring after Steven instantaneously wakes up to find himself in the Alps. This is more than just a visual indicator for the audience's sake, as afterwards Steven is constantly freaking out from the insanity of his predicament and inability to understand what's going on, which appears to give him a measure of control over his body that means Marc has to fight to assume control again. At the end of episode one, Steven is trapped in a dead-end bathroom with a demonic monster tearing down the door to kill him and is understandably more stressed out than he's ever been throughout the episode. This means Marc has to actually coax him into willingly ceding control to him, because this time, Steven's terror is too strong for him to overcome it by force of will.
When Steven is fighting the jackal creature in the second episode, he quotes Muhammad Ali's "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!" The often forgotten second part to that quote is, "The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see." How fitting for fighting an invisible monster.
Even though it's commonly seen in fiction, talking to a different alter in the mirror isn't a symptom of DID. But if you think about it, Khonshu is the god of the moon. And what is moonlight? A reflection of sunlight. Maybe the ability to see the other alters in reflections is just another ability given to Marc and Steven by Khonshu.
The floor where you enter and exit the building is called the first floor in American English and the ground floor in British English. When the British Steven is running from Khonshu in his apartment building, he panics and presses the first floor button instead of the ground floor, something he immediately lampshades. It's a hint that he was created from the trauma of an American child, based on a British character in a B-movie, and young Marc obviously wouldn't know everything about British culture.
In the fourth episode's concluding sequence in the mental hospital, the sarcophagus that presumably contains the third alter is painted red. In Egyptian mythology, red was associated with chaos (for instance, it was linked with Set, god of chaos and the desert), quite literally demonstrating Harrow's claim that there is chaos in Marc.
In the fourth episode, the bingo card would not be valid in the United States, with numbers higher than 75, and in the wrong columns. But UK bingo, aka Housie, uses a 9x3 card with numbers from 1-90. Marc Spector is from the United States, and Steven Grant is British, so the result is a mashup of Housie numbers on a bingo card.
invoked First, there's white. White was a color associated with divine grace, wisdom, joy and light. Despite overall being a pretty Jerkass God, Khonshu is still shown to be a fundamentally wise deity who, unlike Ammit, only punishes those who have actually committed evil instead of also punishing those who might commit evil later on. In other words, Khonshu is wiser than Ammit in that he recognizes that people deserve a second chance after doing something monstrous, and so only those who have definitely crossed the Moral Event Horizon deserve to get axed off. Furthermore, it's quite fitting that the suits of armor worn by two of the series' most important divine Avatars (a.k.a. symbols of their divine grace on Earth) — the armors of the Moon Knight and Scarlet Scarab — are primarily covered in white to symbolize the fundamentally positive moral character of their respective users.
Next, there's black. While black was occasionally associated with evil in Egyptian mythology, surprisingly enough more often than not it fell into Dark Is Not Evil as the ancient Egyptians associated black with the color of the fertile soil created along the banks of the Nile River whenever it flooded (and understandably, their entire society was heavily reliant on regular river flooding for their continued survival). More specifically, the ancient Egyptians frequently associated black with rebirth and Steven's association with darker colors (like the bluish-black sweater he wears in Episode 5) serves as an allusion to how he can be seen as a "rebirth" of both Marc and Randall; not only is Steven a walking Tragic Keepsake serving as a collection of some of Marc's favorite memories of Randall (i.e., his "Laters, gators!" Catchphrase), but his entire purpose was to allow Marc to be able to pretend to have had a happy childhood, effectively being Marc reborn with a happier life.
Then, there's green. Understandably for a society based along a river valley in a desert, the ancient Egyptians associated green with agriculture, harmony and peace. Arthur Harrow's scale tattoo turns green whenever he judges someone and they pass Ammit's test, symbolizing how they are balanced and have internal harmony.
Finally, there's red. The ancient Egyptians linked red to both the hellish Sahara Desert and human blood, and saw it as indicative of violence, war, rage, disorder and suffering. Arthur Harrow, the Big Bad of the series, spends most of his time wearing a red set of robes, emphasizing how dangerous he is along with how blood-soaked his supposed "utopia" would actually be if he ever got the chance to put it into practice. Additionally, his red wardrobe serves as some pretty clever Foreshadowing for the later reveal by Ammit herself that Harrow's own scales lack balance and he's just as disordered as those he's been killing for only God knows how long. Also, Harrow's scale tattoo turns red when he judges someone and they fail Ammit's test, symbolizing how they are unbalanced and disordered. And, of course, there's the fact that the sarcophagus in the asylum housing Jake Lockley is colored red, symbolizing how Jake is the proverbial Token Evil Teammate of Marc's alters in terms of how Ax-Crazy and ruthless he is.
It makes sense that the Moon Knight armor provides Bottomless Magazines for crescent darts, because it's a self-healing armor. It not only heals Marc but also itself, so it makes sense that its emblem can be taken off repeatedly.
Not only that, but the moon is eternally recurring, especially the crescent moon.
Taweret seems out of place as Marc and Steven's ferryman (hippo... woman...) and as Steven points out when he correctly describes her as the goddess of childbirth and fertility, she's actually doing someone else's job (Anubis' in this case), not to mention it's apparently been a while since any souls were ferried through the Duat because of the lack of faith in the Egyptian gods in the present, barring the few characters we see like Harrow and the avatars. Naturally, she's a little out of her depth instead of just Sadly Mythtaken. This leads to Fridge Horror concerning Anubis' fate and exactly why he's not around, mostly likely having something to do with Ammit.
It could imply that Anubis is imprisoned in one of the many statuettes that Osiris has been collecting in the Great Pyramid, just like Khonshu (in the end credits of the finale, we see an ushabti with a jackal's head, although as there were multiple Egyptian deities with jackal heads, it might not necessarily be Anubis). How many of the other gods tried speaking out against the Ennead for various reasons, and for how long has Osiris been locking them away?
At first, "Doctor Harrow" appearing in Marc's (and later, Steven's) psych ward seems like some hoodoo by Harrow to keep Khonshu's avatar otherwise occupied while he releases Ammit. But as the scenes unfold, it becomes clear Dr. Harrow is actually trying to help Marc and Steven come to terms with each other and their past, to strengthen their bond, even if forcing them to integrate isn't possible. This makes total sense. To understand why Marc has DID, why he created the Steven alter, both Marc and Steven have to "confront their demons", as it were. Who better to guide them through this process than someone they consider to be essentially a demon? What they have to do is extremely difficult and uncomfortable, something in many ways they'd rather die than face, so it makes sense the "avatar" of this need would be someone who already makes them uncomfortable and puts them on edge — someone who has, in point of fact, killed them.
It seems strange that the identity Marc would create from a tagline that read "Dr. Steven Grant has no fear" would result in jumpy, meek Steven. But having no fear doesn’t necessarily mean he’s never afraid. It could be that (from Marc's perspective) Steven doesn't have any fear because he doesn't have anything in his life to be afraid of. It also fits why Steven would have a good relationship with his "mom", considering what their real mom was actually like, because taking away a major catalyst for their issues would just be one less thing for Steven to be afraid of.
At the end of the second episode, Marc's confident veneer is demolished and he violently lashes out when Steven keeps telling he hurts everyone around him and says he intends to take over and stop Marc from doing that ever again. With the fifth episode, this makes even more sense, since it undoubtedly made Marc think not of just Layla, but also get a painful reminder of his mother and brother. Not to mention, since Steven came to be as a way to cope with this pain in the first place, it hit way too close to home for Marc. From Marc's perspective, this might feel like the ultimate betrayal, with Steven agreeing with his mother that it was Marc's fault his brother died.
It also ties into Marc's reaction in the fifth episode when he argues with Steven about opening the bedroom door and the memories it held. Steven points out that Harrow/Ammit are out there wrecking havoc, and Layla might die as well, and that if they don't "work through this" that it would all be his fault. Marc virtually snaps, regressing into the angry, scared child he used to be as he rages that Steven can't make him...because "this is all your fault" is the exact same sentiment he had to endure from his mom.
In the first two episodes, Steven's boss and coworkers at the museum seem extremely harsh towards someone struggling with mental illness. But, it turns out Steven had only been operating full time in the body for about two months, meaning he had just started that job; they barely knew him and had no way of knowing how disturbed he was.
Marc's reluctance to tell Layla the truth about his role in her father's death makes a lot more sense once his backstory is shown. He already believes himself to be a natural killer because of his mother blaming him for Randall's death, and the last thing he wants is for Layla to view him the same way. Sure enough, she does end up accusing him of being a murderer-by-proxy for it, even though he had no idea Bushman would kill all the hostages, and even though he tried to stop it once he realized what he was going to do. He just quietly accepts her accusations, because he's so severely internalized it due to his mother's abuse.
Oscar Isaac plays a Fake Brit named Steven Grant. It turns out that Steven Grant is something of a Fake Brit in-universe too, in the sense that he is an alter based on a British character in a movie that the system's American host Marc Spector watched as a child.
The reveal in episode 5 that there are multiple afterlives explains the multiple variations on life after death the MCU has presented thus far, from The Nothing After Death described in Iron Fist (2017) to the Ancestral Plane seen in Black Panther (2018).
It's a bit of a hilarious Irony that Taweret, who's the current guide of the dead, has an avatar with a bird-like theme (mainly the wings), while Khonshu, who actually looks like a bird, has an avatar that resembles a mummy, a famous depiction of the dead in ancient Egypt.
The first one may actually have some relevance — hippos often depend on birds to pick leftover meat and other stuff from between their teeth, acknowledging the way a patron and avatar depend on each other.
Furthermore, Layla's costume is known as "Scarlet Scarab". This is a callback to her father, who always referred to her as his "little scarab". And who mentioned that they had spoken with Layla's father, and that he would be so proud of her? Taweret. She based Layla's costume on the nickname her beloved father gave her. A nice move from the goddess of childhood.
Khonsu's avatar being a mummy is appropriate as well. While he is often depicted with the head of a falcon, he is also depicted as a mummified man, complete with a side-braid of hair representing youth.
The Mr. Knight mask has a stitch in the middle to represent the split between Marc, Steven, and Jake.
Harrow says Marc's brother Randall would still be alive if Ammit had been able to pull "one weed from the garden": Marc. Remember earlier when Steven asked if "weeding the garden" meant killing a child? Harrow said "I'm glad you mentioned that", because Marc would have had to have been killed as a child. Since he saw Marc's pain when he tried to judge Steven's balance at the museum, he knew by this point what had happened and what would have been called for.
Marc's weapons of choice are crescent darts while Steven's are truncheons because they form two halves of Khonshu’s staff, a stick with a crescent head.
A subtle bit of Fridge Heartwarming: after learning the truth about her father's death, Layla questions whether Marc only married her to get rid of the guilt. But aside from a brief cameo as one of the other patients in the asylum, Layla (and by extension, her marriage to Marc) never shows up once in any of Marc's memories when he and Steven are trying to process his guilt and trauma. However it started, Marc's feelings were completely genuine.
Many fans have noted that there are apps that can show you how the stars looked in the past and the sequence where Khonshu and Steven dramatically turn back the night sky seemed to just be a way for Khonshu to get stuffed in an ushabti so Marc/Steven lose access to Moon Knight/Mr. Knight. But they were in the middle of the desert, where there was no WiFi, and even though Khonshu, a genuine god, could probably magically give them WiFi, as Hathor said, he's theatrical and probably went the more bombastic route. There's also a chance that an app, no matter how sophisticated or up-to-date, wouldn't be 100% accurate; with something as drastic as Ammit's release "on the horizon", Khonshu probably thought the guarantee was worth it.
While Marc and Steven appear through reflections, Jake Lockley (in the stinger) is mostly seen through a glass of water and the limousine tinted windows: glass surfaces that obscure his appearance.
In the third episode Khonshu attempts to put Harrow on trial for conspiracy to release Ammit, ironically doing what Harrow has been preaching: trying to stop people from doing bad things before they do them. Also the fact that Harrow grew to dislike Khonshu partly since Khonshu's punishment came too late also shows this as well.
This line takes on new meaning when the scenes in Omnipotence City in Thor: Love and Thunder show how lazy and uncaring so many gods are in the MCU: "Spare me your self-righteous threats! I was banished for not abandoning humanity, unlike the rest of you."
Dr. Harrow spells out why Steven was created in the 5th episode almost the whole episode before it's revealed to the audience, to Marc/Steven, with this, "The struggling mind will often build places to seek shelter for different aspects of the self from our most traumatic memories." It's just that it was a different thing that caused Harrow to say it.
As a child, Marc came up with Dr. Steven Grant as an alter to deal with his mother's physical and emotional abuse. However, there's no reason for Steven to focus so thoroughly on Egyptian mythology or French poetry. Steven represents not just an escape for Marc, but his adoration of Layla, because those are what she loves.
The first few episodes raise a few questions regarding the origins of Steven/Marc's DID, which forms as a response to repeated, severe trauma in early childhood: did Marc Spector create the meek Steven Grant, or did Steven create Marc, and why? It's not until episode 5, "Asylum", that we get an answer: Steven came second, and formed in response to Marc undergoing abuse at the hands of his own mother.
Layla's phone call to her missing husband. While Steven is understandably creeped out by it, imagine how horrifying it must have been from Layla's perspective. She's been trying to contact Marc for months, is clearly extremely worried about him, and has no way of knowing whether he's even alive. Then one day hefinallyanswers the phone... except the person on the other end isn't Marc, but a meek British man who doesn't know who Layla is or who the phone he's holding even belongs to. Imagine how crushing it must have been for Layla once the realization sank in that the man on the other end really wasn't Marc Spector.
It's possible the cult only started a few years ago. Earth only got living proof that the Norse pantheon was real about 15 years before the series began, and it's possible that the cult formed around Arthur when he showed proof that Ammit was real as well.
Which leads to some horrific implications of its own. One: how many cult leaders, seeing that the Norse gods are real, are using fake gods (or fake versions of real gods) to assemble cultists loyal to them and willing to do anything the alleged divine avatar asks them to? Two: How many cult leaders actually are avatars of Jerkass Gods?!?
Oh and even worse, Arthur knows exactly what Steven is going through because he was the previous vessel of Khonshu.
Is this the first time Gus has been replaced? And if not, how long has Marc been putting this masquerade of Steven's life on?
Since Marc couldn't find another goldfish with one fin, this is probably the first time this happened. As the clerk points out, pet shops don't usually stock one-finned fish, and Marc doesn't seem to have realized that he could just cut off a fin.
It's eventually revealed that Steven has only been primarily fronting for about two months, so it's very likely that Gus is the first and only fish that he's had.
If Arthur's words are true, then Marc is forever trapped as Moon Knight. Even if he stops Arthur and Ammit, Khonshu will just give him another mission. If Marc refuses, then Layla becomes his newest vessel and the cycle repeats.
Khonshu and Steven turn back the stars 2000 years. How would that have affected the countless alien civilizations we know exist out there?
This is mitigated by the fact that it seems more like Khonshu is simply rewinding how the night sky looked 2000 years ago, given how the sky seems to quickly revert to normal after Khonshu is trapped in stone. Similar reasoning can be given for Khonshu causing a solar eclipse earlier in the same episode and the Earth not being affected by whatever catastrophic consequences resulting from the Moon suddenly accelerating into the Sun's path out of nowhere. However, it calls into question exactly how many oblivious civilians can see the fuckery happening in the sky, as Harrow's dig crew reacts to the unscheduled eclipse and its shadow is shown covering Cairo.
The Stinger reveals that Khonshu is still going to be using Marc through Jake Lockley, all while he, Steven and Layla are all oblivious to this. Here We Go Again!...
How long does Khonshu think this contract with Jake will last? Marc and Steven are aware that neither of them are violent, and so is Layla. They'll eventually figure out that the third alter is doing something to them...
Khonshu is manipulative, but he's not exactly cunning in that regard; he kinda brute-forces his manipulations. He's also somewhat cocky, at least with humans. He probably really didn't think it through or, at best, figured that he was keeping his word, since technically Jake is his avatar while Marc and Steven have no obligations to him. That said, this also likely opens the way for Steven and Marc to access Khonshu's powers without his explicit approval, since they're all sharing a body. If nothing else, since Jake is seemingly perfectly happy to work for Khonshu, the god has something of an 'inside man' who can help hide their activities. Granted, that's what Marc thought too, and the show has already established that the alters aren't always great at time keeping or knowing what the others are doing, so Jake may slip up eventually.
Khonshu also relies on Jake keeping on wanting to work for him and keeping their deal secret. However, since Jake has likely been created to be a protective alter, this will only work as long as nothing happens which Jake perceives as dangerous towards the system. If that were the case, Khonshu would likely lose Jake's loyalty very quickly.
The ushabti seen in the end credits include a deity with a scarab for a head, likely depicting Khepri, an aspect of the sun god Ra, one of the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon, implying that the Ennead were able to wrest power from a deity typically considered the ruler of all the gods.
Alexander the Great is depicted as the previous avatar of Ammit who betrayed her. Considering the extent of Alexander's conquests, one wonders just how many of the people he conquered were submitted to Ammit's judgement, or if she was in fact the reason why he kept extending his empire, with Ammit encouraging or forcing him to expand the reach of her power.
In episode 5, Taweret confirms that a wide variety of "planes of untethered consciousnesses" (afterlives) exist. If we assume everyone goes to the afterlife they believe in, what happens to atheists? Do they cease to exist anyway or wind up on Platform Nine and Three Quarters and board a train?
When Jake Lockley is seen in the stinger, he is listening to Frank Sinatra's "My Way of Life", a love song about obsessive devotion. Just how crazy do you have to be to have that song in mind when murdering people on behalf of a god?
Well... not crazy (in the colloquial sense), but it seems like the show has positioned Jake as an extreme protector type alter, Steven as a caretaker protector, and Marc as the host. Protectors like Jake will try to prevent harm to the system by lashing out to prevent harm (physical, emotional, etc.) or to exert control of a situation (because it can be anticipated and directed at them and not any of the others) in order to protect the system, which is exactly what we see Jake doing up until the finale; after which point, we can surmise that Jake is likely the part of the system that feels guilty over Layla's father and the violence and harm in general that he's done, and so continues to try and resolve that... it's just not in the healthiest of ways, compared to Marc and Steven, who have started to reconcile with their past.
Marc is the host and we saw the origins of Steven, so how and why was Jake Lockley created?
To paraphrase Marc, "You try killing somebody and see how it affects you." Jake was likely the result of Marc's trauma at having to kill for the first time. Or, alternatively, a particularly traumatizing kill, as Jake doesn't come to the forefront every time violence is needed.
There's an even darker possibility: While Steven was created to give Marc the illusion of a happy childhood and help protect himself from emotional pain, Jake Lockley was created by Marc during Wendy's abuse to protect him from physical pain. This might even explain why Jake's so Ax-Crazy; his entire life has consisted of him getting beaten up and abused, so he's been taught by experience how to hit back harder.
A relatively downplayed case, but as noted above, most of the Color Motifs in the show make a lot of sense... except for Layla's as the Scarlet Scarab. To further clarify, the ancient Egyptians associated red with violence and suffering, so why would a heroine like Layla have a small red scarab prominently featured on her outfit? While it could just be there to serve as a Mythology Gag, could it be actually meant as some subtle Foreshadowing for Layla eventually performing a Face–Heel Turn down the road?
This seems like a bit of a reach: a) The primary motifs in Layla's costume are gold and white, not red; b) while red was associated with chaos and death in ancient Egypt, it was also associated with life and vitality; c) Layla hates killing (and as an avatar of Tawaret, temporary or not, is probably not going to be dishing out excess amounts of violence); d) while Jake is associated with the red sarcophagus, the jury's out on whether he's strictly evil or just chaotic.
. It's just a simple love song, but one lyric stands out: "Moonlight to show the way, so we can follow."