Recap / Moon Knight (2022) S1E5 "Asylum"

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Written by Rebecca Kirsch and Matthew Orton, and directed by Mohamed Diab.

Marc and Steven have to navigate their shared memories and reconcile their past if they're to have any hope of returning to the world of the living.

Released April 27, 2022.

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Tropes:

• Abuse Discretion Shot: While Marc and Steven are going through their memories, they come across one of Wendy, their mother, suddenly barging into Marc's room and hitting him with a belt. Before either of them (or the audience) can see the beating happen, though, Marc leads Steven away while telling him "You don't want to see that."
• Abusive Parents: After the death of Marc's younger brother, Randall, his mother started drinking heavily and became physically and emotionally abusive, blaming Marc for Randall's death and beating him. Said abuse is what caused Steven to emerge as a separate alter, a defense mechanism against that abuse.
• Accomplice by Inaction: What Marc sees his father as for not stopping his mother's abuse of him.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The episode opens with Dr. Harrow talking to a version of Marc who's bruised, has a red bandage on his nose, speaks with a Brooklyn accent, and tries to attack Dr. Harrow when angered — implying that he's actually Jake Lockley, who in the comics is exceptionally violent and speaks with said accent. While the episode calls him Marc, the following week Marvel published an article further implying that for at least some portion of the scene, Jake was the one fronting.
  • When revisiting the night Marc became Moon Knight, Steven argues that Khonshu manipulated Marc into becoming his servant, while Marc insists that Khonshu merely gave them a second chance at life. To make things a bit more unsettling, we see Steven encountering a bird skeleton with a very Khonshu-looking skull in his memory of Randall's death. Either this is just Khonshu somehow trying to reach out to them in the Duat, a hint at how and why Marc perceives Khonshu the way he does, or possibly implying that Khonshu's influence on Marc began long before that fateful night in the desert.
• All for Nothing: Elias's efforts to put his family back together after Randall's death are tragically for naught. Marc eventually leaves as a teenager, because he can't take his mother's abuse anymore, and Wendy dies without reconciling with him. Worse yet, Marc is too resentful of her and too traumatized to even attend her shiva.
• All Myths Are True: Taweret reveals that Duat and the Field of Reeds are just one of the many afterlives, or "intersectional planes of untethered consciousness", awaiting mortals after their time has passed, even mentioning the Wakandan Ancestral Plane by name. She even notes that it's been quite a while since someone specifically ended up under her care, though plenty have been dropped into the Duat courtesy of Marc and Harrow. The fact that Marc has been working for an actual Egyptian god probably helped.
• And Show It to You: Taweret reaches into Marc and Steven's chests, pulling out their hearts in the form of a heart-shaped stone. She gleefully notes that she was worried their chests might explode after succeeding.
• Asshole Victim: Marc defends the literal room filled with the people he's killed by stating that they were absolute scum who deserved to die, such as criminals, murderers, and predators.
• Awful Truth: Steven is not happy to learn everything about his origins, particularly that his mum is dead and was heavily abusive.
• Back from the Dead: Played with.
  • When Marc was recruited by Khonshu, he was badly wounded but not yet dead, and had intended to kill himself rather than slowly bleed out or die of thirst in the middle of the desert. Khonshu making him his avatar allowed him to use Khonshu's ceremonial armor to heal.
  • Taweret notes that even if she could return Marc and Steven to their body, it's still a body that's been shot, and they'd just die again. If they want to go back and survive, they'll need to free Khonshu so their connection to his power will heal them.
• Bait-and-Switch: Those familiar with the comics and expecting some reveal from them here would initially assume that the memory of Marc standing on a street next to a car would actually be a memory from the third alter, who is a cab driver in the comics and thus easily associated with cars. In actuality, it's the painful memory of a drunken Marc refusing to attend his abusive mother's shiva and breaking down after attempting to leave.
• Batter Up!: One of the lost souls that rises from the Duat brings a baseball bat, which Marc and Steven use to fight the Undead after relieving them of it.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: On Marc's 12th birthday his mother continued to blame him for the death of his brother, then when he ran to up to his bedroom she chased him and beat with a belt in a drunken rage. This is what pushed him over the edge, causing him to develop dissonance identity disorder and create Steven Grant to help cope with his mother’s abuse.
• Bittersweet Ending: Heavy on the bitter; while the scales of Marc's soul balance and he moves on to paradise, Steven is dragged down into the Duat and trapped, seemingly forever. As well, there's no apparent way for Marc to return to the world of the living to stop Harrow, whose plans are implied to be getting underway.
• Bookends: The first memory Steven sees is Marc standing by the street with a forlorn expression on his face. It's the last memory he and Steven see in their exploration of their past, and the scene is expanded on there.
• Break the Cutie:
  • The episode is one gradual breaking of Steven as he learns his origins and the truth of "his" mum being dead.
  • Marc was a happy, imaginative boy until his brother died. His mother blamed him for it and spent the rest of Marc's childhood emotionally and physically abusing him, leading to him developing DID.
• Brooklyn Rage: Marc briefly dips into a Brooklyn accent when he talks with Dr. Harrow, implying that it's not Marc who's fronting at that moment, but Jake Lockley.
• Call-Back:
  • In the first episode, Steven was supposed to go on a date with a coworker named Dylan. In this episode, Dylan is the operator who Dr. Harrow calls to get the number for Mrs. Grant.
  • In the first episode, Harrow weighs Steven's heart with his tattoo of Anubis' scales, and they wobble, unable to decide whether it was light or not. In this episode, Taweret, who seems to have taken over Anubis' job, weighs Steven and Marc's hearts, and the scales wobble just the same.
  • In the second episode, Layla asks if Marc and his mother were back on speaking terms. Here, we see why they stopped speaking to begin with.
• Call-Forward: Zigzagged. When Steven follows Marc and Randall to the cave, he steps on bird remains, and at a glance, they resemble Khonshu. We can assume they are part of the memory, but adult Steven has already been through what it calls forward to.
• Cerebus Call-Back:
  • Steven is first seen calling his mum and apologizing for not getting her messages. We learn that Steven officially took over after the death of Marc's mother just two months before the series began.
  • The one-finned goldfish and "Laters Gators" catchphrase? They were associated with Marc's brother, Randall, and his mother, Wendy, respectively.
  • The Rage Against the Reflection moment Marc had back in Episode 2 becomes harder to look at because Marc is recalling all the abuse Wendy gave him over the death of his little brother. In a sense, Steven (who is the replacement for Randall) is blaming Marc for everything that befell him.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Downplayed. In the Dream Within a Dream that is the death realm version of the asylum, Steven wears blue-gray and Marc wears white.
• Company Cross References:
  • Steven mentions that Doctor Harrow looks like Ned Flanders, a character from a certain cartoon Disney has been very proud of acquiring.
  • A poster for A New Hope can be seen in Marc's room, another Disney-owned franchise.
• Continuity Nod: Taweret mentions that Marc and Steven are in one of many possible afterlives, specifically mentioning the Ancestral Plane (which she describes as gorgeous).
• Cope by Pretending: Dr. Harrow explains that Marc created the Steven alter as a means to cope with his mother's physical and psychological abuse.
• Corner of Woe: Marc as a kid sits in the corner of his room in a Troubled Fetal Position chanting a Survival Mantra before his mother breaks open the door to give him a beating.
• Crisis of Faith: Implied. In his grief over his mother's death, Marc breaks down and angrily slams his kippah against the ground. He has a moment of intense remorse as he picks it back up and hugs it while tearfully apologizing.
• Darkest Hour: Steven falls into the sands of the Duat to an apparent Character Death, and Marc is destined for the afterlife in the Field of Reeds. Taweret, despite being the goddess of rebirth, states that she cannot return Marc and Steven to life in their body, as they were shot and dying, and they cannot heal without Khonshu's powers. Khonshu, meanwhile, is still a Sealed Good in a Can in a tiny statuette deep in a secret location accessible only to the Ennead and their avatars, while Ammit has been freed and Harrow and her cult are merrily judging souls in large numbers just as they had planned. Marc is left completely reliant on outside help in the material world — presumably Layla — to return to life and to actually do anything about the Near-Villain Victory that is already in motion.
• The Dead Have Names: While he doesn't remember (and presumably never knew) their names, Marc remembers all of the people he killed in Khonshu's service, and where he killed them.
• Death of a Child: Randall, Marc's brother, died when they were young. He and Marc went into a cave during a rainstorm, and he drowned when the cave flooded.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: Marc's mother breaks into his room and hits him with a belt while blaming him for her beating him.
• Double-Meaning Title: The asylum in the title refers to the mental healthcare facility in their mind, but also to the reprieve from grief and guilt the system gets when Steven fronts.
• Dramatic Irony: After Steven switches places with Marc in the middle of the street, he calls his mother and walks off... in the opposite direction of the building where his mother's shiva is being held.
• Driven to Suicide: Marc was ready to shoot himself after the attack in Egypt. Khonshu intervened just in time and offered the deal to become Moon Knight, which Marc accepted.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • Marc's mother is seen to be drinking with a full bottle in her hand several years after Randall's death, while Elias is trying to celebrate Marc's twelfth birthday.
  • Marc himself is three sheets to the wind when he goes to his mother's shiva, a seemingly vain attempt to muster the courage to actually attend. He can barely walk straight.
• Drowning Pit: The cave that Marc and Randall frequently explored became this as it filled up with water due to heavy rain, leading to Randall drowning.
• Dying Deal Upgrade: In this episode, we are shown Marc Spector at the edge of dying when Khonshu offers him life and rebirth as his sacred Fist of Vengeance, his Moon Knight.
• Epiphanic Prison: Whenever Marc refuses to accept reality, he is shunted back into the therapy session with Dr. Harrow until something snaps him back. When Steven is unable to accept that their mother is dead, he winds up in the therapy session and is only able to leave when he accepts that Marc was telling him the truth.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Marc tells Steven that knowing Layla she'll go on a suicide mission to stop Harrow herself, then has a brief "Oh, Crap!" expression on his face.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Hearing his mother approach, a terrified Marc tries to calm himself in his room. He spots the tagline on his poster, and reads: "When danger is near, Steven Grant has no fear" — and instantly Steven appears, who is completely unworried that his drunk mother is angrily approaching with a belt.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Steven explains that Taweret is the goddess of mothers and children. Marc's trauma is based on his mother's abuse and the death of his little brother when they were kids.
  • When told to balance their scales, Steven figures he and Marc need to take a trip down memory lane to sort out their issues. The thing is, all the memories they dive through belong to Marc, not Steven, foreshadowing the eventual reveal that Marc is the original alter.
  • Just the fact that Taweret puts both their hearts on the scales to weigh at the same time foreshadows that they're both part of the same DID system, as the proper procedure in Egyptian mythology is to weigh one heart at a time.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Taweret says that the afterlife is something humans can't fully comprehend, so they overlay something that makes sense to the dead. In Marc and Steven's case, it takes the form of a mental hospital, which, Taweret notes, is a first for her. Also, it's implied that the form they see for Khonshu is based on a pigeon skeleton that was part of Marc's memory of Randall's death, unless that was Khonshu somehow reaching out from his prison and projecting into the memory, or something.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Steven starts calling his mum in the same memory where Marc refuses to attend her shiva, a close look at his phone reveals he's not even on the call screen — initially he's on the phone's home screen, and then some random app or web page.
• Futile Hand Reach: Steven stretches his hand out towards Marc while his body petrifies into a sandy statue.
• The Ghost: Raoul Bushman, Marc's former commanding officer-turned-employer, doesn't appear, though his handiwork is apparent in the flashback to Marc's pact with Khonshu, and Marc mentions him by his surname.
• Godzilla Threshold: When souls suddenly start being judged en masse, a sign that Harrow has freed Ammit, Taweret agrees to help Marc and Steven return to the world of the living.
• Good Parents: Zigzagged Trope. Unlike Wendy, Elias doesn't blame Marc for Randall's death and did his best to raise him properly, but he still couldn't convince Marc to stay with him because of how strained Marc's relationship with Wendy was. On the other hand, Marc bitterly points out that he was supposed to stop the abuse, and he clearly sees his dad's promise that his mom will get mental help after he's already old enough to run away to be hollow.
• Hates Their Parent: Marc eventually got fed up with his mother's abuse and his father's inability to address it, moving out when he was a teenager.
• Helpful Hallucination: Marc and Steven's experiences with "Dr. Harrow" help the two of them come to terms with their traumas.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted. Steven saving Marc by falling off Taweret's boat with his assailant and becoming petrified balances out the scales, which ultimately transports Marc to the Field of Reeds, but it is entirely unintentional.
• Identity Breakdown: The mystery of Steven and Marc's shared background culminates in a confrontation between the two, in which Marc reveals that Steven formed as a coping mechanism for the abuse he suffered as a child. Steven, naturally enough, is shocked and betrayed.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: The main point of Marc preventing Steven from learning more about his past was to ensure Steven didn't realize he's an alter made to take on the abuse of Wendy Spector and the fact that she's dead.
• Immaturity Insult: Randall mentions that their mother told them not to visit the cave when it's raining. Marc convinces him to go anyway by telling him, "Don't be a baby."
• Injured Self-Drag: One of the memories that Steven and Marc go through in this episode is of the night that Marc became Moon Knight. A Trail of Blood is shown leading to Khonshu's temple, and a dying Marc is seen dragging himself to safety. He briefly attempts to commit suicide rather than to slowly bleed to death but is saved when Khonshu intervenes and makes him his new avatar.
• Instant Expert: Played with. Steven suddenly becomes a competent fighter when he realizes that, since he and Marc are the same person, they share all the same skills, even though Steven can't actually remember learning any of them. They are on the astral plane at the time (well, one of them, according to Taweret), so it works well enough.
• Interrupted Suicide: A mortally wounded Marc is preparing to end his own life when Khonshu offers to make him his avatar.
• It's All My Fault: Marc is still haunted over the death of his little brother, but Steven assures him that it wasn't his fault at all.
• I Want My Mommy!: Randall's final words were to cry out for his mother.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Marc and Steven have to navigate Marc's memories to balance their scales.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Done in-universe. Memory-Steven seems to be looking right at present-day Marc for a moment, says "What?", then keeps reenacting the memory.
• Leonine Contract: Khonshu made his pact with Marc while the latter lay wounded and dying, offering a choice between life in Khonshu's service or dying where he lay. Steven sees the choice as manipulation on Khonshu's part, though Marc points out that taking Khonshu's offer saved his life.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: As Marc is on the verge of being dragged into the Duat, Steven realises that, since they're the same person, they must also have the same fighting skills. He then promptly wipes the floor with Marc's attackers.
• Memorial Photo: There are photos of Randall and Marc's mother at their respective shivas.
• Mental World: Marc's looks like an asylum.
• Mood Whiplash: The opening scene deals with a woman blaming Marc for something, then has Marc ready to shank Dr. Harrow with a glass paperweight while sporting a Brooklyn accent. Then, as he's being injected with a drug, we cut back to the end of Episode 4...which was Marc and Steven screaming in terror at seeing the talking hippo lady.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Marc suggests killing a god to steal their boat. Steven is incredulous.
• Mythology Gag: Marc mentions a man named Bushman, who gave him the job to raid Khonshu's temple that went south quick. This is a reference to Raoul Bushman, Marc's original Archenemy and one of the evilest Marvel characters.
• Never My Fault: Wendy, who entrusted her five-year-old's well-being to an eight-year-old, does not consider herself responsible for what happened at all.
  Wendy: [at Randall's shiva] You were supposed to keep him safe! You let him drown. This is all your fault! This is all your fault!
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Steven's decision to save Marc from being dragged into the Duat leads to him falling over the side and being condemned to the sands in his place.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Steven realizes that the cave young Marc and Randall are in is about to flood with all the rain, he lets out a horrified "Oh, God. Oh no."
  • Steven gets another when he sees those monster dogs after the memory of Khonshu's temple.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • The episode begins with a shot of a raging river and the sound of a boy crying for help, followed by a shot of a woman yelling, "This is all your fault!" Neither makes sense until much later, once Steven begins delving through Marc's memories.
  • The first memory Steven sees is Marc standing on a sidewalk, which Marc hastily brushes off. We later learn that Marc was staring across the street at the place where his mother's shiva was being held, which he refused to enter.
• One-Person Birthday Party: Downplayed. Marc's mother refuses to celebrate his birthdays with him, and Marc's father is the only one present.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Marc, normally calm, is the one with the emotional breakdown when he refuses to show Steven the truth.
    Marc: [after Steven says that if he doesn't confess, it'll be all his fault] No! No no no no! I won't do it! [starts hitting himself in denial] You can't make me! You! Can't! MAKE ME!
  • Also, Marc has always been the more courageous and confident one. When Steven is going through the memories, Marc is clearly terrified.
  • Steven hates being violent, but upon Marc saying that "the point of [Steven]" was to be a defensive shield to protect Marc from his mother's abuse, Steven immediately punches Marc in the jaw.
• Origins Episode: This episode reveals much of Marc's past, how Steven was created, how he met Khonshu and became Moon Knight, and why he and Steven continue to bleed into each other's lives.
• Pensieve Flashback: Marc and Steven are physically present within their childhood memories.
• Personalized Afterlife: Taweret explains that not everyone goes to the same afterlife, and instead there are countless, parallel planes of existence depending on the person, specifically mentioning the Ancestral Plane as one of them (which she describes as gorgeous). Steven and Marc get the asylum because, as Marc ruefully notes, they're crazy. Marc ends up in the Field of Reeds later, presumably because it's been taught to him that this is what the afterlife should look like.
• Plot-Triggering Death: This episode reveals that it was the death of Marc's mother and the intense mix of grief and rage that he felt that caused Steven to start bleeding through and take over for several months.
• The Reveal:
  • Marc is the original alter, and Steven was created to be the happy, innocent child with a non-abusive mother that Marc could never be, based on a character from the B-movie Marc was watching in the previous episode.
  • The death of Marc's mother is what caused Steven and Marc to start to bleed into one another, meaning that Steven was never really calling his mother at all. And her shiva was just two months ago.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: Steven desperately screams at Marc and Randall to evacuate the flooding cave, but his efforts are ultimately in vain since this is Marc's memory, and all of this went down decades ago.
• Sanity Slippage: If beating her only surviving son wasn't a good enough indicator, Wendy eventually believing Marc intentionally led Randall to his death and saying, "I should've known you would do something like this" at least two years later should do the trick.
• Say My Name: Marc can only scream Steven's name when Steven gets knocked into the Duat.
• Scales of Justice: Taweret tries to balance Marc and Steven's hearts against a feather, but the scales fluctuate wildly because the two are out of sync, forcing a trek down memory lane. Ultimately, Steven unintentionally balances the scales when he falls into the Duat, leaving only Marc after he's faced his past.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: After observing the results of Ammit being unleashed by Harrow, with thousands of souls being sent to the Duat before their time, Taweret is horrified and agrees to help Marc and Steven return to life.
• Sea of Sand: The Duat is represented as an ocean of sand littered with the petrified bodies of the souls condemned by Ammit, with Taweret's barque sailing across it to ferry souls to the Field of Reeds.
• Selective Obliviousness: Some time after Randall's death, Marc's mother accuses him of having been jealous of his little brother his entire life and killing him on purpose. Given that all we see of the brothers is them playing and getting along fine, it's clear that Wendy is seeing things that aren't there to justify her hatred of Marc, enhanced by how much more often she was drunk after Randall's death.
• Shout-Out: When Steven first encounters "Dr. Harrow", he makes note of Harrow's new haircut, glasses and mustache, mockingly declaring that it looks "very Ned Flanders."
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • When Marc (or possibly Jake) states his intention to leave Dr. Harrow's office, he speaks relatively normally. When Harrow's guards grab him however, Marc begins maniacally screaming at Harrow about how he's "going to destroy everything" and in general acts a lot more violent and angry.
  • At Randall's shiva, Wendy is initially in shock over her son's death. When Marc comes downstairs, Wendy's grief turns into fury and her voice raises until she's tearfully screaming at him that his brother's death was his fault.
• Suddenly Sober: Despite Marc having downed an entire bottle of vodka, once Steven takes over, he's reasonably sober.
• Survival Mantra: A young Marc mutters, "It's not my mom, it's not my mom..." before Steven manifests and takes over.
• Symbolism: When Steven and Marc find the room with everyone Marc has ever killed, notice how Randall is standing and off to the side, compared to the other people who are sitting. This represents how Marc is distancing himself from Randall's death, and also signifies that Randall was indirectly and unintentionally killed by Marc, as opposed to being targeted by Khonshu.
• Tagline: The tagline for the Tomb Buster poster reads "When danger is near, Steven Grant has no fear".
• Taken for Granite: When Steven falls into the Duat, his body petrifies into a sandy statue. This is the fate of all who fall into the dunes.
• Tantrum Throwing: Marc throws his kippah to the ground and punches it when he breaks down after walking away from his mother's shiva.
• Tempting Fate: Both Marc and Steven state that they're not going to drop into the sands of the Duat or end up in the Field of Reeds, cementing their fates — Marc ends up in the Field of Reeds, and Steven falls into the sands of the Duat.
• They Died Because of You: Marc's mother blamed him for his little brother's death because they went into a cave while it was raining.
• Title Drop: Moon Knight is named for the first time in the series, with Khonshu deeming Marc as such after he accepts the moon god's offer to be brought into service.
• Trail of Blood: A trail of blood leads Marc and Steven into Khonshu's temple, where they find a severely wounded Marc.
• Tragic Keepsake: In addition to being a defense mechanism for Marc, shielding him from his mother's abuse, Steven also serves as a collection of these, relics of his happy childhood before his brother died, including his catchphrase sign-off, "Laters gators!". We also see that Marc kept the drawing of a one-finned fish his brother drew the day he died. Retroactively, this means that the one-finned goldfish he bought was also one, and his search for a Replacement Goldfish was for himself, not to hide from Steven.
• The Unfavorite: Marc became this to his mother after his brother died.
• Was It All a Lie?: Steven's reaction to learning everything about his entire existence being one of these.
• Wham Episode: We learn the circumstances in which Steven first came to be, and Steven sacrifices himself, balancing the scales so that Marc can go to the Field of Reeds.
• Wham Line:
  • Marc explaining why he doesn't want Steven to know the truth about what happened to him as a child.
    Marc: But you've gotten to live thinking that she loved you, that she's kind, that she's still alive!
  • When Steven happily starts walking off and calling his mum — in the direct opposite of the building where her funeral and shiva is being held — Marc reveals another bombshell.
    Marc: This is it. Mom's death and shiva two months ago. This was the moment our lives started bleeding into each other.
• Wham Shot:
  • The first time Steven fronts on screen, cheerfully noting that he has to clean the room while Wendy is ready to kick the door down.
  • The scene of Marc grieving in the middle of the road after being unable to bring himself to attend his mother's shiva before his eyes roll back and Steven appears, innocent as to what has happened, and starts calling "his" mom without actually pressing any buttons, and with his phone not actually showing a phone call in progress at all.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Or as Steven puts it when reviewing Marc's memories of being physically threatened by his mother on his twelfth-or-so birthday:
  Steven: Mum, what are you doing?
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Just before she starts beating him, Wendy Spector asks Marc why he has to "make her" do such things.

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