Long-time fans of the Marvel comic books might be excited to hear about the introduction of the Moon Knight series coming to Disney+, but for many this might be the first time hearing of this strange man with clear issues draped in all white. For those sitting in the latter camp, the new trailer that recently released may have left you with more questions than answers. Allow us to clear up just who Moon Knight is and what the heck was going on in that trailer.
Before we can explain the trailer, we have to first elaborate on just who Moon Knight is. Marc Spector is a man who in the comics was a mercenary. Close to the brink of death with nobody around to help him, he was miraculously saved by the Moon god known as Khonshu. After this event, Khonshu had appointed Marc to be the protector of all those who would travel under the light of the moon. Unfortunately for Marc, he suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which has led him to take on various aliases throughout his time.
To oversimplify things: Moon Knight is a guy with identity issues who is under the watchful eye of a god. It is not surprising that he has not made an appearance anywhere until now, as the character definitely fits into his own stories better than that of say, the Avengers or X-Men. He is often described as a hero but depending on your view of things he may be better labeled as a "vigilante." This is because he does things his own way, and he doesn't necessarily have a "no-kill" rule like Batman, so that may complicate things when deciding if he is a full-on hero or more of an anti-hero in your books. Either way, Moon Knight stops the bad guys at the end of the day, by whatever means necessary.
Moving on to the trailer itself, it opens up with Marc (who we will know for most of the trailer as "Steven" but for the sake of simplicity I will just refer to him as Marc) describing how he can't seem to tell the difference between his waking life and his dreams. This is paired with him taking many precautions to lock himself in his room, clearly attempting to keep himself from getting into trouble unknowingly. Following this, we see how he tends to have these strange visions or apparitions. At one point he might have even seen Khonshu approaching him from the other end of a hallway, but in reality, it was just a frail elderly woman. This is likely his mind struggling to fight between the life he has set himself up to believe (his Steven alias) and the reality of who he actually is (Marc AKA Moon Knight).
Following the scene of the elderly lady/ Moon god, Marc (played by Oscar Isaac) gets a call from someone named "Layla" (as revealed upon turning on the closed captions) and she seems very concerned for his well-being. This part is tricky, as there has never been a character in the Marvel Universe named Layla that is connected with Moon Knight. However, there is one character that goes by Layla in the Marvel Universe, and that is Layla Miller, AKA Butterfly. She grew up in Hell's Kitchen (a neighborhood in Manhattan in New York City that is most commonly known as the birthplace of Daredevil) and is a mutant with the ability to heal the living and even resurrect them when they stop living if she is quick enough. This could be the same Layla presented in the trailer, and if so then that means the series is taking steps to incorporate even more Marvel characters that have not had the spotlight on them in a long time, if ever. However, without further details, this could also just be coincidentally a new character by the name of Layla, so take this one with a grain of salt for the time being.
The next transition shows us this priestly figure with a group kneeling down towards him, and overlayed is the voice of Arthur Harrow, a character that is very obscure in the Marvel Universe. While the comics do have Marc interacting with members of the Priests of Khonshu during the comics where Arthur Harrow is involved, it is too early to tell if the people in the trailer are the priests or if there is a new angle being portrayed here. After all, in the trailer Arthur seems to be recognized more as the priestly figure being bowed to than a genius scientist, so this could be a completely new take on his character. Initially, Dr. Harrow was a minor villain who was performing experiments that were inhumane, to say the least. This is very interesting, as it seems that Marvel wants to mess with an obscure character and give him a new role, and there are plenty of routes they could take, especially if he is more directly in contact with Marc as himself instead of as Moon Knight.
Continuing on in the trailer, Arthur tells Marc to "embrace the chaos" while we see various scenes of Marc getting himself into all this trouble that he seemed so adamant about preventing. These include but are not limited to: regaining consciousness in the middle of a high-speed car chase, falling off of a cliff, gazing up at an altar in a pyramid (almost certainly an altar to Khonshu), running through a corridor with a bag and perhaps too crazy of a grin (along with a crescent moon shadow below him), and just overall scenes of Marc losing his mind. This climaxes with the reveal of his transformation into Moon Knight, to which we immediately get to see him beating up some strange creature. After some brutal poundings, he turns around, and we get to see Moon Knight in his entirety, ending the trailer.
Moon Knight is a character in the Marvel Universe that has been criminally under-represented in media, and the choice to give him a series instead of a one-off movie is a brilliant idea. This way, Marvel can better let audiences explore who Moon Knight is and what he is about. A series also gives more time for other characters to be introduced and fleshed out, meaning that there is a good chance that other Marvel comic book characters we haven't seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of yet will make their appearance, but who those characters might be is still undetermined as of now.
Marvel Studios' Moon Knight is set to release on March 30th of this year on Disney+. Watch the new trailer here: