[So Is There a Third Personality After All?] Moon Knight Episode 5 [The Secret of Steven and the Black Panther Connection]
I’ll be writing about whether there really is a third personality after all in episode 5 of the MCU show Moon Knight, which dropped on Wednesday 27 April, and about the truth behind Steven! I’ll be writing about the key points of Moon Knight episode 5, the explanations, the analysis, the Easter eggs and predictions for where all of this goes next.
This post runs briefly through the things that caught my eye on a first viewing and the Easter eggs, and then gets into the analysis.
Spoilers ahead
For the episode-by-episode reviews of the shows that aired earlier, click the images below!
For the Loki episode reviews, check the image below!
For the What If…? episode reviews, check the image below!
The Spider-Man post is here!
【MCU Discussion, Commentary, and Review】Spider-Man: No Way Home)【Thoughts and Easter Eggs】
Venom is here!
[MCU Discussion & Prediction] Spider-Man: No Way Home [11/17 Trailer 2, Easter Egg]
Contents
A recent hobby
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun lately. The camera is an α7 IV — shoot in RAW, edit in Lightroom, that kind of thing.
This time I shot in Ueno.
Episode 5, “Asylum”
The truth about Steven
As everyone already knows, the truth about Steven Grant is that he was a personality Marc Spector created in order to get through the abuse he suffered as a child.
We knew that as viewers, but from Steven’s side he thought he was the host personality himself. So this scene is the collapse of Steven’s identity, isn’t it.
So the goldfish with only one fin came out of the memory of his brother too…
The truth about the mother
It turns out Marc had a younger brother, Randall, and that he died as a small child because of Marc… And, worse still, it turns out this is why the mother’s mind broke down and she started treating Marc so harshly…
Oh, that is far too painful. And on top of that, Steven has been talking to a hallucinated voice of his mother, as mentioned above… But he does seem to have got past that, more or less, which is a relief.
The Duat and Black Panther
The underworld called the Duat, the place souls pass through on their way to the land of the dead —
And this “Ancestral Plane” is exactly the place in the image below where Black Panther meets his ancestors!!! Honestly, I got so excited here!
Taweret
Hathor also goes by the name Taweret and so on, but Taweret just turned out to be Taweret lol
Apparently she’s the goddess who presides over mothers and children. And she seems to have the role of sending souls off into the next life as well.
After finishing episode 5
The system by which souls circulate
Taweret mentioned in passing that the destination of released souls is infinite (in the Japanese dub, that it differs depending on the religion). Isn’t this actually the first time the MCU has touched on the system by which souls circulate?
Why did the scales stop?
Steven ended up swallowed by the Duat, and as a result the scales stopped. Which would mean there is no third personality, and that the balance came from the two personalities becoming one?
So is there a third personality, Jake Lockley, after all?
Anyone who knows the comics will already know this, but besides Steven and Marc, Moon Knight has a taxi driver personality called Jake Lockley.
There are plenty of things pointing at a third personality — the unwitting killing in episode 2, the mysterious sarcophagus in episode 4. But as mentioned above, the balance of the scales was somehow settled by Steven and Marc alone, so maybe all of that was a misdirect?
Why has it been so long since a soul came through?
Taweret said it had been a long time since a soul came to her, didn’t she. Marc and his family’s religion is Judaism, going by the rabbi’s clothing, but that isn’t exactly a rare religion, is it.
Maybe when an avatar dies, Taweret handles it personally?
What was that psychiatric hospital in the end?
The question is whether that psychiatric hospital was an attack by Harrow, or what it was in the first place — and presumably it was the subconscious, a place for Marc and Steven to sort out their thoughts and, in Marc’s case, to become aware of what he had to do (tell Steven the truth).
The incident during the grave robbing
Marc said the one who killed Abdallah El-Faouly was one of his fellow grave robbers. My own guess had been that the third personality, Jake, was the one who did it — but as noted above, Jake’s existence is looking doubtful, so it seems one of the other mercenaries literally did kill Layla’s father…
What is Layla being asked to do?
Marc makes it to the Field of Reeds at the end, and it looks like he goes back to his body in the living world after this. The bit that puzzled me personally was him saying he’d have Layla free Khonshu. I think only the avatars can reach that sealed-off place, so how is that going to work?
