Six episodes weren't enough for Moon Knight's first season

The Hollywood Reporter

"So, that was weird, huh?" Richard Newby says of his reaction to Moon Knight's finale, which may or may not be a series finale. He adds: "The series, currently billed as limited, and without any contractual obligation for future appearances by Oscar Isaac, ends on a cliffhanger, and a partial resolution in a mid-credits scene. While it would be a surprise if Isaac, who also served as an executive producer on the series, didn’t return to the role in the future, the lacking sense of narrative completion feels like a puzzling choice regardless of where your rating of the series falls. While every Marvel Cinematic Universe project, from film to streaming, has narrative threads and mysteries that carry over to the next project, Moon Knight feels the most unfinished in terms of completing the story set-up, resulting in an oddly rushed finale. There’s no denying the ambition and talent at play in Moon Knight, but the end result left me wanting more and questioning whether the six-episode format best served its characters."

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• Moon Knight is the latest Marvel series to be too insider-y: "The power of WandaVision, the first and still the most impactful of the Marvel/Disney+ offerings, was its crossover potential, enrapturing those raised on the classic sitcoms it alluded to with each new episode, while pulling in others in to connect the Marvel Cinematic Universe dots," says Lorraine Ali. "Since then, though, the TV franchise has become more and more obscure to those of us who still think of 'Easter eggs' as chocolate candies laid by a clucking Cadbury bunny, and it has lost its punch at the virtual watercooler in the process. Yes, chaos is built into Moon Knight’s plot: Steven is never sure what’s real and what’s a psychotic slip, so viewers like me are also left wondering. It’s madness, literally. Confusion is part of the game. The tortured plotting has most certainly repelled folks who aren’t versed in the MCU and don’t have the bandwidth to enter a hall of mirrors with no exit in sight, but I had other reasons for sticking around. In its packed Cairo streets, the haunted desert of Giza and Egypt’s homegrown superheroes and gods, Moon Knight displays a superhero’s careful eye, depicting a place that American TV too often glosses badly. But with each new series, Marvel seems increasingly focused on its deeply dedicated fan base, leaving the rest of us out in the dunes, waiting for saviors Wanda and Vision."
• Moon Knight's finale was both hollow and hasty as it tries to tie everything up though ultimately leaves much to slip through the cracks: "From the deeper mythology to the journey of the character, it unravels when not given the time to breathe," says Chase Hutchinson. "It all begins with the opening moments where we see that Harrow and company are making a beeline journey to the Great Pyramid of Giza. When they arrive there, they rapidly strike down the other avatars we’ve gotten to meet in order to awaken Ammit. It is a lackluster moment that just comes and goes, stubbornly pushing onwards towards the conclusion without a moment to pause."
• What was Moon Knight?: "Like its protagonist, the show never knew what it wanted to be," says Nicholas Slayton. "Despite the fertile storytelling ground the source material offers and the talents of its leads Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight never quite found its focus. Tonal elements and storytelling routes are introduced and then abandoned with each episode. It left the show with a finale trying to reconcile the different stylistic and plot threads, which it only half did, abandoning the rest without resolution."
• Executive producer and director Mohamed Diab on the finale: "Everything you see in the show is a trial and error, a process that we all went through," he says. "There were so many endings — like, not completely different endings, but just, let’s stop here, let’s stop here, let’s stop here. I think maybe the third or fourth draft, everyone knew that this would be the very last scene."
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• How Moon Knight used costume design and cinematography to convey dissociative identity disorder through two distinct points of view
• May Calamawy says being a superhero is thrilling: "When we were filming it, we didn’t have a costume ahead of time because this is not really a character in the MCU," she says. "And so we were building it as we were filming, and once we were finished, you’re just thrown into scenes with it, and I guess I didn’t really have enough time to actually let that digest, what it really means. Then today when it came out, I was really excited. I got really emotional seeing all the Instagram responses and the reactions and how people feel about it, and honestly, mostly the women and how they feel. That has been what has fueled my excitement most about it. I hope that every woman out there, and I’ve said it before, can feel like they can be a superhero now."
• For Calamawy, being Moon Knight's lone woman came with hurdles: “It was challenging for me as an actor,” she says. “I could feel myself almost going into a pattern, where I was making myself smaller…because I was so intimidated.”
• Oscar Isaac was adamant that Moon Knight not be a "masturbatory thing": Asked if he should get two paychecks for playing two roles, Isaac responds: "I should, man. It’s funny because that’s what I was apprehensive about: I didn’t want it to feel like this masturbatory thing. When I started off, I was very adamant that I didn’t want to do the gimmicky, switching back and forth, Jekyll and Hyde part of it. I really segregated Marc and Steven, even asked if we could shoot them on different days. Just do it through reflections and don’t ask me to put on a different hat."