distorted reflections: humanizing marc spector
April 6th marked the fourth anniversary of when Moon Knight’s second episode, “Summon the Suit” first aired, and the final sequence of the episode — the scene in the hotel room — hasn’t left my mind since then. Not just because Marc Spector looks good (he does), but because of the story this sequence tells us.
Beyond reminding the audience that — though the superhero genre is generally sexless — our lead protagonists have a lot of sex appeal (kind of revolutionary when you consider how uncomfortable the general population is with thinking of disabled people as sexual beings), this scene does a lot to get the audience to accept that the next episode is almost entirely told from Marc’s point of view, after the first two episodes were from Steven’s.
Moon Knight is a show about many things. It’s about a system learning to work (mostly) in harmony with each other. It’s about systemic ableism and abuse. It’s about trauma, and grief.
It’s also a very deliberate deconstruction of the Evil Alter Trope.
(“But you’re forgetting Jake —” no I’m not. I didn’t stutter. If you watched six episodes of a deconstruction of the trope, and immediately decided Jake must be the Evil One instead, then you need to re-examine the text and your own biases.)
The series begins entirely from Steven’s perspective, allowing for the show to follow the story beats of an urban fantasy pretty straight forwardly. In the first episode, we don’t really see Marc: we see the aftermath of Marc in the Alps. We hear him, not just when Steven hears him, but throughout the episode when Steven’s unaware (I highly recommend watching with subtitles! You hear Marc when Steven’s getting ready for his date, and when he’s exploring the strange sounds in the museum at the end of the episode). We get a glimpse of him in the mirror, but overall Marc’s presence is —
Frightening, ominous. He warns Steven in a gravelly voice to back off, right before Khonshu decides to join in on the fun to scare the shit out of Steven with a bunch of unfair jumpscares (is Khonshu a secret horror buff, I'm asking the real questions).
And though his ultimate reveal at the end is heroic and defensive, it still leaves Steven and the audience slightly on edge. He saved Steven, but he’s also a killer. He’s threatened Steven to back off, so…can we trust him?
This is something Steven and the audience has to wrangle with in “Summon the Suit”, while trying to get more answers on just what the fuck is going on. And with Marc being reluctant to give details (outside the Avatar thing), Steven and the audience’s only source of information about him outside of Layla is…Harrow.
Harrow is an interesting villain because he’s familiar with ableism, and he’s learned to weaponize it. He fills his shoes with glass, not just cos he’s a weirdo cult leader, but presumably to give off the effect of actually requiring that magic cane of his and Ammit’s. He’s aware of people’s biases towards the disabled: to any outsider, he’s simply a kindly old, disabled gentleman. No one would think twice about him, and he thrives under this unsaid assumption that, since he’s disabled, he’s harmless.
He then utilizes Steven’s internal ableism by convincing Steven that Marc is the Evil Alter. Obfuscating details surrounding the dig site attack to make it sound as if Marc is responsible for the executions, and feeding into Steven’s fear that Marc is dangerous, wrong, and shouldn’t be in control. Harrow does a damn good job of this, to the point that Steven refuses to give ground he is convinced that Marc is a horrible person who does nothing but hurt others.
So when you’ve spent two episodes building this belief up, how do you make the switch from Steven to Marc land well with audiences and have them learn to care for Marc — all under ten minutes, so the next episode sticks the landing when it’s entirely about him?
The jackal sequence begins chipping away at the portrayal we’ve been given so far of Marc: it establishes that he cares about minimizing collateral damage and how badly he wants to protect the people around. It also gives us the gloriously fun moment when he bluescreens for so long seeing Layla in person for the first time in months, that she has to remind him of the threat (he’s a lover boy! We all rejoice!), and then we get to see how confident Marc is in his element, and how he does enjoy the work Khonshu gives him. Marc likes being the hero, and it shows. He hasn’t ghosted Layla out of maliciousness; he’s being manipulated by Khonshu into isolating himself from her.
But what I think makes “the Friendly Type” work so well, is the scene in the hotel room. It doesn’t serve to exist as the stereotypical look at our hero’s abs power fantasy moment (the scenes instead chooses to highlight Marc’s thighs, stomach and back), so… why is it there?
I found the answer not in Marvel, but in Star Wars (funnily enough).
The Acolyte broke the internet (before its unfair cancellation) for a shirtless scene featuring Manny Jacinto’s character, Qimir. In an interview, Leslye Headland said the sequence wasn’t as out of place as some felt, but that it was actually critical to the narrative of the series:
“He did, like, a Steven Seagal neck snap in the [previous] episode,” said the showrunner. “How do you, at all, get from that to humanity? The only way to do that is to show him in such a wildly vulnerable position, and it has to be visual. I can’t think of something more vulnerable than someone holding a lightsaber on someone who’s that exposed. I just don’t. I felt like he was so merciless in the previous episode that he had to stand in front of her and say, ‘You absolutely can kill me.’ Essentially, ‘I’m at your mercy.’ It couldn’t feel like a put-on. It had to feel like he genuinely was like, ‘Totally. You can do this. There’s nobody around.’
Reading old metas from the Last Jedi revealed a similar sentiment about the infamous shirtless scene with Ben Solo. Both Kylo Ren and Qimir are initially introduced to us as cold-blooded murderers, ruthless and uncaring…stripping them down (literally) forces the audience to realize that the boogeyman is human. Moreso, he’s vulnerable.
The quickest way to dispel the concept of Marc as a monster or a villain, is to strip him down and remind the audience that he’s a person just like Steven is, with his own inner world and motivations.
Beyond Marc being half-naked to drive home that he’s more vulnerable than he lets on (that he literally lets anyone see, all the reflective surfaces in the room have been broken, and he’s covered the mirror that we see Steven in, in a brilliant display of visual storytelling), the room gives us even more details about. He copes by drinking, he self-harms (he’s bleeding from his arm, though it’s easy to miss), and he’s focused on finding Harrow because that is all he has left now.
I genuinely think, if you cut this sequence out, then narratively episode three wouldn’t have hit as hard as it did (I imagine especially not the trial with the gods, because that’s Marc/the system at two different, but visually similar, lows). Certainly, it wouldn’t have allowed audiences to sympathize more with Marc while seeing things from his side.