The Ringer-Verse - ‘Moon Knight’ Episode 5 Deep Dive Plus Show Runner Jeremy Slater | House of R

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

Mal and Jo cross the threshold and journey forth to talk about the fifth episode of ‘Moon Knight’ (07:41). They dive into the toughest aspects of the past that Marc needs to face (27:50). And they also take a look at Egyptology Corner (99:07) and answer your questions with Jomi (01:41:55). Later they talk about what to look forward to in the finale with show producer Jeremy Slater (01:53:35). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Jeremy Slater Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the Prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, The Great Bill Hater. We'll talk about the show's wild twists and turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, Every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. I just couldn't face that again. All the things I'd done. Mark, all those horrible things that she said to you, she was wrong. It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have brought him in their cave. I shouldn't have brought up in a cave. I shouldn't have brought up in a key.

You were just a child. It wasn't your fault. Welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to the duo, but also to join us on the Ringers Nexus podcast. feed for all things. Fandom. Joining me today.

Now that she's finished telling me there's one hippo and two of us and this ship can't be that hard to steer. It's my house of our working. Wow, real balance on the scales on that one. Go host.

Joanna Robinson. Oh, hello. Mallory Rubin. Do you want the white jim jams or the gray jim jim jams? in this episode. Any of that sounds sounds lovely.

I'm wearing great pajamas right now so I guess I'll roll with those. I'm Steven. Up to me. Joe, before we face the unbalanced souls awaiting us some quick programming reminders.

And of course, before the programming reminders, some cheers and congratulations to our pal, our ringer verse co-host, Van Lathan, on his book release, Steve Ging.

give us some drum rolls. The sounds is confetti. Make a sound when it falls. Fireworks. Do your things, Steve. Did you say the sound of confetti when it falls?

Yeah. Yeah. Can you get us? Can you repeat? The gentle whisper. The gentle whisper of confetti hitting the floor. Maybe like the sound of like a pen

scratching on parchment, like van signing copies of the book for everybody who has, like with a quill? Like with a quill? A quill on parchment. Yeah. Please. Wow.

A rich tapestry of sound for you guys coming up. If you have not yet purchased Van's book, go do it right now. Hit pause on the podcast. Go buy Fat Crazy and Tired Tales from the Tredges of Transformation, which came out this Tuesday. Order it immediately. Read the book. Come back and listen to this pod. Shout out to Charles Holmes, a real one for advocating people shop locally.

So if you can hit your indie bookstore with that order, that's what you should do. I support it. I love it. Okay, now the programming reminders. On the pod front. On the ringerverse front. Next week is Moonnight finale week here on the ringer verse. It is, of course, also Dr. Strange in the multiverse of madness release week.

So the midnight boys, we'll have their Dr. Strange Instant Reaction podcast for you next Friday, May 6th, movie release day. And then we will be back at the top of the following week with our house of our Dr. Strange deep. deep dive. Follow all of that by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and by following the ringerverse across our social feeds. And of course, bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler. Warning, today's podcast will feature plot

details from Moon Knight's fifth episode, the panultimate episode, Asylum. So proceed with more caution than our hippo pal does when reaching into a chest cavity, to retrieve a heart. But guess what? We have one more programming announcement and it's about today's podcast because Joanna has a very special guest. Joe,

tell the people who you got. I mean, stick around after we talk about everything to hear from Moon Night Headwriters, Jeremy Slater, Gary Slater's here. Please tell me that's how you introed him for the actual interview.

Almost. I lost my nerve, my noive. But, but yeah. get out the whispers of confetti for Jeremy Slater here. He's here with like a lot of fun, juicy info about Moon Night, revelation after revelation. So I learned a lot. Incredible.

Incredible. We are recording earlier than we usually do. We typically record on Friday mornings. We're recording on Thursday because I'm heading out of town Friday for a long overdue family visit. And so I have not had the pleasure of listening to this interview yet because this all happened in a short span of time. So I cannot wait to listen to this interview and hear all of these. goodies and you can do the fun thing as we talk where you, where I say something that's definitely wrong. And then you tell me in real time that it's wrong, because Jeremy Slater told you that it was wrong in the interview in this very podcast. Well, actually, Valerie, I think you'll find that, yeah, exactly. Nothing I love more. Quick facts, Joe, run us through them. This episode's

titled Asylum. We're going to get into that title. Malarine are both very excited to talk about the title of this episode, directed by Mohamed Diab, written by Rebecca Kirsch and Matthew Orton and it is a trim 49 minutes. Spelt! We've got some big picture things that we want to talk about. But first and foremost, I want to mention something really quickly. By popular demand. Yes. Last week, when folks had trouble watching the episode,

I mentioned that friend of the pod, Neil Miller, had introduced me to something we call the Neal Settings, which is how you change the settings on your television to help you view darker, lit moments, scenes in a show or film. So here's some quick and dirty advice from Neil Miller, the Neil settings. I put this on Twitter, but I'm just telling everyone here because people are asking for it. You want to, contrary to what you may think, it's not about brightness, it's about contrast and the depth of black. So instead of cranking up the brightness on your TV, you turn the brightness down, you turn

the contrast up. And then, I mean, this is just good advice for everyone. You try to eliminate as much external light as possible. So if you're watching in a bright and sunny room, that's going to be tough sledding for you. Go watch in a crevice, Joanna's favorite location. I just got like a full body shutter. What about a wet crevice since we talked about this episode? Anyway, last but not least, also you want to turn your sharpness down.

Again, you might, so turn the sharpness down, brightness down, contrast up, and enjoy the depths of black. And those are the Neal settings. And then go listen to trial by content to hear more of Neil's wisdom and Dave's wisdom and Joe's wisdom. Great pod. Check it out. What a concept. Oh, wow. Okay.

That was handy. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Neil. Asylum. Episode five. We have so much to talk about. We've got the great interview coming. There's a lot to get to today.

There's a lot to start thinking about for the finale, which somehow is mere days away at this point. We're almost through our moon night journey. Yeah. we will of course go through all of the beats of this episode in our deep dive, but in a big picture sense, overall impressions on the pan-ultimate moon night. I really liked it. This is sort of the episode we were hoping for where things would get kind of weird and loopy and deeply emotional. I have, you know, a few nits to pick here and there, but for the most part, I'm really excited for the big swings that they went for in this episode. But I just like it when TV gets weird. And this got nice and weird.

How about you, Mel? How are you feeling? I loved it. I thought that it was absolutely devastating. Quite sad. Very heavy, very intense. I also was glad to learn so much and to close so many loops and answer so many questions. But in a way that didn't feel like checking plot boxes, it felt very emotionally impactful.

And like we were really journeying forward on. on our character's arcs. I have some questions about, this is always the case with every MCU show to date about just how much is left to do in the finale. And we'll mostly talk about that later in the pod today when we look ahead. We got some mailback questions about the finale.

We have a few questions about, you know, character X, plot point Y, that we'll forecast a bit. But in general, I loved episodes, four and episodes five so much. And this is just like, this is classic. I feel like I've said this about every season.

And then we have one of our little, we have, I think, a different perspective on this because you rightly believe in a tightly edited season. And I'm like, what if we just had four more episodes where we could have spent all of this time? And then we didn't have to worry so much about how much there is to do in the finale. So I'm having that familiar pre-MCU Disney Plus show finale anxiety

where I'm wondering if they can, answer every question and land everything the way that I think would measure up and follow through on the strength of the last couple installments. But right now, in terms of episode five alone, I thought this was incredibly impactful and fulfilling. I really enjoyed it. And obviously, there are some very natural comps, you know, you identified based on casting news, etc., the likelihood of this episode in particular being the moment where we would get flashbacks, where we would learn about Mark's past, where we would presumably learn the origin, his DID, which we did, or we would see his parents, et cetera. And, you know, called out the very likely

Wanda Vision comp, the penultimate episode of Wanda Vision being structured so fully around revisiting Wanda's memories. That's an episode of television that we both love, that I think everybody here on this Zoom today loves. And I, I think not Jomey. I think not Jomey. Just going to throw Jomey right under the bus and say. Jomey, you like that episode, don't you? The Wanda Division Penultimate? I mean, I know you didn't do the Babe Ruth shot call with it like you did for this, but you like that episode. Jummy's a Wandavision Hater. It's time the truth be told. That's fine. Wasn't until Ryan Erie on Screen Crush breakdown on this episode pointed out that all, I mean, leaving what if out of it, all the Marvel Disney Plus shows have had this moment of diving into

the past in the penultimate episode because for Loki Journey into Mystery, like that's a very, you know, confront yourself, confront your other selves. That's a very like, psychological episode of Loki. Hawkeye Peneltsman episode digs into like the Ronan past stuff and the guilt that Clint is carrying around with that. And then Falcon the Winter Soldier has like the lengthy Isaiah Bradley interlude digging into the past of Captain America. So I think this idea of digging into the past or digging into the self to prepare for battle, you know, makes me think, of course, of one of my favorite episodes of Game of Thrones in the final season.

The Night for the Battle is, you know, A Night of the Seven Kingdoms is an incredible story. But, like, I think that calm before the storm. Should we sing Jenny's song right now? Just as a little until it. Could we ever match Patrick's beautiful performance? Never. My God. I'm so lovely. I texted you recently because it was the, what we call the Serbri anniversary,

where every year on the anniversary of the, so. Anyway, point being, we're talking about. Moon night, not... To beck in late August. For our return to the land of us and fire. But I think that calm before the storm or, yeah, the night before the battle, elegant people talking in rooms, is always more interesting to me than the CGI Punch Fest that we get in the finale's usually.

Agreed. Agreed. I think the penultimate are often some of the strongest installments and hopefully a lot of the introspective and deeply intimate personal qualities of the past couple episodes will also port over and mix in with the inevitable battle brew of the finale. That would be my hope. But, you know, to that excellent insight about the parallel and the through line in the penultimate episodes across the shows of examining your sense of self, revisiting your memories, revisiting your past, even more broadly than just the penultimate episodes of the MCU shows. and this is something that we've talked about a lot in the year plus life of the ringerverse. We're more than an year old.

My goodness. Really just hit me saying that out loud. Steve hit us with the whisper of confetti again. Oh. Well, that was, I think, creepier than you meant it to be. But I liked it. It worked. Let it be known that was a whisper of confetti.

It's quite literally was a whisper of confetti. Yes, that's true. That was how Drax would have interpreted the request, I think. They love it. Just whisper, confetti. But more broadly, examining trauma and the role that trauma has played in shaping our hero's arcs and our characters' journeys, this has been one of the true unifying threads and bridges across phase four of the MCU to date.

Some of that is about how we and the characters alike think about the characters who define phases one through three who are no longer central to the story. Some of that is about how we come to better understand a character like Wanda, who was a part of those earlier phases, but not as centrally as she will be now moving forward. And some of it, of course, is about acclimating anew to a character like Mark Specter, who was not a part of our MCU journey previously. And it makes for some heavy, heavy storytelling. I mean, this was an incredibly, incredibly intense and gut-wrenching episode of TV. But I think it's awesome that the MCU is open to examining,

we talk a lot about genre variance, but tonal variance and to telling different kinds of stories and to not have it just be only that CGI fight that will come at a certain point because ultimately the stakes of those fights are going to matter more if you're deeply invested in who the characters are and crucially understand how they came to be that way.

So I really enjoyed this. I want to talk about that tonal thing for a second because we mentioned this one quote that Feigey gave to Empire a couple times, which is this idea of we're not pulling back. This is, you know, different. We're going, we're like really going for, you know, to paraphrase. It's not exactly what he said. And I think we had questioned sort of midway through, are we seeing the fruits of this? And we had expected that what they meant was a Marvel horror, right, or maybe violence. And Jeremy Slater talked about this a bit.

But the fact that you watch this episode, you go, oh, yeah. Like, that's a promise fulfilled. Your mileage may vary about whether or not you enjoy it. I'm not saying anyone's, like, delighted in an abuse storyline. But I am interested that Marvel feels emboldened to go in this direction, even on a platform like Disney Plus. That's good news. I think for people who really liked the Netflix Marvel shows. And I think that it makes me think about the early days of Marvel and how when they're

making Iron Man 2, for example, they really wanted to do the demon in a bottle story. Because there's all these comic storylines that are very dark psychologically and emotionally. And demon in a bottle is an Iron Man storyline. It's about abuse and is very upsetting. And they wanted to do that for Iron Man 2 and the powers that be at the time, which is not Kevin Feigy at the top of the chain at the time. We're like, we're making movie for kids. What's wrong?

We're making movies for everyone, including kids. What's wrong with you? We're not doing that. And that's kind of part of why Iron Man 2 wound up to be the weird, like, mishmash that it is because the original vision was quashed. And I just think it's, I'm happy that we're in a place where this brand now feels emboldened to make some bigger swings while still in the same operating in the same universe, you know? Should we talk about the episode title for a minute here? Oh, sure.

I guess. I just lived that both you and I were really excited to talk about this for some reason. We were. A real mind-meld moment here. I love it. There's a double meaning in that. Asylum. Asylum, a literal meaning, you know, medical institution is insane asylum.

Other meeting, Mallory, Rubin. Safe Haven. Shelter. Protection. Seeking asylum. And the fact that this episode, not only that it's not called the hospital or Putnam, but that it is not even called the asylum, right? There's no there's no the.

It is called asylum. really helps to clarify the intention behind both manifestations of that term. And there are so many moments throughout this episode where I found myself thinking about that idea of asylum as safe haven, of seeking that shelter for yourself, for somebody else you care about, thinking about the ways, and this will be a through line of our discussion today, that organizing principle that plays a huge role in this episode, thinking about the that that manifests, that Mark's own mind is manifesting these organizing, I just said manifesting like 20 times in 30 seconds.

Maybe that's your organizing principle, Mallory. I'm so tired. But I think it reminds me there's an episode of the Mandalorian called Sanctuary. You know, that's a synonym here. Like, you know, sanctuary, asylum, safe haven. And I like that because for the first couple of things. for the first couple episodes I was sort of missing

we're going to obviously get into it a little deeper but I was misinterpreting Mark's relationship with Stephen as Mark hiding in Stephen just for just to protect Layla and also this idea Mark keeping Stephen prisoner all this sort of stuff as a sort of way

for him to hide out but this idea that he was taking refuge in Stephen and also doing what he could do to protect Stephen ugh like that's that's That's so much deeper and more emotional. So, yeah, I absolutely loved it.

Agreed. Yeah, the idea that he would be giving, giving Stephen and providing Stephen that asylum from the pain. It's a really, really powerful idea. Should we dive in? Let's do it. We have so much to cover and so little time. Just take, you go, we're going to,

you have a big picture note or two that you want to hit. And then we're broadly, we'll probably weave in and out a little bit, but we're broadly going to go chronologically through the episode. You want to start us down this sand dune take us through the maze of our minds? I just thought it might be worth doing a quick Lemire comic refresh. We've been talking about the Lamere Smallwood Run of Moon Night. We've been talking about it all throughout. We thought it would seem like a pretty solid inspiration in this episode really drives that home.

There are some major differences in Mark's origin, he's the childhood trauma, all of that. But I think this idea of going in and out of a reality is very much in the Lumier comic. So to refresh you, like that Mark Spector winds up in the Putnam Psychiatric Ward, which is the name of the spot where our heroes find themselves here. And his dad takes him there after Stephen. emerges after these personalities from his DID emerge. And I think the idea that Amit is the head doctor there as opposed to her. Dr. Amit.

And Billy and Bobby's kicking it as orderly is injecting Mark against his will. Very grim. Yeah. And he's stepping in and out. And this something that Jeremy Slater talked about a couple times is this idea, I don't mean to spoil the interview and I won't spoil the whole interview. But like, you know, all those shots we had of Conchu just like sitting on buildings in first couple episodes in London. That's a very Lumier comic thing where you bring Egypt to the metropolis, all that stuff. But this idea that, like, in the end, the asylum construction

exists, you can interpret it a number of different ways. Maybe the asylum is reality, and maybe everything that happens with Conchue is not reality in that, in that storyline. But there's also an interpretation and a solid interpretation that the whole asylum thing is a mechanism that Kanshu has created to help Mark heal, if that's the word you want to use, or at least be more comfortable with the fractured elements of his own mind. So for him, for all of his fractured identities to come together. And in this case, we're really operating with two, maybe 2.5 if you prefer. But that's a very similar storyline to what we see here. And that embracing of the self of both our own actions in Mark and the fractured, the piece of himself that he splintered off into Stephen.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you mentioned last week, like the specific panel of Mark and Stephen embracing each other and reaching the stage of acceptance. One of the, one of the most striking stretches of that Lemire Smallwood run comes when Mark holds court in front of all. all of his different altars. And they have this shared conversation about what needs to unfold. There are so many, so many similarities. And also, I think, in the elements that we haven't seen, maybe a direct one-to-one mapping, still thematic insights and clues, and maybe even potentially some plot clues about what could unfold.

Still no werewolves in space yet. But certainly some space stuff. Certainly some space stuff in Young Mark. Mark's room, so the Spaceman, the astronaut alter, you never know. You never know. You made that sound like Mark Spaceman. Hello. Anyway, the divide here, like we're going to, as I said, we're going to go through it chronologically. But I think if it's, I don't think it's that confusing, but something that helped me, my organizing principle when watching this episode. And I talked about this a little bit last week when we were

talking about the lights in the hallway slanting and this question of whether or not they might be on a boat. But I find they were on a boat But I find that like thinking about it as sort of like the levels in inception Was actually very helpful to me that there are three levels that we're operating on in this storyline There's the boat level which is the top most Real real real moment even though it's the underworld that's the reality Then there's one level below that which is the empty asylum with the red sarcophagus and the memories

And then there's one level even below that, which is the asylum with Harrow in it. That's the Snow Fortress level, the core bottom of your mind. And so just it can get a little confusing because we've got two different asylum levels, just as we have two different asylum meetings. But I think that that's a way for me to organize what we're looking at here. Right. Just for my own like organizing principle and note taking process when I was watching and thinking about it, I was referring it, referring to like the memory examination. hospital one and then hospital two is the one where dr harrow is because of course tarrett is with mark and stephen on the boat and in the hospital one level but is not in hospital two

and when we get to some of our jake theorizing which i guess we might do actually we we might do that later we might do it pretty soon who knows we'll see we'll see in real time uh i i'm excited to talk about that because i think there's a way to unlock even that Dr. Harrow, deeper asylum level. Absolutely. It could just be two levels if you prefer. That absolutely works. I just thinking about the boat level because, like, Mark is still in denial about where they are when they're on the in the empty asylum, right? And then they get out onto the boat and he's like, oh, oh, hell, we're in hell sort of thing.

No, at a minimum history. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then you could maybe separate the memories as an entirely different realm if you wanted to. But that would get complex in a hurry. But there's a lot of, if you think about Harrow and Tawera as like the two guides, at least going on here, you do have like science versus soul or head versus heart. Or as Harrow puts it, I think, sense and nonsense.

You know, like you've got these two journeys that we're on and you could do a clinical psychological journey or you can do this real soul searching mystical. journey. And Harrow, in a way, the Dr. Harrow character almost literalizes that, that duality. And so much of the episode is anchored around the idea of duality and halves and the parts of you and finding, again, the balance between that, the two hearts on the scale, the balance between the hearts and the feather of truth. But he says in one of the sequences, Mark, I didn't shoot you, your mind is violently vacillating. between sense and nonsense picture. Picture this, your brain is a pendulum swinging between a very difficult reality. And then he goes on to, he's describing the reality there in the facility and the idea that Mark is Moonnight, that Mark is a superhero,

but it also works as a mnemonic for unlocking the swing between the different levels of the episode. So, yeah, it's, you know, the Midnight Boys, we're talking about how, because the episode is so sad and heavy, it's a difficult rewatch, and it is, but I think it's a quite rewarding rewatch because there are so many different elements that I think it helps to, like, click into place a little bit and crystallized, though I'm also, this one, most of all, I'm really curious to rewatch after the season, after we see where the finale goes and see what else, like, stands out anew or plays differently with full clarity.

I think what's also true is that we're already in a place where rewatching the entire season is rewarding because if you think of Mark as protective of Stephen, when you think about their relationship in that way, it's interesting to watch those first couple episodes. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, market peach, apricot, rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious.

Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. I want to go rogue and talk about Jake right now if we can. Wow. I think it helps organize those levels. Because I think if you think about it as boat, empty asylum, harrow asylum, as like top, middle, bottom, it makes sense to me that, like, Jake is rattling around in a red sarcophagus in the middle layer. It doesn't even exist on the top layer. Is rattling around the red sarcophagus in the middle layer.

And then there's a really good case we made that we see him in the bottom harrow layer. And to lay this out really quickly, you know, I'm not telling Mallory anything she doesn't already know. But this idea is when we first see Oscar Isaac in the scene with Harrow in this episode, he's battered and bruised around the face in a way we haven't seen him yet. He's got a bandage on his nose. And he's doing an accent. He's a little... He's speaking, behaving, gesticulating completely differently than we have seen so far.

Yeah, and he's a bit more volatile than even Mark. And I think there's a really good case to be made that that is Jake there, because especially when we go back to that scene and it's Mark, the bruises are gone, the bandages are gone, in a way that even, like, Mark puts his hand up to his nose to be like, where did that bandage go? So I think that idea that, like, Jake still locked away in the middle conscious level,

but in deep in the snow fortress level of your mind where Killian Murphy is, that's where you'll find Jake. And he's awake and he's moving around and making moves. So. Yes. Okay. So your team, this is,

Jake with the bloody nose and the nose bandage in the first Dr. Harrow scene. I wasn't until I talked to Jeremy Slater and that's just a teaser for listen to what Slater says about this. Oh, how interesting. Okay. I'm not saying he confirmed it, but I think things he said made me get on board with this theory. Okay. Well, I'm fully, fully.

I could not be more firmly, this is Jake. Team, this is Jake. I, okay, so first of all, there are so many interesting cuts between the different levels, between the different realms of this reality, between the different aspects in Mark's mind here. Across the episode, some of them are so thematically rich, like the cut from a horrifying first glimpse we have

of Mark's mother saying, this is all your fault, into... Yeah. A representation of motherhood, women, children, right? Fertility. We get also the cut here from Mark and Stephen screaming

into this, quote-unquote, Mark also screaming. And so I love the idea there of a direct blend between Jake and Mark and Stephen in terms of an actual action that they are taking. I like – so one of the reasons I'm – in addition to all of the evidence that points to it, one of the reasons I really like this is because we have across the episode – This is going to be like a classic house of our – we've got our outline. We've got our time goal. And then – Early we go and spend 30 minutes on a thing we weren't even supposed to talk about here.

But we were recovering ourselves. Over. Into the sands. We are sliding down into the sands. Will we be able to run forward or will we freeze? Who can say? There are three scenes with Dr. Harrow at this level. It just is so perfect to me that they would be Jake, Mark, and Stephen. And we can say, I think, definitively, that the second one is truly Mark. And the third one is definitively Stephen. And so it fits that this would be Jake. And I think that really unlocks, unlocks a lot as the idea of this organizing principle. Because when Harrow says, and I'm not going to just, I might say Harrow, might say Dr. Harrow. We're always inside of this episode, unless otherwise noted, talking about Dr. Harrow, since that's he's in this episode. That's not true.

Later we'll be talking about the finale. We'll talk about the other harrow. Ignore that. It was a falsehood. Mustache Harrow. Yes, Ned Flanders. Yes, Ned Flanders. There you go.

With his fake diploma up on the wall. He says the struggling mind, and this is in this sequence, too, quote unquote, Mark slash Jake, the struggling mind will often build places to seek shelter for different aspects of the self from our most traumatic memories. It's called just an organizing principle, okay? Some people, they see a castle, right? Somebody else will see a maze or a library or a psych word. Mark slash Jake asks, yeah, or it could be a psych word, yeah. So there's a real similarity there to what Taurat says to Mark and Stephen elsewhere.

because the duat's true nature is impossible for the human mind to comprehend, you may perceive this realm as something more easily recognizable to you. I bring that up because one of the main points against this, this is Jake case that people have completely fairly noted, is that back in the Mark Stephen level, Mark has retained the knowledge from this exchange. He mentions the organizing principle. He cites that.

Now, I think there are a few different ways you could still interpret that and make the case fit, right? One of them is that if Mark's mind is manifesting all of this, there's another manifesting for your manifest tracker on today's podcast. Take a drink, yeah. If this information is something that he already contains, then he would have that knowledge. But part of it is that if Mark is sending Jake, sending this aspect to seek shelter for different aspects of the self,

as Harrow outlines there, that could potentially be an explanation. You outline most of the evidence. I think it's just very, very compelling. Like, there's evidence elsewhere outside of that scene, too, right? We've already talked across the episodes about who the third personality might have been, who was stabbing, that neither Mark nor Stephen claimed to have been in control at that moment. I think all that stuff is clear that, like, Jake has been around. It's just like, the cabin driving by with the street melts, the melting barrier

sequence at the end. Like the question I asked Jeremy Slater is, have we seen Oscar Isaac play? Right. Jake. Right. That's been the question. And we have because he did it in this scene. Definitely.

Right. Speaking of the organizing principle in this idea of the afterlife is sort of what you imagine it might be. There are some questions as to why, like, why a Jewish man would see like something having to do with the Egyptian afterlife. and I think you have to kind of yada yada or say like that's the consue in him or something like that if you want to. But I like, I love this idea. And this actually is close to, I'm an atheist. But if I believe in an afterlife, I believe in an afterlife that probably is tailored to whatever the person is. Right.

And so I love this idea that depending on who you are, that's the afterlife you experience. And I love, I love the mention of the ancestral plane in this. So this idea that all these spaces are connected. in some way. I do think there's a solid question to be raised about the Eternals and how we square this idea of an afterlife with the idea of the Celestials built everything and we are merely a nesting ground for baby Celestials. But I choose not to dwell too much in the realm of the Eternals. It will only hurt my head. Eternal is the recommended viewing at the end of every Moonnight episode on Disney Plus.

They're trying. They're trying. Can I throw a few more Jake things your way? No, I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no. We can come back to it later because some of them are about like other aspects, other, other, other areas of the episode. But I wonder if we should just hit them all, all the Jake stuff right here. Should we come back to it?

No, no, no. Give me the full Jake barrage. I'm ready. I'm braced for it. We've covered most of it. Obviously, you mentioned the sarcophagus. The Who Punched Stephen thing. So we will talk more obviously about when Stephen initially emerges.

But one of the questions, we got a lot of mailbag questions about this. This is something that people have been asking about a lot, is if Stephen emerged right before Wendy, Mark's mother, abuses him, why would Stephen not have that memory? And Stephen's, as Mark explains elsewhere in the episode, he says that's the whole point of view is to not carry that pain, right? To live a life free of that. Could Jake have also emerged at that same time and been. the one actually in that moment. And then in the scene itself, obviously, like all the physical stuff that you mentioned, but the way that he speaks, Steve, can you play a soundbite for us here?

Can you play the line where he says, Hey, thank you. I feel really great. I mean, they must pay you a lot of money in this place. You're really good. I tell you what, I feel like a million dollars. Never felt so good. I'm going to see myself out.

Thank you. We have never heard. Oscar Isaac deliver a line like that in this season. Never. I will say that some people have pointed out that when Layla shows up in Egypt and Mark confronts her there, that a lot of people at the time thought that might be Jake because he also, it's kind of a New York accent, right? Like, Mark is from Chicago and he's doing a New York cabby accent here. Yeah. Right?

And so I was not a believer back in a person. episode three when people pointed that out, but I'm kind of a little over now. And if you go back and watch that episode, you can hear it there too. Yes. Okay. Yeah. But it feels like difficult to brush off here, quite heavy. Also, Harrow, one of the things that Harrow says to him in this exchange is you're doing everything possible not to look within. I feel like that really, again, feels like deliberate. It fits in every, in every scenario, but it feels like it helps unlock that there. The mirror. And this is true in all of the Dr. Harrow sequences, but the mirror behind him is covered, is shrouded.

That's not the first time we've seen a shrouded mirror in Moon Night, but it feels quite deliberate in terms of its placement in the scene here. And I found myself wondering, maybe that's one of the connections

to the Shiva scenes that we get elsewhere in the episodes. You cover mirrors during reflective surfaces, mirrors during Shiva when you say Shiva. But maybe it's because Jake can't see Stephen and Mark can't see him.

And then there's that moment where he picks up the glass pyramid and tries to stab himself. what did you make of this line? Because he says, and I will say I had a hard time actually like hearing this word for war, but based on the subtitles, Doctor, no, you're not. You're going to release that monster.

He's going to destroy everything. He's going to destroy everything. Who is that about? I know. I thought he meant, there's a couple interpretations, right? He could be talking about himself? Is he talking about Harold? I think he's talking about, I think he's talking about.

I think he's talking about Amit was my, like that monster being Amit and that he's and he being Harrow himself. Okay. Yeah. I like that. Okay. But the door is open on how you choose to assign those pronouns, honestly. So here's my question for you for the finale. Well, we'll dot some of our finale look ahead throughout.

But this is on my mind. Is there time to intro Jake fully in the finale? like I think they could set up a future where it's Mark and Jake if Stephen is in fact gone, which we'll obviously talk about later, and I don't think is what either of us hopes is true. Does introducing a new personality formally that late in the game, will that track if so much of this episode centered and landed because of Stephen and Mark as the two hearts, the two souls seeking that truth and that balance with each other? Like, I think you could make the case either way.

Could this wind up, even though, of course, Jake has been heavily hinted at as an emerging personality, feeling like a plot development at the expense of the cohesiveness of that arc? Or would it feel very organic because it is a new phase of Mark assessing and understanding his DID in full? Slater talked about this a lot, so I'll let him answer, like, a lot of those questions. But I think that what I'm worried about, like, when I was... popping on the Reddit and the Reddit comments are not the only, like, thing to go by in terms of reactions when I was popping on the Reddit, it reminded me of the end of Hawkeye where everyone was like, where's Kingpin, where's Kingpin, where's Kingpin, where's Mephisto, where's Jake, where's Jake, right? Like, I'm worried that if we get, even though you and I just had a delightful time spending all this time talking about, like, is Jake already here, when is it coming? I'm worried if, like, we're just focused on when is Jake going to be here. We're going to miss the story. they're trying to tell us, which is about Mark and Steve.

So I think that kind of addresses Stephen, which I think that kind of addresses your question, which is like, for me at this point, I think I would rather have Jake be like a post-credit stinger than involved in the final storyline of Mark and Stephen that we've been following so far. I think I now feel that way, too, which is not how I felt a couple weeks ago, but because of how satisfying the Mark Stephen journey has been, I'm, I'm there. I'm there now, too. Okay. Take us back.

Into the underworld. All right. So, I mean, before we do this journey, you know, there's basically like certain moments and memories that we need to hit. This isn't exactly, this journey through the underworld through the asylum is not exactly a one-to-one with that TV trope I was talking about last week. But there still is like a test, you know, stakes on it, a ticking clock on it. We have to balance the scales here. The scales we've been talking about since episode one, this idea of two hard. hearts achieving balance. I mean, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful idea, right? Where's the third

heartache? No, we're not going to talk about that. Okay, so the two hearts achieving balance, way to get the feather of mod on the scales of justice. This is obviously like foreshadowed in episode one with the little girl and Stephen talking. Why was it? It's foreshadowed in the way that Harrow's tattoo was going bananas when he tried to read Stephen and he said there's chaos in you. Right? He couldn't judge in one way or another because it's It's all out of balance here. I'm excited to go on this journey. I think you want to talk about scale-wise before we go on the journey.

I just want to say if that kid from the museum who said to Stephen, did it suck for you, getting rejected from the field of reads, leading to Stephen saying, well, that doesn't make sense because I'm not dead, am I, am I? One of the most devastating bits of foreshadow we've seen in the MCU, but also I hope that kid is playing the lotto. because the inner eye. It's a bizarre.

It's a bizarre. It's a bizarre moment. What did you make show of the visual rendering of the hearts? A little like white stone. Yeah, the white stone instead of a more. I like, I mean, they look like bioaccurate red bleeding heart. You wanted to like gloop them on the scale?

I did not personally want that. No, I was delighted by this choice. But I was curious what you thought about that. They remind me of the canopic jars that we've seen a couple times, right? Those like white stone jars with the animal heads that the organs would go into. So I think that's what they're trying to evoke there. But also it's like moonite iconography for things to be that kind of stone white, not bright white, but stone white. You know what I mean?

So that's, I think, what they were going for. If I had to guess. So let's talk about this journey. Obviously, Mark is like, let's kill the hippo. And Steven's like, or go to therapy. Listen. Or should we go to therapy? I have a lot of love and empathy for Mark Specter.

You're not down with Hippo murder? Let's kill the hippo pursuit from Mark in this episode. This is where I got to break out my old binge mode, tough look for our guy T-shirt. Like tough look for our guy, Mark Specter here. This was rough. Tower is lovely. Lovely. It's so helpful.

Oh, my God. With like a beautiful blue fingernail polish and just like, you know, shout out. I mean, like, I don't know if we'll see her again. I think the point I made last week is that Antonio Saliv, who did the voice is such a smoke show, that it would be odd to never see her gorgeous face. But if it's just a voice performance, it's a tremendous voice performance. Great job. Joe, can you please read Steve's Zoom chat?

Men would literally rather kill the goddess of motherhood and go to therapy. Thanks, Steve, Alley. So this journey is about showing. showing yourself to yourself, right? Which any good therapeutic journey should be. Harrow says Dr. Harrow, Mustache Harrow, Ned Flanders Harrow says there could be no progress without understanding. So this is the progress we're on. We're going to hit some road, like landmarks on the road here.

First stop. Everybody off the bus because we're going to a cafeteria filled with dead people. Mallory? Not appetizing. The dead calf. Boy, so I loved the approach of giving us the glimpses through the glass panes of a couple doors previously, showing us just a snippet of something that we had seen before

it helped orient us and the fact that we would be returning to these relics of the past. We got the little glimpse of the bathroom fight sequence from the end. end of the premiere, we got the sky, turning back the turning back time, turning back the sky map sequence with Conchua and Mr. Knight from episode three. And then we walk into this, Stephen calls it a calf, full of dead people, full of the people that Mark has killed. And that was like a really harrowing revelation as he starts to, he looks at them and the comprehension is dawning and he's reciting the cities. The cities where he killed these. people on behalf.

They're not even people of their locations. Yeah. Exactly. There were missions, right? And of course, he's rationalizing this to a horrified Stephen by

recounting the horrible things that these people had done that he needed on behalf of Conchu to protect the travelers of the night. And it was one of the, and I think that this has been a strength of the show throughout the season, it's something that

we've discussed a lot across our episodes. one of the many moments where, like, you can never let yourself off the hook for long from thinking about what Conchu is doing and why, and whether we can ever allow ourselves to trust in him as a partner, as a protector, as an ally. And of course, you've talked, you know, you've shed so much light across the, across the run about how he's positioned differently across the comics, but this, like, a parental, paternal approach that he takes. with Mark. I am the one who can help guide you. I can give you this new lease on life. And we'll talk obviously later today about the actual birth of Mark as Moon Knight in Conchus Temple.

But I thought that this was such a great scene, not only for what it told us about Mark, but for what it told us about Contchu. I think that Mark's tactic here, which is, you've seen Dexter, right? I'm just like Dexter. It's fine. It's fine to be serial killer. Let me tell you something. I've never seen Dexter killers. I've never seen Dexter. I'm wholly unsurprised. Seems great. I don't like horror, Rubin. But you know the concept, right?

Yes. Dexter's a serial killer who kills serial killers. So it's fine. The premise of Dexter, yes. It all comes out in the wash. The conopic jars are here again. And then most poignantly, we see a little kid here. We don't know who the kid is yet.

But it's Randall, Mark's younger brother, here in the room of people he's killed, which means that Mark, even, even a little. as a grown-ass adult is blaming himself for the death of his brother. He includes his brother on the roster of people that he's killed. Yes. This was devastating. Absolutely heart-wrenching. And Stephen, of course, follows. And Mark does not want him to because this is the original trauma. This is the origin of everything that unfolded, of the moments that led to Stephen's emergence, of the moments that changed Mark's life. And I was so struck by the fact that Stephen did not recognize his own brother, did not know who Randall was.

Now, of course, this makes complete sense because Stephen emerges after Randall's death. Like, I'm not saying it doesn't track. It tracks perfectly. But I just thought it was so, it just hit so hard. Like when he doesn't recognize him and then he says, I had a brother. Like, it helped really crystallize how separate, truly. Stephen and Mark were from each other, how bifurcated their lives and their realities and their histories and their memories were. The most meaningful thing in Mark's life is not something that

Stephen has any awareness of. And that is, of course, the point. That is the dawn of Stephen, not knowing that, not having suffered his mother's horrific and misguided wrath. So if you thought death cafeteria was a bummer of a first stop, wait till I tell you about stop number two, which is the death of a brother. A really, really quick intro and outro of Randall Specter here. I have a really, really important question for you, Mallory Rubin. Is it about Gus? If Randall is drawing a one-fished, one-finned fish in the past, did Gus the one-fish

Wanda? That was more Australian than British, ever exist in the tank. I was like, for a minute, I thought Daniel Ricardo of F1 fame had joined us to prep us for the Melbourne Campre. I don't get any of your racing references on it. I will. I will get you to watch Triumph to survive. You're trying. Really hard journey.

I will. I know. You got me to watch Outer Banks, so anything is possible. Oh, wow. Yeah. I did. Great stuff. I've been thinking about this a lot.

There were a couple things back to back. So we see Ro Roe drawing and coloring the one fined fish, Gus. We also hear, of course, the exchange between Mark and his mom as they are heading out to your dreaded crevice to the cave. Later's Gators. And his mom, that's what Mark says. Frazing on your dreaded crevice, finally. What I said wet crevice earlier. I did.

I just hope we could just roll on past that. Okay. Oh, boy. We hear Mark as they're heading out saying, later's gaiters, and his mom replies in a while crocodile. Now there's, of course, the very literal, like, crocodile I'm at connection there. But of course, I was struck by both the one Finn Gus connection and what becomes Stevens sign off at the end of his calls to his mom in earlier episodes is that these

aspects of Mark's memory and Mark's trauma, these deeply painful things, have become these positive touchstones in Stevens' life and reality. But also these elements of a more innocent time. Like transporting the more innocent elements. Holding on to like the memory of a happier moment and of an intact, loving, happy family. Whether what this means about your actual question of whether Gus ever existed, I don't know because I think you could, and this is one of the things that's been so interesting about Moon Night. Like you can interpret it in so many different ways still. Maybe Stephen actually bought this one fined fish that he saw.

or Mark bought it for him because, again, there's the whole what was happening with the replacement of the one-find, Gus that led to the two-find Gus. Or maybe Jake that creep was like ripping fins off of fish. Oh my God. That's horrifying. Just to make Stephen happy. Maybe these were real fish and they were purchased as this connection to this memory,

to this connection to Randall from the past. I thought it had one fin, right? Or maybe, exactly. Maybe he is, and there are so many different moments, like we'll talk now about. the crunching of the bird, the bird statue that looks like, the statue of the bird skeleton that looks like Conchu, as Stephen is following the boys into the cave, like, is that actually there? Is that something that is in his mind? And so he is seeing it. He is imagining that

it is there. I think you could ask that about so many different physical manifestations in the episode. And the drawing is in, is in Young Mark's room. It's framed on the wall. But it's not, it's not filled in, even though the version that we saw in the picnic table was. So even across the drawing, there are distinctions. But it's just like, it's just so heart-wrenching. My favorite interpretation I've seen of the bird skeleton here is this idea that, like, this is a core memory. This is part of the core memory of the loss of his brother is the bird skeleton in the ground. And so that when Mark was figuring out what he thought Conshu would look like, he sort of made him look like this bird skeleton from this very,

traumatic day of his life. Because we don't see Kanshu in the making of Moonnight scene. We don't see like the birdheaded Kanshu figure until Mark sort of accepts the job. We just see the disembodied voice. We hear a disembodied voice and see the statue. And then we see the figure after that. I don't know. It's interesting.

The Tombustre thing we should talk about, of course, really briefly as they go into the cage, cave, the dreaded crevice. Mark and Randall are playing. I just don't like the nickname Rero. I think it's because some people call me Jojo and I don't like that either. So I'm avoiding it and just sticking with Randall. So like Mark and his brother are role-playing Tombustor, and Mark is Dr. Grant in this scenario, Dr. Stephen Grant.

And so my question to you is this. Is this why the accent is so bad? Because it's an accent that he made up when he was a kid. Ooh. Follow question. He had 20 years to perfect it, so why didn't he? Oh, interesting. I like that theory because it is so fully anchored in this moment in time. I like that. By the way, that reminds me. One of the things that we wanted to talk about at the very top, but we didn't because I talked about Jake for 27 minutes instead. I love talking about Jake. Should we just real quick here on an accent corner, just celebrate this performance for a minute? The acting from Oscar Isaac in this episode was incredible.

Amazing. Just genuinely unbelievable. I actually think this moment, I mean, all throughout, it's seamless, right? So a fun bit of trivia is that Oscar Isaac has a twin brother who doesn't really, you know, they're fraternal twins. They don't really look that much alike. But I guess in the scenes where he's acting opposite himself, his brother was there doing the scenes with him, which I think is really beautiful. But the, it's seamless. it's a perfect performance and a perfect digital effect.

Like, it worked beautifully for me. But the facial expressions on both Mark and Stephen as they are reliving these memories or witnessing them for the first time because they don't, in Steven's case, doesn't have the memories. It's just, like, unbelievable. The posture's different. Like, you know, it's just, it's so, it's so incredible. But this scene where Stephen is chasing a memory that a part of him doesn't want him to discover. and he's trying to save these boys who are, one of whom is already dead. And he's just going like, boys, boys, like in as they're going into the crevice.

No nooks and crates to be seen. It's just like all crevice all the time. And it's getting narrow and narrow and narrow. And I'm so upset watching it. But the frantic chase for these boys really, really upsetting. Like, you know what's going to happen before. You know, as soon as like he says it's going to rain or I don't want to go in there or take care or look after your brother or whatever, you're like, Well, that's a dead brother walking.

And the episode opens with the scream for the cry for help. Yeah, yeah. Before that shot of the mother. So, yeah, we, you know, so Randall Spector, we should say, is a character in the comics, but does not die as a child. The actual traumatic, the story of what happened, what the traumatic incident in Mark's childhood was is different in the television show here. than it is across the comics canon. In the comics, Randall becomes

Moon Knight's nemesis. Well, he becomes a foe, Shadow Knight. And it's also a tragic story, but in a very different way. Next on the traumatic bus tour. Yes, we will be back to Roro. I will call him Roro. We'll be back to Roro on that trauma soon.

Full representation. The abuse of the mother. right, who blames him for Randall's death. It was horrible. This is a nit I'm going to pick. I would say, I'm not saying this doesn't happen. I'm saying it certainly can. I think maybe it's the performance that was off for me.

There was just something that felt like a little. Also, it might be the fact that I've seen the movie walk hard too many times where they go, the wrong kid died. And that's just like this running joke in that movie. And it's kind of ruined this whole like the wrong kid died. very deeply traumatic. But like the fear for that kid I really glommed on too. I think it's just maybe the performance of the mother that didn't really fully work for me.

But it's still obviously a harrowing experience for this character and something really tough to watch. So yeah. Yeah. Just absolutely like brutal to see Wendy Spector, to see Mark's mother blame him for her other child. death rather than not only being glad that he was okay or comforting him in his time of anguish guilt and shame, but actually lashing out of him and vilifying him, like this child in pain and in need, just horrible. And we've discussed so much across the season, the way that Mark's life seems to be defined by this sense of shame and the guilt that he carries, seeing, seeing the

origin of that here was so clarifying. And I thought that watching Stephen, witness this and his journey across the episode because there's there's this like active denial early about what he's witnessing from the mother because that is not his memory of her at all but also also even in the early stages where he's like this is not this is not correct this is wrong and the this is wrong idea will will return later when we learn that she has died he is horrified to see mark suffering these from these words A reason why that is so strong is like the next stop on the tour here, which is the ineffectual nature of the father. Oh, the, um, on the birthday cake front, when he's running up the stairs, the stairs from the end credits.

Yeah. And the birthday scenes. Yeah. The stairs at last. But I think when you have a, this is something that I have some of that I have some experience with that like if you, when you have an abusive parent, that is one thing. but what is sometimes even harder and more difficult is the other parent not protecting the child from the abusive parent. And so I was actually, I think, more traumatized watching the father do literally nothing to shield his son from the mother here. And that's so upsetting.

So to have Stephen, Stephen is like a brother figure to mark all this sort of stuff, but he's also the adult male voice in the room saying, this isn't right that Mark didn't get to hear as a kid. Someone to come in and say, you don't deserve this, this is right. And when you have experienced an abusive parent, like, you're just stuck in this world where you believe this horrible messaging that's being spewed at you, and you're so longing for someone to come in and say,

this isn't right what's happening to you. So it's so healing to have Stephen here, even as Stephen is undergoing his own traumatic thing, they're both in full-blown trauma responses to everything, right? But to have Stephen's voice here saying, it's not right, is both the external voice he needs in this moment, but also the fact that it's coming from within him,

that there is like a judge of what's right and wrong, as we talk about consue and we talk about omit, and we talk about judging what's right and wrong, there's a voice inside of him, despite the fact that he's saying, I've been a killer in my whole life, I deserve this. I'm like, I'm worthless. I'm shameful.

There's a voice inside of him saying, this isn't right. You don't deserve this. Right. And Stephen. So. Well, Joe. The fact that in that scene with his father,

when teenage Mark leaves and his father follows him, that young Mark is wearing the white hoodie, I thought was so interesting, too, because that became like his cloak, his uniform. moving forward because the disappointment of his father not protecting him, not stopping this horrifying abuse verbally, physically, as we'll see later, from unfolding was another one of these moments.

And you know, you explained so, so expertly last week, how with D.I.D., there is this, there is this one original trauma. But one of the things that, you know, and I think we've both said many times, we're not mental health experts, nor would we ever claim to be, but when we think about the way this has explored inside of a story and the beats that emerge across the story,

thinking about the way that that failure, when one of your parents has failed you so deeply and the other one does not protect you, would cement itself. for Mark in that way, where the thing that he was wearing in that moment of great disappointment would then become the thing that he held onto and draped around him moving forward is... And then he becomes a protector, right, for travelers in the night. I mean, yeah.

The next stop on the tour is another... It has to do with another father, the death of Layla's father. Here is really interesting because... So we get a little bit more information right. Mark says that he became a mercenary because he got kicked out of the army because... for going AWOL in a few weeks date that could be Stephen, that could be Jake. We're not really sure. This is true to the Lemuric comic canon.

This is why Mark becomes a mercenary. Bushman gets a mention, and Jeremy Slater talked about Bushman and sort of their original plans for Bushman in the story, which I thought was really interesting. But I know we've had all these theories about what happened here. I'm tempted, given that we only have one more episode to go to just take on face value what we see here, what we're told and what we see. see. And like, you know, I'm open to all possible theories, but I think we should just, I mean, I am going to say, I think Bushman did this, shot Mark. Mark was dying, crawled his way into this temple, was going to end himself and was resurrected. And that hero doesn't appear to be anywhere. And I don't think Jake was involved, but, you know, happy to be proven wrong. What are you

thinking in this moment. Yeah, I was going to ask you what you thought about the fact that we didn't see the actual deaths, just the aftermath. And whether that meant that there was still more there to be revealed in time. But again, we have, on the one hand, we have so much to do and not a lot of room. And I think I agree with you, though, I guess maybe the one toe I still have in the we have more to see corner there is just from Layla's perspective and what she maybe still could stand to learn about what happened there. But I think I'm with you. This felt like,

okay, maybe we won't see anything more there. But I don't know. Whenever they don't show something that they've talked that much about, I do always wonder. But I was focused more on, we've talked about Mark and death a lot this season. And how many times in this episode, we are reminded that Mark wants to or feels unworthy of life, you know, connecting to that sense of deep and defining shame that he feels. When like earlier in the episode, when he realizes that they are in the underworld, he's relieved to be dead. He says, I'm not crazy. I'm dead. When they're in the room of the dead that the calf full of corpses, one of the things that he says to Stephen is kept wishing I'd fail and one of them

would kill me instead. The healing ended up being a curse. And then in Conschus Temple, as you noted, we see him pick up his gun and bring it to bring it, bring it up against his chin. He's poised to, he's poised to fire. That was a real, like, I can't believe I'm watching Disney Plus moment, honestly, for me. Yeah, absolutely. And he's in a situation there. Lela's father, the archaeologist, we don't we don't know enough about the history between those characters i think it's safe to say it's not the same level of attachment that he had to his brother randall but still surfacing again anew this guilt and shame over lost life people that he thinks he failed to protect and as you said then to become this protector to to opt in to this pathway where he would have

the ability to protect people and like when when you know you mentioned that always been a killer line, there are so many like echoes of language between characters across this episode and now in hindsight across the season where when Mark's mother calls him a disgusting human, I think Daniel, Daniel Chin, our colleague Daniel Chin, made this point in his excellent recap on the ringer.com of this week's episode that like you think of the way that Conschus speaks about Stephen, you know, the worm, this unworthy person, right? And like this right here, is his mother's voice, this idea that he's a killer,

this fear that he carries surfacing, and then that becomes mixed up in how Conchu, how Mark thinks about himself, but how Conchue also then manipulates Mark. And one of the things that I really loved about this sequence was the way that Stevens' perspective, this gets to what you were talking about a few minutes ago,

Stephen's perspective on Conchua and Moon Knight is really the crucial thing here. And of course, Mark reliving and assessing, It's all entwined because Stephen is a part of Mark and Mark is a part of Stephen. But Stephen would say, like, he's not broken. He needs help. And Stephen's starting to realize

that he can be that help for Mark is so impactful. Like later, of course, in the episode with our mother when he says, it wasn't your fault. That's the most intense moment and version of that. But here, when he says,

like, that sneaky old vulture, he was manipulating you from the start. and Mark says, well, he kept us alive. Mark, he was taking advantage of you. Mark does not really want to go on and continue down this path. And this connects to, I think, the end of the episode of what might happen in the finale. Like, the fact that Stephen also thinks and says,

yeah, we need to get, we need to get back to Conchu. That's what we need to do. We need to get to Contchu because that's the only way that we will be able to help, that we will be able to protect Leila, that we will be able to protect all of these other souls. It's like giving Mark through Stephen's sancter. this approval that he really needs. And I love that because the fact that that approval is, again,

actually coming from within, from himself, really helps not only with that, this is part of yourself, this is another younger brother relationship and bond, but with this fully realized introspection. While we're on Conchua, I am curious to ask your opinion on the theory that maybe Conchu has always been there, like that he's been there from the start. That's the other popular theory Charles floated this, and I've always talked about it a bit. It's a popular theory on the internet. We've talked about it.

We've talked about it because it's in the comics. And I think, I think... Did see the skeleton impact your thinking here at all in that sense. Sure. Also, the white baseball jacket that he's wearing in his birthday with the red collar and the red cuffs matches this panel from the Lemire Smallwood run of Mark, boy mark in the white ringer tea with red collar. and the red cuffs on it and Conchoo looming over him

as a child. So this idea that Conchu was stalking him from childhood is in the comics. I think that the way that Conchu talks to him in this scene, your mind, I feel it fractured and broken, that sounds more to me like

I've just discovered you and less like I've groomed you to be this. But I'm open, really open to either interpretation, you know? That second part is what I did find myself wondering, like, do you want death or do you want life? And Mark saying, I don't know. And then Conchu saying that line that you just read, your mind, I feel it. Almost, there's, I think, a way to interpret the scene. Like, he's almost like, and especially because we hear then from Stephen

about that manipulation. Like, he brought him to that point. And it made me think back to episode two and Harrow saying, do you think that Conchue chose you as his avatar because your mind would be so easy to break or because it was already broken. Right. And like that idea that a circle has no beginning, right? Like when did all of this start and how deep could the connection go? And I don't know. I wonder like what the path back to Conschu, like does the fact that they're going back

to Conchu amid all of the Harrow Amit theorizing for the finale, is it more fodder for the possible reveal that Conchu could be the one with the hand on the wheel. At the end of the day, I think they're going back to Conchu because Marvel wants Moon Night on the table for potential future properties. But I also think, and this is getting way ahead of ourselves, but I also think with Stephen gone temporarily or not, it's Mark in the field of reads. And as you've been saying, he's had this death wish for so long. And I know his scales are balanced at the end of this episode. So in theory, he's achieved some kind of kind of inner peace.

But he looks so blissful in the field of reads at the end there. This is what he's wanted, which is it's done. I have peace. And I'm going to, true to brand invoke Buffy again and say, like, there's a very famous Buffy Empire Slayer plotline where she's in heaven and then she's ripped out of heaven back into the fight. And that fucks her up, basically, for the rest of this series that she was in heaven and she was done and she could lay, like, her burden down or lay, you know.

And so Mark still has to make that choice. That's part of the finale of like, I know they're pointing the ship towards the gates of Osiris and all sorts of stuff like that, but he's still going to have to be the one to choose to leave heaven to go back into the fight. And I don't know that it's a choice he's going to make easily.

I mean, what a terrible burden. Yeah. So finally no peace in paradise at last and not be able to stay there, to have to go back, not only to everything you just left behind, but to more loss and more pain. We should say on the subject of Marx's Jewish heritage, Jews do not believe in the concept of heaven.

So I think you saying paradise or field of reads or something like that is probably more accurate. I used sloppy language there. We interrupt these flashbacks, this terrible tour of trauma to bring you some hippo comedy, right? Basically, Toirot breaks in to let us know that Amit seems to be, it feels like Amit has been released is maybe how we're supposed to interpret this because the prejudged souls are coming back fast and furious, right? Yes. Rated down like celebratory confetti from the sky. A whisper of confetti? Yeah, no, it's more like a downpour.

Yeah, it's a shout of confetti. That's the group term for it, I think. A chorus of confetti. But I will say another knit I have to pick here is I'm not really sure I understand the full plan here. They're going back. Okay. She's like, if we go back, you're going back to your lifeless body with some bullet holes in it. And he's like, okay, get a message to Layla to free consue.

And my question is, does that seem like an easy assignment for Layla? Just go break into the other void and free consue somehow? Okay, so that's Layla's task, I guess. And I don't know what they were, were they just going to chill in the dead body until she did that for them? And how are we getting messages to Layla? And what did the gates have to do with? I don't understand the plan at all here. I'm excited to find out the answers.

And I love the idea that Layla will have a very active hand in this. I also on the wait, what exactly will we see unfold front? You know, they're working toward the gates of Osiris. And I couldn't help, but I kept thinking about, we don't know this to be true. But as discussed, it certainly seemed like Osiris and Harrow might be in caho, right? Might have something cook in there. And so what complication might immediately unfold on that front? Excited to find out, as you say.

And really excited again for Layla to have a mission. It just seems like it seems both oddly complicated and too easy of a reversal of the death of our hero here. But anyway. Back to therapy, we go. That's a finale problem, not an episode five problem. The episode five problem is we're still working to balance the scales. And so what's the one thing that could prevent Stephen from being the kind, sympathetic, empathetic, careful with his words guy he's been this whole time? If Lela dies, that's on your head, it'll be all your fault.

The prospect of Laila in danger. So he says that. He says, if Laila dies, it'll be all your fault. It's your fault. As you say, echoes of language. That's his mother's words that Stephen is throwing in Mark's. face. It'll be your fault and he flies into a tantrum, basically. This is the visual that we have seen in so many of the trailers and the marketing of the season of Mark kind of pounding on his own

face. And the idea of like Stephen pushing him effectively, ultimately, but also horrifyingly, by saying something that taps into that, that biggest, the most deeply seated fear of Mark, that it is his fault that the people he loves and wanted to protect have met some great harm and maybe even mortal peril was like very, very, very painful to watch. Sends him all the way down into the bottom, which is back into the Harrow office, right? Back into the heart of things. And then Harrow says this thing, which I think goes back to some of this. The circle has no end question.

Do you think you created Stephen to hide from all the awful things you feel you've done in your life? Or do you think Stephen created Mark to punish the world from what your mother did to you? we've seen we'll see eventually in the next sequence right that mark created stephen right that that's what happened but this idea of a persona that is there to punish the world for what your mother did to you sounds like jake to me a jake persona did did you yeah i don't yeah i i agree a character that punches out at the world because you're so mad that nobody protected you from that you live in an unjust world that that would like that would like that you're let this happen to a little boy.

And it's interesting, too, to think about, like, is that Mark asking himself that? Is that the Harrow-Amit trap trick test? Is this a consue manipulation? Because it's pretty distressing in any of those interpretations. But it's fascinating that, you know, really all of that is still in play. We hear Stephen in his Dr. Harrow sequence ask if it's a test. but we've talked a lot about the organizing principle as well in the way that the mind.

It's really interesting. Seek shelter. It is. It really is. And he, of course, also in that same sequence, he guides Dr. Harrow guides Mark to Stephen to opening up. There can be no, no, you show this line. There can be no progress without understanding this is where we get that line.

And, you know, of course, that recalls the line that we heard of a version of more than once from Harrow, the prior episode. I can't help you if you don't help yourself. And this is, of course, a theme across the episode and the season. Like, it is, it is true that Mark has to help himself by Stephen and Mark aligning. They are achieving that, but it's also true that you have to ask others, that it's okay to ask others to tell other people that you need help.

It's okay to ask for someone else to help guide you. And that's also what's happening here because of the way that in this manifestation, they have split. They have become... these, Stephen is out of Mark's body, as he says. And so there's a bridge and an alliance and a kinship in addition to this sense of, a sense of self. And then if we just keep going to theory corner within our analysis here, like, there's also the possible more sinister read of like, why to go to like the, the Dr. Emmett kind of complex. Why is Dr. Harrow guiding him in

this direction? What is balancing the scales to get Mark back to the upbrow. world and to Conchu unlock for Amit and Harrow potentially. You know, that's interesting to think about too. I want to hop forward to something that I was going to talk about in the sort of the, the Shiva for his mother section really quickly, but like this idea that in episode three, Mark says to Layla, for what it's worth, I had it under control until very recently. And she says, what happened?

And he said, doesn't matter. We know it's the death of his mother, right? Doesn't matter. And she says, we could have handled it together. And he said, yeah, that's not really what I do, is it? And so that just goes to write exactly to your point that you just said, this idea that, like, Mark, rather than help himself, has just divided himself and won't even reach a hand out to those other parts of himself that he's sort of divvied this trauma up into.

And what is the final image that we have of Stephen? Quite literally, speaking of jumping head, but reaching his hand out and calling Mark's name, which is such a lovely way forward. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative cancer, colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremfaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tremfaya is a prescription medicine used to

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Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Cole Houser returned, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Ripp build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch willing to protected secrets at all costs.

Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. We're running low in time and that's not the only reason I want to say. Zoom through the...

No. The bedroom sequence. I don't want to hang out this bedroom too long, but like this is where Steven starts to really understand despite the fact that there have been a lot of clues along the way,

Stephen, that he is the construct here, that he has been made up. The tagline on the Tombbuster posters, when danger is near, Stephen Grant has no fear. There's some confusion. You mentioned this already

when we were talking about our guy Jake, but like there's some confusion here of like if the point of Stephen is to shield him from all the trauma, Why does Mark disappear into Stephen right when his mother comes in with the belt and we are certain what happens next? That doesn't make a lot of sense if Stephen is the one who's supposed to be protected from the trauma. So maybe it's Stephen and then he becomes Jake when the belt comes out or something like that. It doesn't make a ton of sense in that order.

But I have this question about Stephen Grant has no fear. Is it because he's fearless or because he's never had to fear anything? Like, Stephen has never had to fear anything because he lives his really sweet little, I'm doing Rubik's Q's and working at the museum life. And Mark has removed every element that would cause him fear and kept him sheltered that way. Like, how are you interpreting it there? Ooh. Great question. I think that in a nimble and deft and nuanced story, fear manifests in multiple respects in multiple respects.

What's my manifest count out? At books. But it... 20. Oh, no. Well, I think we're well north of that. And Stephen certainly exhibits fear and anxiety in his life. He's afraid of being alone.

There are all these different ways that Stephen experiences a version of fear. But in terms of that specific version of it and what that connects to and stems from, I think it's a great question. What I loved so much about seeing that line, that tagline, on the poster. The reason that that resonated so powerfully, I think, is because Stephen, for so much of the show, whether by Conchu, by Mark, though I agree with you, I'm really eager to rewatch and see how the Mark Stephen dynamic plays, by himself initially, is the one who seems afraid and unsure. And the idea that he came into existence in response to Mark's fear, to the fact

that Mark was rightly terrified and needed Stephen, Stephen to be the shield, Stephen to be the protector from that fear, the one who didn't feel that, is, I think, so powerful. Yeah, the other thing is, like, we talked about the way in which Stephen has, like, these aspects of Layla, did, like, Mark put some aspects of Layla in there. So this idea that Randall, like, you know, when Randall dies, he's afraid to go in the cave and his brother says, like, you know, basically don't be afraid of cat, right? So this idea that, like, Stephen is allowed to be as afraid and soft and whatever as he needs to be. And Mark is never – Conch who's shaming him for that, but Mark is never going to really shame him for that because of what happened with his brother, right?

All right. Because of everything that happens here – and we should say that, like, in the Lemire comics, and we've said this before, that Mark created Stephen in his childhood. So as a childhood friend. But Stephen's unable to handle this depiction of his mother, all this sort of stuff, is what drives him into, as you mentioned, one, two, three office visits into Dr. Harrow's office. Number three is Stephen. And this is his journey to understanding his mother is truly dead. Oh. Really powerful.

My goodness. This scene. Wow. And I think. Yeah. Sorry. No, I was just going to say, like, I think the first. fact that Stephen also has to confront a truth that he doesn't want to face is important.

And obviously so much of the episode is oriented around the moments that Mark does not want to look at. Mark does not want to see or have Steven see or show to Stephen, right? But this is something that Stephen does not want to accept. And this is where we get the, what is this some kind of test line from Stephen? And there's this fascinating exchange with Dr. Harrow about when you first came in here, I was worried you'd never even be able to acknowledge Mark and Stephen saying, I brought us here. And again, like you can interpret that, I think any number of ways. I think for me, I'm curious if you think that was, that is actually what happened. Obviously, that is not the literal. I think we agree that that particular set is not the literal facility. But I think for me, the proximity of this to the what's this. kind of test line and the organizing principle through line of the episode. I'm not sure I'm ready to believe that that is actually what happened, but I'm curious what you think about that. I'm tempted to believe it. I'm tempted to believe that Mark, Stephen finds himself on a street and

is not sure how he got there. And so he takes, he's like, I don't know what's going on. I'm losing time. Okay. And takes himself into this institution, which might have been the place that set him up with some tapes or whatever it is to help him. I don't know. But maybe it doesn't make a ton of sense because then after the incident in the museum, the HR guy slides the pamphlet at him and he doesn't act like, oh, yeah, I've been to a place like that before or something like that. Who knows what any of the personalities could be repressing at any given point?

I guess that's always a possibility. In terms of the phone call itself and confronting the fact that, as he says, finally, my mom is dad again and just incredible acting from Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawk in this scene. No accident, right, that a phone call is the thing. A phone call is the way to break through to Stephen here because Stephen was making those phone calls. The phone was the nominal connection, the way of maintaining this mirage, this, that he manufactured or that Mark helped him manufacture. And now that same idea of phone call would be. the path to clarity and acceptance. Again, I'm not a medical health professional, mental health professional, any kind of health professional, nor are you. From my observation of film and television about this sort of thing, it seems like, please

let me know if I'm wrong about this, but it seems like a common therapeutical, therapeutic, a common therapeutic practice. for someone suffering from delusions is to, yes, and the delusion and force the person in the delusion to confront the limitations of their delusion. So to take it, to not say, just say, no, no, no, your mother's dad, but say, all right, let's call her. Okay, let's go ahead. Let's do it. Let's call her. Let's call her. And then force them to confront that there's no one else on the other side of the phone there. And a very literal sort of like conspiracy theory, Easter egg sense, there was all this question of like, who is he calling? If it's not his mom, who is he calling? And

there were all these theories. And I think it's just like, I think he was just talking into a dial tone, a dead phone, you know? So, ooh. All right. Last stop on the tour. Mom Shiva. Mom Shiva.

This is a, we saw, we of course saw the street scene at the beginning and they were not ready to go there because you don't skip all, you don't skip the cafeteria full of dead bodies and go straight to this street scene. but the scene where Mark is unable to go inside for his mom's Jiva. And here's my interpretation of the trauma around this, which is when an abusive parent dies and you've not gotten any closure on that abuse, there's never now a chance that that person will ever say sorry to you or acknowledge what they did to you.

and you don't have a chance to extend to them any kind of understanding that maybe you could muster for them as an adult, that it's just gone, that opportunity is gone. And so it's not just like, oh, I wasn't able to go in and be the dutiful son. And like, it's this thing is going to be forever broken. Or if Stephen would put it, not broken, but need some help inside of him. And that's the thing that just sort of tears down all the walls that he had up there. really upsetting stuff.

Yeah. Oh, boy. And also to mention his father again, you know, we see Elias Specter gesturing through the window as he sees, as he sees his son standing there in a state of despair, flask in hand, gesturing for him to come in. But does he go out? Does he go out to see if he's okay? No.

Does he extend a helping hand or an offer of aid in any number of forms? He does not. And when we see, and that is heartbreaking. And when we see Mark crumble and he's saying, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, is he talking about what happened with Randall, any number of things that what's clear is how palpable that guilt still is for him. And when we see him become Stephen in that moment and we learn that, and this was just two months prior, we get a timeline. We get a data point on the time front just two months earlier from the events of the show that, and we've talked so much what happened, what that made

the barriers come down between them. We learn what it is here. But seeing Stephen watch this. And then again, crucially, seeing Stephen extend this kindness and this absolution to Mark, who says, I just couldn't face that again, all the things I'd done. Stephen says, Mark, all those horrible things that she said to you, she was wrong. Now, this is important in so many ways because Mark has just so desperately needed someone

to tell him that for so many years of his life because Stephen is a part of Mark as much as he is a partner or new brother figure it is Mark forgiving himself, but Stephen has also been the one who has this affection for their mother, who refuses or does, who is reluctant to believe the worst of her. And he sees so clearly how hideous and wrong

these betrayals have been. So this help yourself idea again is on display here because Stephen forgiving Mark is Mark forgiving himself. It's also this journey. You know, we've been talking about all the like abuse that Conschu levied at Mark and Conchue levied at Stephen and all the sort of stuff that's been at them. But Stephen throughout this season has been like levying a lot of critique at Mark. Right. What's wrong with you? You're violent.

You're a killer. I can never be like you. I couldn't be you. You're disgusting. all sort of stuff. And so for him to be, to give him the old Robin Williams' goodwill hunting, it's not your fault, like, moment is huge. Absolutely. Absolutely. And especially in the framework of the scales, the scales and the balance, judgment, this is the realm of judgment. This is the moment of judgment. And for Stephen and Mark here, it's not about judgment. It's about understanding and acceptance and empathy.

And the empathy that you show other people often stems from the empathy you're able to show for yourself. So I thought this was lovely. And then from this incredibly beautiful moment, we get a couple really weird CGI moments to close. I just like, not my fave. Not my fave to go from this like incredibly emotional psychological journey to this like literal clunky fight with sand zombies. And I guess Steven's journey is like, I can be violent too. Like sure, okay. Like I think Steve's journey is. I liked that actually because maybe maybe what it means is like him saying I am Mark and Mark as me. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's good. But I'm like, okay. And that means you can beat some sand zombies about the head. Okay.

Clarifying question that I don't expect you to have the answer to. When your scales don't balance, do you turn into a statue of sand? Or do you turn into a zan zombie? Does it depend how unbalanced your scale is? Towerett says to them, the dead will drag you down into the duat where you will remain forever frozen in sand. Yeah. But who are the dead? Who's doing the dragon?

These are great questions. I mean, so the, the attackers in that sequence, because Mark repeats the cities, right? So these are the corpses from corpse calf. That's who is attacking in that particular element. I know, but I'm just sort of like, but yeah, it's a good question. Who are the draggers and who are the draggies?

What's the difference? What about, do you get, do you get, like, broken out of frozen sand jail to do some dragon? And then you're back to being a frozen sand statue? Well, I'd like to know the answer about whether you can get broken out of, I mean, you can, we know you can be broken out of being imprisoned in stone because Kanshu in episode three said, send Mark to break me out of the stone they're going to imprison me in. Can you get broken out of this sand, frozen sand state too?

Because, of course, that's one of the big questions heading into the finale is have we, right, have we said goodbye to Stephen? What is your current read? on that. Yes. We've said goodbye to Stephen. No, I think we're going to see Stephen again. Okay.

Me too. Come on. We have to. I hope. Now, okay. Like, I want to say for the umpteenth time that I am not a mental health professional, I sincerely hope that this is like a, I mean this. I mean this like in a sincere and like, I think, I hope gracious.

way, not in a, like, misguided way. So if that's how it comes off, that's not how I intend it. But here's what I was kind of thinking, seeing this. On the one hand, there's the, like, the reality of Stephen and Mark solidified in the balancing of the scales, which I think is poetic and impactful. But this question of, like, does Mark have to leave Stephen behind to move forward? Now, we've talked a lot about the comics canon and the parallels there. On the one hand, saying goodbye to Stephen is part of how Mark moves forward, how Mark has found this balance.

We as viewers love Stephen. We don't want to lose him. Mark has embraced this part of himself. And I don't want after they've reached this moment of like shared understanding and bonding for them not to be able to support each other. That's like painful. It's a complex message because they face the truth and they made this breakthrough. They made this progress. Stephen acknowledged that he was. the altar, that he was not the original. That was something you talked about last week. But Mark having to say goodbye to a piece of himself, like, it just, I recognize that that represents progress,

but it just seems so sad to me, even if it is part of the heat. Well, something I will say is that if we're using Lamere Comics as a guide, there's a moment in the comics where he sends all his altars away, and then they show up to help him at the fight in the end. So if this is the moment of like, I'm sending my altars away, As you say, it seems like mixed messaging because the scales are balanced. So the implication here is I've done the thing to achieve inner peace.

But it feels like the thing to achieve inner peace is to live in harmony with Stephen, not leave Stephen behind in the sand dune. So I don't, again, I liked so much of this episode. I have a few nits to pick. And that would be one of them. It's confusing. But maybe it'll all feel clear in the finale. My question for you, we got a bunch of mailback questions about the finale. But my question for you is, what do you want to see?

the finale other than like the CGI Punch Fest that we're sure to get. As much as we talked today about how deeply invested we are in Mark and Stephen and how content we would be for the finale to center fully on them. And as much as I believe that and feel that, I'm and as much as I love this episode, I missed Harrow, non-doctor Harrow, OG Harrow, and Layla. And we talked at the beginning of our Moon Night Pods about how surprised we were, pleasantly surprised, but surprise we were to get so much Harrow so early. And now we have one hour left in the show. And I'm like, I actually have a lot that I don't know about this guy. And really hope we get that. So Harrow, Harrow's journey, I think we've gotten some incredible line reads from Ethan Hawk that have

unlocked that. You know, your torment forged me, et cetera. But I want the details. I want the specifics that we got now for Mark. I want that for Harrow. And I want Layla to certainly be central. I am anticipating. certainly a big battle. And, you know, I don't mind the, like, Marvel, Marvel's got a third act problem, CGI slugfest, I think as much as maybe some. It's, to me, it's like it's part of how these stories go, and I've made my piece with that.

And if it's well executed and looks cool and connects to the journeys of the characters, great. I hope the balance is right. So much of the show has been about balance. So inside of the finale, I hope that we have balance as well. Across characters,

in terms of introspection, and all of those theatrics. That's my hope. And of course, I'm hoping for a setup, either for what's to come in the Moonnight universe or how Moonnight might connect to the wider MCU universe. I know that that's something that was on your mind to ask in your interview. It is. You will hear what Jeremy Slater has to say about that. And I think, honestly, I know we've teased this interview a lot, but I do think that, like, listening to Jeremy Slater closely here will set people up for success to enjoy the finale. I think a lot of things that gets in the way of a Marvel TV finale is misaligned expectations.

I am so guilty of this, right? What is going to be the big quick silver reveal? Oh, it's Ralph Bonner. It's Ralph Bonner. We get Bonnerd. So if we just calibrate our expectations, I'm thinking like a little tomb busting from Lela, some punchy punchy, hopefully the Return of Stephen, post-crassinger, Jake. That's all I'm hoping for. So you want some bust in, but no boners.

Got it. Mammal crevices for our babe Lailas that I'll say. She doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve it. Oh, my goodness. Joe, we already did Theory Corner. We talked about it in full, I think. How about Egyptology Corner, though?

Well, I just, we got a question from Sal in our mailback who says, as far as I know, Tawerit isn't involved with the afterlife in Egyptian mythology. and she seemed really unsure of herself, eG note cards. Is this meant to imply that the deity that normally performs this task has been imprisoned by the evil, Aniaid leaving her with it? That's a great question to find out more about how Tawerit found her way into the show. You're going to want to listen to what Jeremy Slater has to say about it. It's really cute.

But essentially, it's a yada, yada, yada moment, to be honest with you. But we do see that it's anubis. It's anubis on the scales. So maybe this is usually Anubis' job. So, yeah, maybe Anubis has been put on ice. Based on the Lemire Smallwood Run, that makes me concern for our guy Crawley and his soul. We're...

Do we have time for Crawley? Maybe we do. And then Osiris, as we already mentioned, Mallory is worried that Osiris is working in cahoots with But what's also true is that Osiris is the god of death and resurrection. So could some resurrecting be going on courtesy of Osiris? Maybe Osiris isn't a bad guy after all. Maybe he's going to help with the resurrection.

We'll see. I choose to believe. I love it. How about our eggs? We talked about a ton of these already, but do you have a favorite Easter egg or two that we haven't hit on already? Or maybe just someone brought up another thing that I'm confident. you have neither seen or read, which is Stephen King's It.

But a younger brother goes down a drain in it. Georgie goes down the drain. So someone's wondering if maybe that was related to what happened to poor Randall here. Oh, you. Distressing. My favorites, I think, are just all the ones we already talked about. Probably all the Gus ones. Maybe just, you know.

Yeah, it's always always. great to see a little bit of Cubs regalia. Maybe seeing the boat in full in the duod here at last because we talked about the little version of it in Gus's tank. So that's another Gus connection. But that was that was nice to see that payoff. Do you have a secret scroll? Difficult episode for a secret scroll.

No. Okay, I've got one. How about Dylan? Because when Harrow is playing out the phone call ruse, he says Dylan. Dylan, of course, is from the ill-fated. Steak date. Oh. Maybe the fact that Dylan has been mentioned again, even if that is not an exactly real thing that is happening.

Maybe also Dr. Grant's sidekick. All right. It's mailbag time. We're sailing across the sands into your mailbag questions. Jomi Adan is here with us as always. Jomi. I'm not really looking forward to going on Tower Red's boat and seeing the rest of my old life. Like, I'm not really looking forward to that.

I've made a lot of mistakes. How are your skills, Jomey? How balanced are your skills? It's looking, it's not looking so great right now. Hopefully I got a lot of time to fix it. But if I got to go through my, if I got to go through my, whatever my psych ward is, and open that door and it's like, ah, trauma. I'm not really looking forward to that.

So we might have to find another ancestral plane for your boy. Jomey, can I ask you to revisit some recent trauma with our first mailbag question? Oh, my goodness. We got our first question from Lauren. Shout out, Lauren. Is this the best penultimate episode in the Disney MCU? I'll let you guys go first. What?

I let you guys go, please. Joey, this is your number one platform. Please. You're not supposed to see that, Jomey. That's the whole point of you. Wow. team. Wow. That hurt.

That hurt, Steve. Wow. Wow. Steve, that stuff. Boy, our Stephen invoking the infamous Stephen, that is the whole point of view moment in the mailbag at the end of, well, not the end, nearing the end of a very long podcast, tough stuff. I'm going to not answer the question because I will, I will, for me, the scales are always swinging. until I've seen the full season of TV. Then I will assess where the penultimate episode ranks.

I think that's really fair. That being said, right now I would put it Wanda 1 this 2. Number 2. I would just like to say that on IMDB, you know, I love that the Ultimate Loki episode. I know he didn't.

Currently ranked number one of all the, of all the penultimate episodes. Which is an IMDB rating? I'm just saying. Did you say our bots out there on the? Yeah, did you go with the last few nights? Just like clicking. Clicking Stars on IMDB.

I'm not great at, uh... Did you mobilize the CR Army? I could... I wish. Wow. I wish I had to the power. The CR heads, they rode for C-Biscuit, a movie that Chris Ryan has never seen. Definitely seen.

What about the secret Dob mob army? Oh, my God. What a showing from the Dob mob. Wow. They really, they really showed up. They really showed up. When she needed them most, they were there. It was good.

It was a really good episode of TV. And I mean, yeah, I knew Oscar eyes were going to bring it in a way that, no, we hadn't seen it in the MCU before. So it was just like, yeah, this was going to be a really great episode of television. And I think it, I think it, of course, it wasn't like perfect, but I think it was very, very, very, very good, especially among the MCU television shows. I don't think that's a crazy thought to say, really. Great episode of TV. I support you. Thank you.

Thank you. It's really great. Welcome to the gentle hug that is House of our. We need names for the stands for everyone here. So the Dob Mob, Joe, what's your, what's your mob? Oh, someone, the Joe. People on Twitter, they suggested Joe Bros, but that's very like, I don't know that I want, like, bros. Well, it works if and only if we only use the Hawkeye.

bro. Oh, Joe Bros. That is great because it's like one of your favorite references. What are the Are you guys? Are they the Roobes?

Rubens Ravens Ravens. Rubens Ravens? Speaking of, have the Ravens train it up in the draft? So anyone know? No, it's actually. Mouse Pals?

Mouse Pals. I like, I like that. Jomi. Oh, I, God, no. I don't have fans. I got, you know. The Jomey homies. Come on.

John Homies And the That's pretty good actually That's pretty good The Steve Almananiacs Almaniacs

The Almananx Ommanex Ominex That's good That's like cute I like that Oh wow Shout out to

Miles Pows Jirovos The Stephen Allmaniacs And Jomey's I love it. Shout out to everybody. Now that you have

formal names, you must show up when if we're ever invited to another Pick Pick, pick movie draft. Assembly of bots. Just as for Malarie's chaotic energy. You have chaos in you, Mallory, especially during a Big Pink

Movie draft. Oh, boy. All right. What's next? Our next question comes from Courtney. More painful moment. What happened at the end of this episode? Or, Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good. I don't want to go.

From Infinity War. I don't want to go. Nothing will touch that. I'm sorry. This was a very, very, very painful ending, but the snap and our dear beloved Peter Parker disintegrating. Maybe if Oscar Isaac had given us a sandy, like, Lay us gay

Turned into stone Why wasn't that his final word? You're right. Wow. That would have been tough. But, Oh my God. Wow.

I always love to think back on really sad MCU moments, though. There are so many. There are so many. Like, this is a classic. Here are my 100 top five saddest MCU moments kind of list. Can't narrow down.

I think the Peter Snap is still number one. But I can probably dig out. something from this episode, but probably not Stephen turning into sand that we don't think is going to last through the finale. Man, you know what gets me every time? When Tony comes off the ship and he says to Kat, I lost the kid. Man, and the, how about Thor and Rocket? No, no, we're not, you know, when we're not doing this.

We're not doing this right now. We're almost at a time anyways, Mallory. Let's do a whole episode about this and just cry, okay? That's a great idea. I would love to. I would love to. Our 100 top five saddest MCU moments, a 17 hour.

Bring our first podcast. All right. Bring us home. What's our final mailbag question? Question comes from Tim. And Tim asks, what are the chances? What are the chances of

in his final act of self-realization, Mark sacrifices himself to save Layla? Oscar Isaac has said he wants this to be one and done for its MCU offering. At the end of it all, do we get Moon Night in the MCU, but not with Oscar Isaac? I think they won Oscar Isaac,

with much love and respect to Leila. And I, you know, I would be happy if Lila, like, I don't know, got some powers in the finale if she wants them. You know? She's going to bust a tomb. She deserves a reward. I support her, but I think the MCU is going to want that Oscar Isaac energy at the end of the day.

Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Joam? Let's power up Leila and still have Oscar as Midnight. Let's do it. Yeah. Why not both? Why not both? What can I know those those? Really? Exactly. Wait, can we quickly in real time as Jome is answering this tack on another mailback question that we, I'm realizing is connected to this, which is Hannah asking about the canonical tie of Mr. Knight to Stephen and whether if we don't have Stephen, we won't have Mr. Knight

anymore, or maybe we think that's moot because we're going to get Stephen. I just think we're going to get Stephen. I just, I mean, Jeremy Slater is going to talk about this, so you can hear what he has to say. I will say it's not like, I'm not certain one way or another after what he said, but. Wow. You just did the dollar bill stern. I'm not uncertain. But I'm just so, I just like, I just feel like it has to be.

Stephen, come on, our guy. Yeah, I feel like Stephen absolutely will come back in one way or another. We might not be next week. but maybe the next time we see Moon Night after this series. You think they'll make us wait? That would be cruel. What about in next season of Book of Boba Fett is when Stephen and Mark are reunited? Oh, my God.

In low-key season two. I would watch. In the middle of the rancor fight in Loki season two. Actually, suddenly. I didn't tell you guys, but I was on Reddit earlier today. And Oscar Isaac, was on set in Miss Marvel. So, you know, who knows?

Anything's possible. That's a lie. I'm just messing with you guys. Oh, wow. That's not you. Like, cook, line, and sinker. Wow, you. Wow.

Like, Gus with one fan. I was just, like, sort of swimming after you. I believed you. Anything's possible in the multiverse now. Wow. Right before you go, where's the next time you think we'll see, Moon.

I know this is probably a question for next week, But knowing that next week is the last episode. And like Tim said, we don't know if Oscar Isaac wants to continue to be Moonnight after this series. Like, where do you think we see him next up? Captain America movie. Cap, Cap, Cap four. Really? Yeah.

Interesting. Cap and Moonnight, like, has them back and forth in the comics. And I could just really see Sam having absolutely zero time for Mark and or Stephen. and that being a source of true delight in comedy. That's no insider information. That is a pure swing for the fences. There were the tweets and the headlines making the rounds a couple days ago about Kevin Faggy talking about how Marvel's going on a retreat

to sketch out the next 10 years. The Midnight Boys talked about this on Wednesday. We've got to get a Midnight Sun's tease soon, right? My thing is, that's what the Blade movie is. You think Wherwolf by Night? Wherewolf by Night would be a very natural tie. I think that's where the Blade movie is. That's why we haven't, because Blade was supposed to come out, 2023, but they pushed that back.

You know what I'm saying? So I'm thinking like, hey, man, we get some of these more supernatural people in this business, you know what I'm saying? We can just pop it off right there, you know? What's the hold up, you know? So I think that's where we'll see a blade in like a Midnight Suss type thing. I'm hype. Drop the bag for Oscar Isaac. Let's do it.

Let's lock him in. Kevin Feigy, I know you're listening. Kevin Feigy's big fan. Ring a verse listens to every episode. He's listening right now. Kevin Faggy, make it happen, bro. Let's go. Do you think Kevin Fagging wants to hear my conversation with Jeremy Slater?

And he does. He would love to. He would absolutely love to. Let's roll it. Great news, Kevin. It's the time. Jeremy Slater, welcome to the ringerverse. I wanted to start by asking you about the Jeff Lamere, Greg Smallwood run of Moon Night,

which we've been talking about on the show. That's obviously quite inspirational for the plot line we're seeing this whole season and especially in this episode. So I wanted to ask you about that, but I also wanted to ask you, because Marvel never adopts things, adapts things directly one to one. I want to ask you how you balance

honoring existing canon with creating new canon at the same time. That's a great question. I think the Jeff LeMeyer run was definitely the one that got me most creatively excited. Like when they said Moon Knight was one of the characters

they were interested in developing, and kind of gave me a stack of material to take home with me. That was the one run where I read it and I was like, I can see this. I can see how this works as a TV show. And it turns out that was also one of Kevin's favorite runs. So he loved the way Le Maier kind of brought Egyptology into the modern world. He loved that you could be on the bus and look over and see Conchus standing on the side of the road,

which was a thing we put in the second episode, but we took that directly from the Le Meyer run. So we knew that that was probably his most famous run, at least in recent memory, and it was something the fans would want to see. But at the same time, because it is kind of a trope in television, you know, obviously there was the entire first season of Legion, but there was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there's an episode of Community. Like the whole, the show is just a dream and we, and we're all characters in a mental institution,

has been done before. And so we were really worried about, and we discussed it a lot in the room of like, how do we do this in a way that doesn't feel derivative of Legion, doesn't feel derivative of these shows that you've seen doing the same story bees for the last 10 years. So it was a long, complicated, drawn-out process. And at a certain point, we decided, you know what, we can't do the asylum stuff. It's just, it's too familiar. We're just going to get dinged for it. And it was one of our writers, Alex Minahan, who actually came up with the idea of, at the time we were. were really leaning into episode five was going to be our big, it was going to be our big mind fuck

episode. We kind of used the leftovers, like the International Assassin episode of that show. As our reference point when I was pitching this to Fagie of like, we're going to let Moon Knight's origin, we're going to let Mark's origin be a mystery throughout the season because it's such heavy stuff. It's so kind of brutal and heart wrenching that if you start that out in the pilot, you're going to half your audience is going to bail immediately. They're just going to be like, this show is a bummer. I don't want to deal with it. So I was like, we're going to need like four episodes of Stephen sort of being a delightful twit and a lot of like Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weiss, like mummy action.

We're going to need this fun sort of carrot to kind of get everyone to come along until we can really hit them with the brutal emotional stuff in episode five. We just didn't know what that would look like. And at the time, we had gotten really creatively excited about the idea of setting episode five in the duat. and it was one of our writers, Alex, who was like, hey, you know that idea that we discussed in the first week and then threw out with the Le Maier run? Like, what if we brought it back and the Duot wasn't an Egyptian sailing barge? What if it was both things at the same time?

And once she had sort of cracked that idea, the whole episodes started to fall into place because it had been one of those things. We had just been banging our head against the wall. There was six or seven different versions of this episode that were heists or that took place in kind of asking. astral plane dimensions and went to some pretty weird places. But it was always missing that connective tissue of how do you get the audience to have a clear path through this madness where it doesn't just feel like a clip show or just random weirdness. And so once she had that idea, we could see at least this is the finish line. This is this is the shape and the skeleton that the episode needs to have. And things started to fall into place after that.

I've heard you say in a couple places that the first episode of the season, bears the closest resemblance to the pitch that you initially gave Kevin Feige at all when you were talking about what you wanted to do with Moon Night. And I'm wondering if you talk a little bit more about what that pitch was, was it just what you said that, you know, Stephen is a bungler in our way into the story or was there something more at play there? There was a lot of specifics in the pitch that didn't wind up working in the show. Like in the pitch, you know, Bushman was, I thought Bushman was initially going to be the main villain. I thought he was going to be possessed by an Egyptian god by the end of it,

and you'd have a big sort of avatar battle. At the time, all I knew, at the time, Echo was going to be our love interest solely based on the fact that they knew Marvel liked the character of Echo and was trying to find a show to put her in. And she didn't work at all for the story we were telling. And the second they were like, you know what? We've got this Hawkeye show and we feel like she would fit in a lot better there. We were like, oh, thank God. So there was a thousand things that were radically different about that initial pitch. But the one thing that kind of stayed the same were kind of some of those set pieces from the first episode,

him waking up in the middle of like an Alps chase going backwards down a mountain. That was in there. And then him being trapped, you know, him sleeping and tying himself to the bed. That was in the pitch. and realizing his goldfish was different and being chased by the jackal and having Mark save him in the bathroom. All of that stuff kind of came from the initial pitch. But the biggest thing that came out of that was me saying, you can't make this show about Mark Spector. We have to take a swing here.

And the reason for that, which is something I haven't really talked about until this episode came out, because it's been very hard to discuss without spoiling. But it's because it's hard to like Mark Spector for, I think, a lot of readers. Like, as a comic book fan, I love the character of Moonnight. I didn't love the character of Mark Specter. And that's something I kept struggling with and kept coming back to of like, when he's in costume, when he's Moon Night, he's awesome.

He's cool. He's mysterious. He's funny. But for so much of his run, the character of Mark has just sort of been defined by his misery. He's a guy who's always just sort of guilty and at war with his own mind. and he's always just kind of struggling and in pain. And he's also sort of a violent brute at times.

And so I knew like trying to introduce that character as your protagonist in the first episode, people are just going to, they're never going to give him a fair shake. They're going to hate this guy because he's someone who's constantly pushing people away. And that's not what you want to see in the protagonist of a show. And it's especially not when you want to see in the MCU where I think totally, most of the time, your protagonists are nice people. They're good people. You like spending time with Steve Rogers or with Scott Lang.

And so my big idea coming in was like, we need to take one of his altars, Stephen Grant, who, you know, usually in the comic books is just kind of portrayed as Bruce Wayne. He's kind of just like the rich playboy in a tux. I was like, if we make this guy a puppy dog and make the audience fall in love with him, and then we introduce Mark as Stevens protector,

and the guy who's keeping the puppy dog alive, we're going to like him for that reason and we're going to be on Mark's side because we both have the same goal. We both want to see Stephen survive this. And then if we hit people with this emotional backstory and you finally understand who Mark is and why he is the way he is,

you know, five out of six episodes through the run, now hopefully if you go back and watch it, you have a deeper understanding of Mark and you're going to like the character more. But it was really sort of that like put the pot, put the frog in, in a jar of water and then very slowly turn up the heat versus just throwing audiences right into the sort of the trouble with the Markspector character right off the bat.

I think you were really successful with that because I know a lot of people, I heard from a lot of people that they really miss Stephen in episode three. So I think your instincts are dead on about Stephen there. I wanted to ask you about something that Feigey said to, I think, it was Empire Magazine before the season started was this idea that Moon Night was going to be weird or wilder, darker, that they weren't going to be pulling back on anything. And I think a lot of us were waiting to see how that manifested. And obviously, this is the episode where that really dark, sticky stuff emerges. And I was wondering, you know, this is still going to be on Disney

Plus. So when you're in the writer's room and you're breaking this stuff out, what's the calibration of thinking about how dark cameo, how dark should we go? What were those conversations like? They were constant and they were ongoing because the reality is in the room. We had no idea what we would be allowed to do and how far we'd be allowed to go. Like we still knew this is airing on Disney Plus. We knew we weren't going to be allowed to do anything that had a TVMA rating that wasn't sort of family appropriate. But at the same time, we did have this directive coming down from Kevin, which is,

this is a show about mental health. This is a really dark character and a dark show. And I think he had been craving that in the MCU a little bit, craving the chance to do something different and push. You know, he's always looking for ways to push the MCU out of its sort of comfort zone and expand the boundaries of what it can be. And so Kevin was extremely supportive of that right from the beginning. But it's tough because I think I think Kevin makes statements like that

or I say things like that, or the director says things like that in interviews. And I think a lot of the fans take that to just mean violence. We talk about this is going to be brutal and hard hitting. And their minds immediately jump to, you know, there was a comic like 15 or 16 years ago where Moon Knight slices off the face of one of his villains while they were still alive and like holds up the severed face. He's like, is this what you wanted? And I think a lot of the fans heard those comments and they're like, ooh, they're doing this version of Moon Knight. And it's like, well, no, we were never going to be slicing faces on Disney Plus.

And I wouldn't want to write that show and be in charge of making you fall in love with that character in the first place. But we knew so it was hard because people were expecting one kind of brutality. And it turned out to be sort of emotional brutality. It turned out to be like, look, are we as violent as the boys or some of the Netflix Marvel shows? like, no, absolutely not. We're never going to have the same level of violence. But we were like, we could have the same level of emotional complexity, and we can go to some of these same incredibly dark places

and really just trust that we are in Marvel's hands and they're not going to let us, they're not going to steer us wrong, essentially. And honestly, it was just, it was a series of creative discussions and arguments, and I did not win all those discussions. And that's just the collaborative process. It's like there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. when you're working on something this big, and when you're working on a character who, you know,

my job is to shepherd him through these six episodes, but this is a character that Kevin is, you know, hopefully going to be playing with for years to come and finding new different contexts to stick him in and use him. So it really is a collaboration in terms of what is the story that's being told. How far can we push this? And some of the time you just have to defer and just say,

you know what, Marvel's got a gut instinct. We're going to go with that. I know some people watching the show have been really invested in whether or not you would dig into Mark's Jewish heritage, his background, his childhood, all of that. I was wondering, and I know that you've said also that his Jewish heritage was something that was important to you and your writers to preserve into the show. I'm wondering how you went about including that in this episode. Yeah. And the honest answer is that we had a lot of different versions of the show. over the years and we wrote a lot of drafts and there were there were versions where um where

his is that were much more faithful to the comics and there were versions where obviously a lot of that stuff was was changed for a lot of different reasons and there were a lot of a lot of cooks in the kitchen and a lot of people making those creative decisions so I can't necessarily speak for everybody um it was important to me and to my writers that that his Jewish heritage be preserved because because he is one of the only Marvel heroes that is canonically Jewish. But at the same time, I was reticent to sort of, I didn't want him to make his Jewish background a plot point, where it then becomes responsible or triggering for his superhero journey that he's going on.

The fact that he's Jewish, it informs his character, and it informs who Mark Spector is. And I think that's something that's going to continue to be explored throughout the history of the character, especially with his relationship with his estranged father. But at the same time, you know, there have been famous Moon Night Runs where sort of his DID has been the result of anti-Semitic hate crimes that he's sort of witnessed. And I was like, I was really reticent to dip my toes in the water. Number one, just because I didn't want to depict hate crimes on screen, I feel like, I felt like it was taking the show in, it would

taken the show in an area that could have felt potentially exploitative in a way that I wasn't comfortable with. And also, I didn't want to sort of blame his mental problems and blame his, the things that are happening to Mark as an adult on the fact that he was Jewish. I wanted to make those a very clear separation where his faith existed and it was important to him. But his, his faith wasn't the reason he became broken as an adult or as a human being. He was broken because he was raised by a mentally unwell mother and raised in a sort of abusive family. And those two things needed to be separate in my mind. And that was something that I was sort of constantly fighting with.

And, you know, I think there's still a lot of ongoing questions and a lot of story to hopefully be told in the future. You know, we had some really lovely scenes that ultimately got cut that were about his faith in trying to reconcile the fact, trying to reconcile his religion with the fact that he is now an avatar in service of an Egyptian god. There's a lot of fun things to dig into as writers. And the reality is when you're telling a story like this, things get lost along the way and things get compressed and cut down. But nothing's ever gone forever. So hopefully if there are more stories to tell in the future, those are areas that I would love to see future writers touch on and tackle and maybe take that ball and run with it in a way that we unfortunately couldn't. I want to talk to you about future storylines, actually, because I know during a red carpet interview at the premiere, you mentioned the fact that, of course, Mark Spector has other altars, but that you really want to drill down on this, you know, double act between Stephen and Mark here. I know that Oscar Isaac has, you know, out and out, talked about Jake Lockley, the third personality that a lot of us been talking about.

And I know that, you know, there's always been some breadcrum trails and includes. along the way, but can you talk about what we might expect from a Jake or where he is or what we should be thinking about him? Well, what Oscar has said on the record, I believe, is that you're definitely going to learn who was inside that, that mystery red sarcophagus at the end of episode four. So since that's out there, I can confirm that is definitely true. We definitely have some big surprises and some big swings coming up. One of the questions that I just constantly get asked on Twitter is where the hell is Jake? Where the hell is Jake Lockley? And the thing that I have to just keep telling everyone is like, look, I know you think you wanted a show where it was all three of

them bouncing off each other right from the beginning, but I promise you as the guy who had to write this and make sure that it makes sense, you really didn't. This show would have been a goddamn mess from the beginning if we had been trying to balance all three of them. Just because balancing two of them is hard enough. We have, it's actually surprising how few characters we have in our show. And if you look at this last episode, I mean, it's kind of Oscar Isaac on screen with no other human actors except for like two hero scenes for the entire episode. It's just him facing off against him or giant CG hippos.

The success of this first season was going to really live or die based on, based on this relationship between Mark and Stephen. The show is about Mark Spector and his own mind and this sort of internal battle that's happening. And my feeling from the beginning was that if this was Mark and Stephen's journey, if we tell a six-episode story about these two characters, really starting them at two polar extremes where they kind of hate each other and mistrust each other.

And if we can kind of bring them together like you saw at the end of episode five and really give them some lovely touching emotional moments, then we can really break your heart. heart with the end of this episode, then we can really take this character on a compelling journey. And I don't think you would have gotten that same journey if Jake Lockley was also in the mix. I don't think Stephen's sacrifice at the end of that episode would have the same weight if you still had one buddy left. So it was a creative decision that was really borne out of just knowing where emotionally we needed to take that story and knowing that if even though the

fans desperately want to see Jake and look, I want to see Jake too. Jake is fucking great. But we wouldn't have been able to make Stephen work. And Mark doesn't work without Stephen if Jake was in the mix right from the beginning. So that was sort of my creative reasoning, I think. Do you think it's safe to say that we've not yet seen Oscar Isaac play Jake Lockley? You know what? I can't say that. But I also don't know for sure because some of those decisions, I think, were made by Oscar in the moment.

I think Oscar is very much the sort of creative steward of this character in a lot of ways and takes a lot of responsibility for how these different altars are presented. So there are times where I'm watching the show and I'm like, I know that Jake wasn't in the script at this point, but he's doing some interesting things with his performance. And it makes even me wonder, like, did we just see Jake? Was that just like a flash of a different altar? Was that a flash of Conchew?

Was that a flash of Stephen? I think part of the brilliance of what Oscar is doing is he keeps everyone guessing, including some of the people who wrote the episode. You mentioned how integral Stephen is to this story, but then, of course, you know, we lose him in the sands at the end of this episode. But, yeah, I've seen a lot of film and television. I shouldn't be worried that I'm never going to see Stephen Grant again, right? I don't know.

I really, look, I think it was a pretty heartbreaking ending. So I think if that was the end of the road for Stephen Grant, I think we gave him a pretty tragic sendoff that really hits you right in the fields. But I would also say for because I have seen I have gone on TikTok. I have gone on YouTube. I have seen the crying reactions and the people who are sobbing and screaming Stephen's name and punching their pillows. And the last thing we want to do is kind of make a show. that you give six weeks of your life to us. And at the end of it, you're just like,

I am incredibly depressed. That thing fucking sucked. Why did you do that to me? So I would say, hang in there for episode six, because you might not get everything you wanted, but we're definitely going to try to give a happy ending to some of the characters and some of the story plot points. I wouldn't say everyone gets a happy ending in this,

but I will say there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Something that a lot of people, including myself, have loved about Moonnight is that it's largely unconnected from the rest of the MCU that there isn't a lot of connective tissue. And of course, you know, we love our crossovers. We love our cameos. But it's nice to have this little space carved out for Moonnight here. And I'm wondering, looking towards a finale, you know, there's the finale to come. There's post-credit sequences to come, et cetera. Should we be expecting it to slot into larger MCU in a way that we would recognize, or should we not have that on our radar at all? I'm usually very reticent about spoilers or anything like that. But in this case, if you go into the finale

expecting, you know, Sam to show up in his Captain America outfit, you are going to be disappointed. At different points in our development, we did talk about bringing in other characters. I tried really hard for a long time to try to have an ancient Egypt flashback that would have involve the Eternals just because I'm buddies with Kumail and I was like, oh, I want to write some Kingo. And so we tried to figure out a way, like, could they be

involved in this sort of plot in the past? Are there characters in present-day Marvel that would make sense for them showing up in the finale? It's not that we didn't want to see the Eternals in ancient Egypt, but doing a sequence like that becomes massively expensive, not only

bringing in the actors, but also recreating an entire world. And and that money has to come from somewhere. So then that money is getting pulled away from the jackal chase at the end of episode two or Stephen turning back the night sky in episode three. So a lot of those creative decisions are made because you're saying like, look, I've got a finite amount of money. I want to make sure that we're using that money to make moon night as cool as possible

and that we're not bringing in Captain America to let him kick some ass on someone else's dime. And part of it was really following Kevin's lead and Kelly. Kevin was really smart about recognizing, you know what, I think your story is currently working. I think your story, it feels like its own thing. It feels like it's divorced from the main MCU to the point where it didn't feel jarring in Falcon Winter Soldier to have crossover with other characters. Because those characters are so established in the lore of the MCU and they're so established in that world, that you kind of expect war machine or other people to show. up. And we kind of realized that if you got to the end of this particular story we had been telling,

and suddenly Bucky walks out of the shadows, you kind of have that initial like, yay, Bucky moment. And then you kind of realize Bucky doesn't have anything to do with this. And it's going to take a long time to catch Bucky up on what the hell has been going on. And it's kind of dragging us away from this, this, you know, we have been driving towards this finale pretty aggressively. there are a lot of balls we've sort of thrown in the air up to this point that we're trying to catch in this last episode and the thought of bringing in an outsider and trying to do justice to that outsider

while still catching all those balls before they hit the ground. It felt like we were, it felt like we were working at cross purposes to what was best for the show. So it sucked for me as just a Marvel fan who wants to play with every single toy and wants to just like, yes, give me all of them. give me Tom Holland and give me old Chris Evans.

I don't care. I will play with everybody. It sucked to not get to play with every toy in the toy box. But I think Kevin was absolutely right in saying, let this be its own thing. Okay. I'm going to cross off Jonathan Majors as Kang from my expectations list. No, I wanted to ask you one last question, which is, you know, I'm looking at you on a Zoom call right now. You've got a lot of great toys behind you.

something that I love asking Marvel Writers is to talk about some of the ephemera or toys or posters or comic panels that might have been up in the writer's room as you're breaking the season. Like what was inspiring you as you were putting this together? I brought so many toys into the writer's room. There are a couple Moon Knight statues over there in the corner who kind of sat in the middle of our table. We had some Funco pops. We had some Hasbro action figures. I definitely brought all my toys from home. But the other thing is that Marvel is really good at the research.

And we had an amazing executive called Nick Pepin, who kind of went out and found the coolest Moon Night comic art over the last 40 years and sort of papered every wall. So we had this everywhere you look, there was incredible inspiration where you could say, you know, that's a funny line or that's a cool shot or the moment of, of being on the bus and looking over and seeing Conschus standing on the street corner we were like, we have to put that in our show

somewhere. So you would find inspiration from places like that. And then also we also had a ton of reference material for the ancient Egypt of it all. We had there was a laminated poster that I think they sell to

like middle school. It was like a kid's introduction to all the Egyptian gods and it was sort of a family tree of this one's related to this one. But it was drawn in a really colorful cartoon-y style. And one of those cartoons was to wear it. And she was just the

cutest goddamn thing you've ever seen. And I was obsessed with that hippo. And we were like maybe a week or two into the room and people were talking about very important, very smart things. And I was just like, shut up. How do we get this hippo into our show? This is the only thing that matters right now. And everyone kind of laughed

and I was like, no, stop laughing. This is serious. I'm putting this. I'm finding a way to put this hippo in the show because I love her. And that was number one. Like I think it was one of those moments where everyone realized like, oh, we have permission to get weird here. We have permission to make something that doesn't necessarily look and feel like your traditional Marvel show. But also knowing that I needed to know from the beginning that I needed to find a way to get to wear it into the show helped us land on the idea of using the Egyptian duet, the underworld, which, which was suggested by Bo DeMeo,

one of our brilliant writers, which is just one of those guys who knows a little bit about everything. So he started talking about the duod and the sailing barge across the sea of sand and all this really exciting stuff. And I was like, well, that's how we get our hippo in there.

I know she doesn't technically belong there, but we'll figure out an excuse for why she would be driving this barge. And then once you realize, oh, well, if they're going to the underworld, you know, instead of having this be a heist where they have to sneak into the underworld, maybe they should be going to the underworld because they're dead. And so that's how we got our ending for episode four.

So all of those things sort of work backwards of like his death is related to the underworld and the underworld is related to the hippo and the hippos related to this random poster that Nick thumb-tacked on the wall. But that's kind of the genesis of where this weird stuff comes from and how it sort of over the course of a 20-week riders room sort of solidifies into something that is cool and exciting and hopefully hopefully makes some level of sense by the end of it. All right. Thank you so much to Toerite's number one fan, hippo lover, extraordinary Jeremy Slater.

Damn right. For the chat and for the show. Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for doing this. This is so much fun. All righty, friends, after that fantastic chat, we have reached the field of reads. So it is time to wrap today's episode. Thank you to our guides through the underworld.

Steve Allman for senior producing this episode. Arjuna Ramgapal for his additional production work on this episode. And Jomi Adanaron for his work on the social for this episode. Please tune back in next week for our Moon Night finale coverage. And for the Midnight Boys Doctor Strange Instant Reaction Pod next Friday. Poo-Pew! Until then, remember, we're goblet half-full kind of gals. What's the difference between butter and butter?

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