Moon Knight Episode 2 Begins the Battle Between Steven Grant and Marc Spector

Well, Marvel-loving friends, as the great Maximus once said, are you not entertained? Moon Knight, which debuted last Wednesday on Disney+, has been giving us precisely what we signed up for. Not your run of the mill Marvel Cinematic Universe hijinks, no. We’re talking about Oscar Isaac. (AKA the man on the front of Esquire’s newest issue.)

Moon Knight promised a showcase for Isaac’s multitudes of acting chops, portraying a man with dissociative identity disorder. After Episode One gave us a high-speed, can’t-take-a-breath introduction to this mysterious corner of the MCU, Episode Two, which debuted this Wednesday, sets up the interplay between our hero’s two main identities: Steven Grant and Marc Spector. Not only that, but we see each identity in their respective suits. If you’re starting to feel a little lost, we don’t blame you. Your friends at Esquire had to do a little digging ourselves.

Here’s what you need to know about Grant and Spector going forward.

Let’s start with America’s sweetheart-in-waiting: Steven Grant. We know him relatively well at this point. Or at least as well as we can. The man works at a museum gift shop, is struggling with his mental health (chaining himself to his bed at night), and is, you know, starting to get hijacked by another man who may or may not be living inside of him. During the battle at the end of Episode Two, we see Grant manage to control his own body enough to don his own version of the Moon Knight costume.

But it’s not Moon Knight, technically. The dude in the three-piece suit, in Marvel lore, is called Mr. Knight. Check out what Moon Knight co-director Aaron Moorhead told Marvel.com about Mr. Knight: “Mr. Knight is Steven Grant’s vision of a cool guy, a svelte man. Being gifted the suit doesn’t mean that you are gifted fighting abilities. And if you don’t have skills, then you are going to lose this fight. We built everything around making losing the fight frightening and scary.”

It’s a very cool concept. Given that so many superheroes seem to (when they’re gifted special abilities) automatically know how to fight, here’s a character who has super-strength, but can’t really throw a punch. How about the man who does? Marc Spector. He’s the other guy who looks exactly like Oscar Isaac, but with an American accent. The mystery behind what Spector is up to is only starting to reveal itself, but it’s becoming clear that the Egyptian moon god Khonshu rescued Spector from the brink of death, with the caveat that he would become his human avatar on Earth. Spector clearly knows how to fight, inhabiting the armored and hooded Moon Knight look.

“It’s a celebration of the power of the human mind,” Isaac told Esquire about the real-world subtext for his portrayal of multiple identities. “It’s basically saying, We have a superpower and it’s the human brain, particularly for those who deal with trauma and sustained abuse. There’s this thing that the brain can do to allow them to survive.” As for Moon Knight itself, we’re betting that more of both characters’ histories will be detailed in the next few episodes. Let’s just hope that Spector and Grant will play nice with each other.

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