By: Jared Diaz
OwlFeed Journalist

While I am happy that Moon Knight is finally coming to the MCU with his own Disney+ show, I’m worried that they will ignore some elements of his character because of how dark and mature his character is meant to be.

What do I mean by that? Let’s look at the history and character of Moon Knight.

For context, Moon Knight is a Marvel character that was created in 1975. He made his first appearance in Werewolf by Night issue 34. His real name is Marc Spector and he was the son of a rabbi father whose family had left Europe in the 1940s to escape the Holocast. As Marc got older he rejected his father morally and embraced materialism. He eventually became a heavyweight boxer, a US marine and a CIA operator.

During his time in the CIA, Marc worked with William Cross who would betray the agency and become the villain Crossfire. Marc’s brother, Randall, also joined the CIA, but he too would betray the agency, seeking money and selling weapons for both the CIA and a rival group during a fight in Italy. When Marc’s girlfriend, Lisa, overhead Randall’s plans, he killed her with a meat cleaver. When Marc realized Lisa was killed by Randall, he confronted his brother and he left Randall with injuries that were so severe that they made him go insane.

Later, Marc become friends with CIA agent Amos Lardner, however he unknowingly turned him over to Operation Cobra, which was a CIA project designed to control their agent’s minds. Marc was fed up with the CIA and once he found out about operation Cobra, he left the CIA and become a mercenary for multiple years, fighting for the causes of any one who paid him enough money.

During one of his mercenary jobs in Africa, he ended up meeting a french mercenary called Jean-Paul DuChamp. The two of them became good friends and both Marc and “Frenchie”, as he called him, served together on several missions.

Eventually, Marc and Frenchie started working for a man named Raoul Bushman while they were in Egypt. However, Marc couldn’t work well with Bushman due to his bloodlust conflicting with Bushman’s bloodlust. Marc started to question his mercenary lifestyle and while on the Sudan in Africa, Marc saw Bushman assault the town of Salima, seeking information on, archaeologist, Dr. Peter Al Ron’s discovery of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb that might contain gold.

While they were holding up the town, Dr. Al Ron actually attempted to stab Bushman from behind, but Marc managed to warn him in time. Bushman then killed Dr. Al Ron by biting him in the neck with his steel teeth. This caused Marc to turn on Bushman and he managed to help Dr. Al Ron’s daughter Marlene escape.

However, Bushman caught them in the act. Bushman ordered his men to kill the people in the town. Marc tried to stop them only to be beaten. Bushman threw Marc’s unconscious body in the desert and left him there to die. Marc managed to crawl to the tomb that Dr. Al Ron discovered. Hewas pulled into the tomb by Marlene and her servants. They brought Marc to the statue of the Egyptian Moon God Khonshu.

Marc was completely dead, however as Marlene was crying over him suddenly he simply woke up and he believed that Khonshu brought him back to life as a second chance to serve him as the Moon Knight of vengeance and thus Marc Spector become Moon Knight.

With his show coming soon to Disney+, it makes people wonder how can they handle a dark character like him along with the topic of mental illness in a superhero TV show, which would be something we haven’t seen in the MCU before.

For those who don’t know, Moon Knight suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which has resulted in the creation of his other personalities such as Jake Lockley and Steven Grant. He even has created some of the personalities of Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine. These personalities often collide because they have desires and wants of their own, which results in Marc having more violent urges and him wondering if what is happening is real or not.

Moon Knight is also one of the most violent vigilantes in Marvel, rivaling Deadpool and The Punisher in violence.

Godzilla Mendoza said on YouTube, “He kicks bad guys so hard they vomit, he carves a moon lego into people’s foreheads, he crashed an airplane into Taskmaster because he was too lazy to fight him hand-to-hand and once he kept a human face as a souvenir after violently killing his nemesis by tackling him off a rooftop and stabbing him repeatedly. Then sometimes he would put the face on and look in the mirror while hearing the voices in his head telling him to sacrifice more souls to a frightening elder god that looks like a bird skeleton.”

Khonshu is a cold and ruthless god as well. He rules with a cold reservation, befitting many ancient religions. To follow him is to be his son but the relationship will rarely bring favor or mercy. Khonshu is a god who demands human sacrifice. While he does give his followers powers, it comes at the price of sanity. He has even attempted to drive Marc insane at one point.

As Polis said in a YouTube comment “Let’s hope Disney doesn’t water him down much.” I would really want to see Moon Knight done justice in his own show.