[Movie/TV/Comic] Marvel Cinematic Universe: A place to talk all things Marvel

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Khonshu has to be released in the next episode or Marc stays dead. Not sure how they’d work to release him when they physically can’t.

Layla, probably.

[Ophenia]

That is similar to what I was thinking. She is reading off of cards, as if she is new to the job. To me, it felt like she is a stand in, or temp due to Anubis being either busy, or something worse like you mentioned.

She also mentions it's been a long time they haven't seen anyone coming here when she introduces herself

[Kathandira]

Layla, probably.

That sparks and interesting speculation.

More than once, it was mentioned that Layla was being considered for the next Moon Knight. With Mark dead, perhaps she will rescue Khonshu. After all, if I remember correctly, Mark died in the caves, where Layla was as well. For all the time spent on Mark being dead, we don't know how much time has really passed in the living world. Next episode could pick up from the moment Mark died, and refocus on Layla. If she frees Khonshu, and he sees Mark is dead, he may choose Layla to take up the mantle.

That could lead to Layla trying to rescue Mark, perhaps invoking the court of avatars (or w/e it was called) to prove that Harrow is a terrible person. It can go a whole bunch of ways. But you don't just throw in that someone is being considered for the next person to be Moon Knight, without ever doing it.

- - - Updated - - -

She also mentions it's been a long time they haven't seen anyone coming here when she introduces herself

That is also very true.

[Redwyrm]

They might . . . not? Maybe this is one of the cases where they're planning on multiple seasons, like Loki. Maybe S1 of Moon Knight is everything going to hell, as we've seen, followed by Harrow "winning", but Marc coming to terms with himselves, ready for Round 2 as a now-freed Ammut starts gearing up for the apocalypse. S2 could open with a now-focused Marc/Steven/Jake triumvirate cooperating consciously to get Khonshu released so they can get back to work.

All the above is rampant speculation and thus I'm not putting any of that in spoilers.

It's possible it could go that way but I don't see it happening. It would be very risky to end Season 1 without some resolution. Even Loki (which had a cliffhanger, see you next season) had a resolution with Kang version 1.

I could see them putting off the Jake reveal till the very end and having that as the cliffhanger for Season 2. I definitely see them releasing more than just Khonshu from the God prisons. As the council of current gods seems at best inept and at worst corrupt.

[Endus]

Khonshu has to be released in the next episode or Marc stays dead. Not sure how they’d work to release him when they physically can’t.

I mean, you need a god, probably. And Taweret's, like, right there. Khonshu had to get Marc to agree to his terms before Marc died, likely because if he didn't, Marc would be out of reach; resurrection's not really in Khonshu's wheelhouse (also that it'd be in a completely different afterlife; they only get the Egyptian one because of the whole Avatar thing). Khonshu can't raise the dead; what he provided for Marc initially was the healing powers of his vestments, as his Moon Knight, to make sure he didn't​ die. Marc's past that point already, here.

Also, ancient myths are full of stories of people escaping the Afterlife by "cheating" somehow. The boat's SUPPOSED to go across the sands to judgement, but clearly, they can grab the tiller and steer in other directions.

- - - Updated - - -

That sparks and interesting speculation.

More than once, it was mentioned that Layla was being considered for the next Moon Knight.

I think Khonshu's just using that shit to provoke Marc and keep him under control. Marc's damaged psyche makes him way easier to manipulate.

However, what I do think is it's excellent foreshadowing if Layla becomes the Avatar for some other Egyptian God. Like, say, Taweret? Hathor at the council was also supportive of Marc. Ammut's a threat to all of 'em, obviously, they just didn't believe Marc was right that there was a risk of Ammut's escape.

[Kathandira]

I think Khonshu's just using that shit to provoke Marc and keep him under control. Marc's damaged psyche makes him way easier to manipulate.

However, what I do think is it's excellent foreshadowing if Layla becomes the Avatar for some other Egyptian God. Like, say, Taweret? Hathor at the council was also supportive of Marc. Ammut's a threat to all of 'em, obviously, they just didn't believe Marc was right that there was a risk of Ammut's escape.

I can get behind that angle.

[Endus]

What god is helping release Ammit then? It’s something humans can do or this wouldn’t be an issue.

I meant the "escaping the Afterlife" for maybe needing a God. Ammut and Khonshu aren't dead, they're trapped inside stone statues in the mortal realm. It's entirely possible you don't need anything special to release them; just smash the statue.

Nothing Khonshu can grant Marc is strictly necessary, if Marc can escape the afterlife on his (their?) own. Dunno how particular Marvel is about it, but it's pretty standard trope stuff that if you escape the afterlife, whatever wounds may have sent you there are cured, so you don't just immediately die again.

Khonshu's vestments don't raise the dead, they heal the living. Marc's dead, not wounded. It worked the first time, because he was just (mortally) wounded, but not yet dead, and Khonshu had to get Marc to make the vow before he died, precisely because if he died, it'd be too late.

[Endus]

https://www.marvel.com/characters/khonshu

Uhhhh

Referring to the comics.

Can't draw anything from that, we gotta go by the MCU canon, and as of this point, there's no indication Khonshu can raise the dead.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I mean, they specifically told us that’s her mission.

Yeah, they did...but it hasn't happened yet...hence "probably".

But you're the one that's "Not sure how they’d work to release him when they physically can't"

[JDL49]

They do not have a contract atm with Oscar Issacs for anything else, so counting on a S2 seems premature and ending S1 without sufficient resolution a piss-poor decision.

[Ihavewaffles]

Latest episode was really, really good, the previous two were so goofy with tiny lil Layla smacking down large burly men like they were toys..plz no more of her, she's just overall annoying.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Latest episode was really, really good, the previous two were so goofy with tiny lil Layla smacking down large burly men like they were toys..plz no more of her, she's just overall annoying.

Where was Layla smacking sown large men like toys? She fights some guys off a ledge when recusing Steven, gets thrown around by the body guard when fighting at the coffin for the map before surprising him, then barely survives a mummy with a flare to the eye.

I can’t think of any point where she comes across as black widow or some one who takes on big men with ease.

[exochaft]

Where was Layla smacking sown large men like toys? She fights some guys off a ledge when recusing Steven, gets thrown around by the body guard when fighting at the coffin for the map before surprising him, then barely survives a mummy with a flare to the eye.

I can’t think of any point where she comes across as black widow or some one who takes on big men with ease.

These are fights that she probably shouldn't be winning (especially when it's a direct physical confrontation), and there are other parts where she's basically portrayed as durable as Moon Knight in full costume. For example, when the invisible doggie throws her into the wall: why they decided to have Moon Knight thrown into the car that can give way and lessen a blow and throw Layla into the immovable brick wall I'll never understand, as it should've been reversed if you want people to believe she can walk away from that. Another example is when that body guard launches her into the metal structure while he's tossing her around like a rag doll... that's major damage to a normal human, as they're not getting back up and probably have a misaligned/fractured/broken spine. If she had super powers that lined up with not taking damage, that's fine, but she doesn't have anything beyond a vague backstory that doesn't indicate anything to reasonably explain how she survives all this stuff. But it's being played off like when Black Widow falls down the side of the building and smashes into all of the duct work on the way down and is basically fine.

This is a problem Marvel has quite a bit as of late, and it just happens to line up with female characters more than male characters right now (but it does apply to both). If you can't have any sense of damage or stakes, investment gets lost because you don't know the limits of a character to build suspense or you'll just assume that the plot will just magically make everything better. If you take an MCU character like Iron Man, you have a pretty decent idea of what his limits are or when he gets hurt, as it'll typically be shown through his suit getting banged up or pieces breaking off if you can't see Stark's body getting banged up, or the suit functionality or the HUD itself showing the damage. If you take Black Widow from her last movie... well, I already mentioned the falling building scene (because it's so absurd), but the movie is filled with her (and other characters) taking hits and taking barely/no damage of any importance receiving a bunch of life-ending attacks that should kill a normal human. I'll even throw Moon Knight into this: the show portrays him as basically being able to shrug off bullets, yet someone can just stab through his suit with a spear with no effort... still doesn't explain why he doesn't wear his suit during other fights (but budget issues with CGI does sadly), so we don't really have an idea of the limits of his suit because it's all over the place. This isn't even getting into the other aspects of writing that are out of whack with Marvel's portrayal of their characters as of late.

I'm still not sure what the point of having Layla in the Moon Knight series really is, and how she's dealt with kind of makes her feel like the writers didn't either. What little she does contribute to the story could've been done with background exposition, as the character itself didn't have to be in this story at all with a couple of tweaks. Honestly, the character feels like an insert to have a 'main'-ish female character in the story, shoe-horned into major plot points for representation as I wouldn't doubt there would be backlash if it was basically just an all-male show given the current environment. It's a dumb reason to insert a character, especially when there's other female characters you could bring in from the comics if you wanted.

It's such a shame, because Oscar Isaacs and Ethan Hawke are killing it with their acting, and the whole package of the show is being massively held back by the writing and the budget... well, I'm being nice by assuming it's the budget when it comes to CGI (or the lack of it) and editing while assuming it was changed mid-production.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

These are fights that she probably shouldn't be winning (especially when it's a direct physical confrontation), and there are other parts where she's basically portrayed as durable as Moon Knight in full costume.

I could see the argument for her not beating the body guard but that’s about it and even then she only manages it by surprising him after she got man handled the whole time it wasn't a easy thing or her treating him like a toy.

As far a durability goes realistic portrays flew out the window with the first iron man, every one who’s not thor or the hulk should be dead multiple times over at this points.

But she clearly isn’t close to moon knights level of being impaled shot ect and just healing through it all.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

You can draw a lot from that as the powers of various MCU characters have been at least similar to their comic counterparts.

Various characters, sure. But there are also a lot of characters in the MCU that have entirely different powers than their comic book counterparts. So you can't really say "it's like this in the comics therefore it must also be like this in the MCU".

And Moon Knight specifically has been shown to have different abilities than he does in the comics. And in the comics his powers aren't that consistent. Most of the time he doesn't actually have powers at all....least-wise a magical costume that he can summon at will and makes him basically unkillable. He has had costumes with different levels of protection...but they are all mundane in origin...and he puts his tights on just like everyone else...one leg at a time.

[Endus]

We must watch a different series.

But even then, you understand someone like Layla could actually fight "large burly dudes," right?

It's the weirdest fuckin' take.

I'm a "large burly dude". 6', fairly heavily-built. Not a bodybuilder or something, don't take that as a brag. And doing martial arts training, I have absolutely had my shit wrecked by a 5' 110-lb nothing of a girl, because I got overconfident about my strength and she leveraged that into throwing me a good 6 frickin' feet through the air before I hit the mat. And she was at the same training level as I was; it's not like she was some master and I was a know-nothing student at the time.

[exochaft]

It's the weirdest fuckin' take.

I'm a "large burly dude". 6', fairly heavily-built. Not a bodybuilder or something, don't take that as a brag. And doing martial arts training, I have absolutely had my shit wrecked by a 5' 110-lb nothing of a girl, because I got overconfident about my strength and she leveraged that into throwing me a good 6 frickin' feet through the air before I hit the mat. And she was at the same training level as I was; it's not like she was some master and I was a know-nothing student at the time.

I think you're misconstruing what Marvel does and what happened to you. It's basically an argument of fighting smarter or with the tools you have, not brute force vs. brute force with a dash of depowering and stupidity.

All things being equal, you will win that fight unless you screw up if you have the physical advantage... and what you described happening was technically your fault, because if you fought without getting overconfident you'd likely win if your training is actually equal. Fairly certain if you fought her again, you wouldn't make the same mistake.

I also did martial arts training back in my younger days, and if there was a clear physical difference where I was superior I'd never lose even if I made a small mistake... perhaps I fight more defensively than you do and always relied on leverage over strength (just slightly leaning into a defensive block while maintaining a low center of gravity can be enough to knock down or unbalance an opponent over which you have a large mass advantage), could be a difference in style of martial arts, but one of the first lessons that ever gets hammered into your head is being cocky gets you hurt/killed. Regardless, I've fought against people 100lbs over me, and there's a point where sheer mass and power cannot be overcome unless your opponent lets you win or they heavily screw up by really overextending and leaving themselves open to be exploited... or having a weapon can help, too, hence why firearms can be a real world equalizer over weight differences. There's a reason there's weight classes for many competitive fighting sports, as literal mass makes a huge difference. What I find as a weird take is that sheer mass and strength isn't considered an advantage when all other things are equal.

The main point is that what you demonstrated and what Marvel tends to demonstrate is not the same. You made a mistake, perfectly fine, happens to all of us... and I'm pretty sure you learned your lesson and didn't let that happen again. Marvel tends to either make the characters/opponents suddenly or consistently so stupid (this extends beyond just fighting) when they shouldn't be, or nothing is demonstrated to show an exploitation is being leveraged.

Take the bodyguard fight scene with Layla and how she wins: it actually starts off fairly decently on both ends, she's using whatever she has as a weapon against a knife-wielding bodyguard. The guard shrugs off the attacks while guarding his upper body, showing that she doesn't have the physical strength to overpower. We got more over-telegraphed swings with the knife (which is silly in itself, but I'll let it slide this instance), then he starts doing stupid stuff: he one-handed flips the knife while holding her off and does a massive overhead swing that can be seen a mile away and lets go of the knife immediately without trying to pull it back... obviously this was to have him lose the knife for reasons. An underhand or forward stab/slash would've ended the fight there, but we gotta do something dumb... moving on! We get a back and forth, then he literally lifts her up off the ground and slams her spine into a metal rod. There's no leveraging Layla's power involved, this is brute force swinging and twisting a body from a dead stop from one side of the body to another above your head... again, that takes a helluva lot of strength to do versus someone overextending an attack and leveraging that forward into a throw. She should be down for the count, but she'll do a flying full body stab in a second. I'll give them points for them making the guard look cocky to some degree, but he's already done some severely stupid things so I'm already uninvested at this point. She'll get a hit on him because he does a dumb underhand stabbing move almost at ground level after recovering his knife so she can block it with him being unbalanced, which has him stagger back and accept her stabbing with open arms a couple seconds later. Why didn't she whip out her 'weapons' early? Don't know, maybe she forgot she had it? Anyways, she leaves and finds a gun right outside the door. Why didn't the guard pick up that obvious gun when he came in? Meh, who cares at this point.

So how did she win? Her opponent was written to do some dumb things that even overconfidence can't account for, along with Layla basically taking no damage. Instead of writing her as being smarter in the fight, they have her fighting head-on strength vs. strength for most of the fight. They also underpower the guard by having him not have a gun (btw, there's a gun literally on the ground just outside the building that he would've seen, Layla picks it up after the fight)... maybe he dropped the gun and used a knife for fun? Regardless, they make the guard lose his weapon in a dumb way while making insanely silly fighting moves that make no sense beyond they need to give Layla a window of opportunity. They could've had this scene play out in many ways: she could work soft tissue areas (like trying to crush his balls a la Loki), or even have her run away since she already had what she wanted. Heck, that's the easy out for the writers: she runs away injured after the guy gets cocky to retrieve his knife, she finds the gun outside the building (again, she finds it after the fight anyways) and shoots him... boom, done, could absolutely buy that. Instead, they try to go for their version of female empowerment that's more insulting to women than empowering with how it's written and the hoops they have to go through to make their narrative work.

All this being said, does this mean Layla could never win this fight? Of course not, there were ways she could've won in more believable and less dumb ways. What I am saying is that the current Marvel is terrible at writing in general.

[Adamas102]

These are fights that she probably shouldn't be winning (especially when it's a direct physical confrontation), and there are other parts where she's basically portrayed as durable as Moon Knight in full costume. For example, when the invisible doggie throws her into the wall: why they decided to have Moon Knight thrown into the car that can give way and lessen a blow and throw Layla into the immovable brick wall I'll never understand, as it should've been reversed if you want people to believe she can walk away from that. Another example is when that body guard launches her into the metal structure while he's tossing her around like a rag doll... that's major damage to a normal human, as they're not getting back up and probably have a misaligned/fractured/broken spine. If she had super powers that lined up with not taking damage, that's fine, but she doesn't have anything beyond a vague backstory that doesn't indicate anything to reasonably explain how she survives all this stuff. But it's being played off like when Black Widow falls down the side of the building and smashes into all of the duct work on the way down and is basically fine.

This is a problem Marvel has quite a bit as of late, and it just happens to line up with female characters more than male characters right now (but it does apply to both). If you can't have any sense of damage or stakes, investment gets lost because you don't know the limits of a character to build suspense or you'll just assume that the plot will just magically make everything better. If you take an MCU character like Iron Man, you have a pretty decent idea of what his limits are or when he gets hurt, as it'll typically be shown through his suit getting banged up or pieces breaking off if you can't see Stark's body getting banged up, or the suit functionality or the HUD itself showing the damage. If you take Black Widow from her last movie... well, I already mentioned the falling building scene (because it's so absurd), but the movie is filled with her (and other characters) taking hits and taking barely/no damage of any importance receiving a bunch of life-ending attacks that should kill a normal human. I'll even throw Moon Knight into this: the show portrays him as basically being able to shrug off bullets, yet someone can just stab through his suit with a spear with no effort... still doesn't explain why he doesn't wear his suit during other fights (but budget issues with CGI does sadly), so we don't really have an idea of the limits of his suit because it's all over the place. This isn't even getting into the other aspects of writing that are out of whack with Marvel's portrayal of their characters as of late.

I don’t know how anyone can still have this hang up with the MCU.

Even from the very first Iron Man, Tony Stark takes multiple falls and collisions that should put a normal man in the hospital for months but he gets up and walks it off, maybe puts an ice pack on for good measure. Human bodies (the plain old basic variety) have NEVER functioned in a totally realistic manner when it comes to injury.

If you want to make this a male vs female thing by ignoring all the punishment that Clint and Tony endured then I don’t know what to tell you.

Even if we just consider Moon Knight Marc sans suit can apparently just face-plant a dive from a 3rd story window and just walk away with an easily fixed dislocated jaw?

[Endus]

I think you're misconstruing what Marvel does and what happened to you. It's basically an argument of fighting smarter or with the tools you have, not brute force vs. brute force with a dash of depowering and stupidity.

I mean, we can boil your entire post down to "fights in filmed media are shot to communicate narrative, not to reflect reality". You're also presuming that the guard in question should have made every "right" choice, for some reason, and people make mistakes all the time (hell, my own post, as you noted, described a mistake I made while sparring).

Even in film, not every combatant is equally skilled, and telegraphing is largely done for the audience's benefit, rather than to be interpreted as a hand-to-hand master class for real fighting.

Everything's silly in this exact way for every character. Why are we picking out Layla? That's where we get to "weirdest fuckin' take" territory.

[JDL49]

Well Moon Knight just concluded and actually managed to be a good watch. As it stands for now this a standalone and I'm not sure whether a sequel makes sense since the character stands apart from the rest of the MCU. We'll see.