Major spoilers

Steven, Marc and Layla find the tomb…

What we’ve had hints of in the first three episodes we get in buckets this time around. We are full on Raiders of the Lost Ark, even down to shot choices (I’m looking at you ‘coming up over sand dunes to see a valley with a convoy in it’. I could also mention the shooting of the interiors and the narrow passageways). For me it was glorious: the use of Jordan here is superb because it doesn’t feel like Jordan – the shots of the river and wind gouged canyons are almost exactly the same as those I’ve trekked through in Egypt. The scenery is wonderful but what’s more impressive is the building out of the dungeon everyone ends up exploring.

I’ve seen it twice now and my teenagers screamed more the second time when a certain set of clicking magicians turn up than they did the first. That is some good television.

What’s equally interesting is that the show marries this with design choices around colour and contrast that highlight the differences between each of the sides and help really lift the stakes. The composition of certain frames are not only perfectly framed comic book panels but they are an almost flawless translation to small screen ratios and limitations.

I want to talk about Steven and Marc. Everything else is gravy really.

For reasons I won’t spoil, in this episode Steven and Marc are forced to come face to face. Steven has never been sidelined. Indeed, Marc has been written as wanting exactly that, but Steven has been given a feisty resistance to losing himself – not least from the perspective of engaging with a mental health crisis but from the existential fear he would never survive such a surrender.

This episode gives neither of them a choice. They meet under very strange circumstances – upon the barge of the dead which is busy taking Marc/Steven to the underworld (presumably to meet Osiris). The hints that Steven is not trapped in his mind but is instead in the underworld are subtle but they are there and it makes more sense than having this all be ‘a dream’ from which he will wake. He and Marc have both been trapped before and that didn’t force them to meet – but this interpretation makes a lot of sense.

What I loved was not that they met, nor even that we’re on a hospital themed barge but that when they do meet they hug. It’s a wonderful little moment. They find themselves lost and alone and then see one another – and instinctively they know the person in front of them has their back. After the antagonism of who gets to be in control, removing that tension leads to this wonderful moment of camaraderie.

This is a super episode that does both sides of Marc/Steven justice. Not to mention the details that have gone into the design, from the mirrored walls of the tomb to the colours used inside the dungeon to the tiny little Moon Knight action figure we see in the underworld – all of it speaks to a design vision that knew exactly what it was doing.

This control over the appearance of the world gives the cast space in which to play and to bring out their characters.

There’s been a lot of talk about how superb Oscar Isaac has been and rightly so, but May Calamawy’s character has a lot to do in this episode and she handles it wonderfully although discussing her key scenes would be a spoiler too far. Enough to say that I’d love to see her in more.

Verdict: This episode took us where most normal shows would end their season. Instead we have two more episodes to go. It is whacky, surreal, and coherent and I’m really impressed. Here’s to the last two episodes and to us finding out exactly what it is that Taweret is doing on that barge.

Rating? 9 ancient relics out of 10.

Stewart Hotston