Major spoilers

Marc and Steven have to examine their pasts…

Where to start? After the sharp left turn at the end of the last episode I was braced for something wild and Moon Knight episode 5 doesn’t disappoint. Thing is, this isn’t wild for the sake of it, nor is it wild without heart.

Where Moon Knight goes this week isn’t about show or gimmick or even set pieces for the sake of awing the audience.

What we have instead is a raw and entirely unexpected exploration of childhood trauma. This might sound gratuitous, but it’s handled with such delicacy you could be forgiven for thinking this wasn’t Disney at the tiller.

This feels adult and vulnerable in a way that only the Netflix Marvel shows have previously achieved. Where WandaVision fell short in answering its absolutely central question and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier presented only a very gentle discussion of race in the America, this has spent the first four episodes carefully constructing Marc and Steven’s relationship without privileging either. It has centred mental health as existential crisis without belittling or blaming any of the parties involved.

Having done that we are then presented with an episode in which Marc and Steven discover more about each other than perhaps either wants. They’re forced into this situation because they are dead.

As discussed in the previous review, they are on the Barge of the Dead on their way to have their hearts weighed and their afterlife decided upon. This affords the show the opportunity to explore their pasts, their break with one another and to do so in a way that moves them through it rather than just allowing us to observe it.

The key aim of the writers feels like they wanted to show us trauma can be faced and explored and, ultimately, overcome. They don’t do this by arguing it’s easy or a matter of just ‘doing it’, but by showing us the raw and profound cost of facing that which has defined us.

That this is done with hippopotamus gods and ships sailing through the desert is all the more accomplished.

Your mileage may vary but for me this was the single most accomplished episode Marvel has brought to the screen because it committed to everything it’s been promising. It delivered on those questions and hints and demands with a tenderness for its protagonists that means I never, once, felt they were being exploited for my entertainment.

Once again Oscar Isaac delivers a pair of outstanding performances and I felt nothing but heartbroken sympathy for both Marc and Steven as they faced truths they wanted to forget or didn’t even realise might be their truths.

At no point was I wondering what was happening elsewhere. At no point was I wishing for more characters on screen. As has been the case all the way through, this series has focused on Marc/Steven’s mental health and, even dead, this remains the case.

What’s astonishing is we finish this episode with a clear route to what needs to happen (find Harrow and stop him) but our heroes are really, really not in a place to do that. Moon Knight has done more in its five episodes than many other shows manage in twice the time and I literally have no idea how we get from where we are to the ending that I suspect is in the works. I’m absolutely prepared to be surprised and given my general views on how the very nature of superhero narratives are unable to break their bounds that says a lot about what this show has accomplished thus far.

Rating? 10 unbalanced souls out of 10

Stewart Hotston