By EMMITT MURPHY

An image of advertising for Moon Knight. Moon Knight premieres March 30 only on Disney+ (Credit to Disney+ and Marvel)

Marvel Studios published the first trailer for the show “Moon Knight,” the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Jan. 17. The show will follow Steven Grant, played by Oscar Issac, as he battles with dissociative identity disorder, also known as DID, and eventually becomes the fist of Khonshu, Moon Knight.

Moon Knight first appeared in issue #32 of Doug Moench’s “Werewolf by Night” in 1975 and it wouldn’t be until 1980 where he would get his first solo series, which laid out the groundwork for his character in the comics. Moon Knight started as the mercenary Marc Spector who was fatally wounded by his employer, Raul Bushman, and then revived by the spirit of the egyptian moon god Khonshu. 

After he was resurrected and beat down Bushman, Spector developed DID which led to the development of his three alter egos—the taxi driver Jake Lockley, the billionaire Steven Grant and the vigilante Moon Knight. 

Steven’s DID is a major point of contention for fans, considering the fact that its portrayal could make or break a story. With the show reportedly taking inspiration from Jeff Lemire’s 2016 run on Moon Knight, which had explored Marc’s mental state and made the reader question what was real or not. 

The exact details about the characters alter egos in the show is unknown but it is known that Steven Grant will not be a billionaire in the adaptation. Instead, he will be a mild-mannered gift shop employee who wants nothing of what’s happening to him. It’s unknown if his origin from the comics will be adapted into the show, but it’s an extremely safe assumption that the show will follow a similar story, at least with Khonshu.

For the antagonists of the show, Marvel had decided to dig for some rather obscure villains from their comic book history, starting with the main antagonist Arthur Harrow played by Ethan Hawke.

In the comics, Arthur Harrow was a Nobel Prize candidate due to his work in medicine and was set to win the prize if he wasn’t caught with secret Auschwitz-Birkenau documents that he stole to cure his trigeminal neuralgia, which paralyzed the whole left side of his face. He then decided to kidnap subjects to experiment on and someday cure his paralysis before he was eventually stopped by Moon Knight.

The strangest thing about Marvel’s choice to pick Harrow is the fact that the character appeared in only one issue from volume #2 of “Moon Knight” and was never seen again. Judging by the trailer, the character seems extremely different from his comic counterpart where he seems to be a leader of a cult-like group, not a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

The other known antagonist for the series is the Midnight Man played by the late Gaspard Ulliel. Midnight Man, or Anton Mogart, first appeared in “Moon Knight #3” is Moon Knight’s direct counterpart, a thief who’s shtick is that they only appear at midnight. The character’s role in the show is currently unknown so there is no telling how much about the character will be lifted from the comics.

Moon Knight premieres March 30 on Disney+. It is described to be one of the more brutal entries to the MCU and is “the first legitimate Marvel character-study since ‘Iron Man’” according to Oscar Issac.