WARNING: The following contains major spoiler for Moon Knight Episode 1, "The Goldfish Problem," now streaming on Disney+.
From his first comic book issue, Moon Knight embraced the tenets of Ancient Egyptian mythology: reimagining its deities and their conflicts as a facet of its ever-diverse superhero universe. There was a great deal of precedent for the move – notably with Thor and his supporting cast openly emulating ancient Norse mythology, and Hercules doing the same for the Greeks – and the natural drama of a polytheistic pantheon made strong storytelling easy. The comics made heavy use of Egyptian mythic figures, and the premiere of the Moon Knight series for the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks to do the same thing.
That, in turn, informs the identity of the series’ main villain, who remains enigmatic after the first episode, but who has already been revealed if traditional mythology holds true. While Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow appears to be the front man, the real boss’s presence can already be felt, and she finds her origins in the folk tales from thousands of years ago. As is surprisingly common for such mythic figures, she’s a holy terror.
Harrow leads a cult in an unnamed European village worshipping the goddess Ammit. He apparently serves as her conduit or vessel, and the scales of justice tattooed on his right forearm contain the ability to judge the hearts of mortal human beings. His mortal cultists submit to “her” judgment, and those found unworthy are immediately killed by the exchange. Later, he confronts Grant in the museum where he works, explaining that Ammit punishes evildoers before they commit their crimes, saying, “Would you wait to weed a garden until after the roses were dead?”
It’s followed in short order by the episode’s requisite monster attack, which comes as Grant works late at the museum and struggles to process. The creature bears the head of a crocodile, but has few other specific features. The attack is shot like a horror movie, with Grant scrambling through the shadow-laden museum in terror while the creature chases him in a frenzied rage. Through the PA system, Harrow calls on him to surrender a stolen scarab, to no avail. Only with the monster smashing down the door to the bathroom does Grant receive some reprieve when the other soul sharing his body – mercenary Marc Spector – takes over and transforms into Moon Knight.
All of it is more or less in keeping with the mythic version of Ammit, whom ancient Egyptians presented as the personification of karmic vengeance. Harrow points to an image of her in the museum, sporting the head of a crocodile, the front of a lion and the back of a hippopotamus: all known to be dangerous to people. According to The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson, she stood ready to punish the souls of the recently departed. Their hearts were weighed against a single feather, and if they were found wanting, the goddess would devour their souls. She wasn’t strictly worshipped; instead, stories presented her as an object of fear and destruction.
Moon Knight has already made her terrifying, not only in the monster that attacked Grant, but in Harrow’s seemingly absolute ability to determine right and wrong. The sudden death of the woman in the cult spoke to an intelligence far beyond human, one that viewed individuals as nothing but ants to be judged by some impossibly esoteric standards. As creepy as he is, Harrow can’t hold a candle to that. Ammit makes manifest what he can only hint at.
Even worse, her evil is still a part of the cosmic balance in the Egyptian pantheon. As horrific as she is, her actions still carry moral weight, and her destruction serves a larger cycle of death and rebirth. That’s not terribly different from Moon Knight’s own dedication to justice, coming from a deity with similar motives and only a marginally higher moral code. The most frightening thing about Ammit is how close to her heroic adversary she may turn out to be.
New episodes of Moon Knight air every Wednesday on Disney+.
Source: Trendz OH
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