Daredevil's Disney+ Release Can Make Moon Knight Even Better

With Daredevil making the shift to Disney+, it can now enhance the Moon Knight viewing experience. Daredevil was the first of Netflix's grittier MCU series, featuring more visceral violence and adult themes. Marvel chief Kevin Feige has teased Moon Knight's heavy violence and brutality, which is one of many aspects that marks it out as unique from the current slate of MCU programming available on Disney+.

Moon Knight is the story of Marc Spector (Oscar Isaacs), a mercenary with disassociative identity disorder who becomes a conduit for the Egyptian moon god, Khonshu. The series is based on the Marvel comics character of the same name, who has a long history with the wider MCU stable of heroes since his debut in 1972. Over the years, Moon Knight has snatched Thor's hammer and has even assumed the Iron Fist mantle. The combination of Moon Knight's antiheroic character and Spector's mental health condition should provide Isaacs with a wealth of material to work with in the role.

The arrival of the Defenders various series on Disney+ gives MCU fans the chance to reacquaint themselves with the more cerebral and darker elements of the Marvel universe before diving into Moon Knight. This is not only true for Daredevil, but also for shows such as Jessica Jones, which similarly tackled themes of mental health. In fact, when Jessica Jones debuted on Netflix, it gained critical acclaim for how it dealt with themes of misogyny, psychological abuse and the multiple ways in which people deal with trauma. Moon Knight should take a cue from the Netflix shows' delicate balance of superhero tropes with raw human emotion if it wants to successfully bring the complex themes of a show like Jessica Jones into the wider MCU. As a result, watching Moon Knight in conjunction with the older Defenders shows could dramatically enhance the viewing experience.

Beyond the very human theme of mental health, Moon Knight will also tackle the mystical realm of gods and monsters that was previously reserved for the Thor movies. That was until Eternals brought godlike beings firmly down to Earth, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings combined contemporary San Francisco with ancient Chinese mythology. This current MCU phase is clearly fascinated with the possibilities of juxtaposing the recognizable contemporary settings of the previous MCU phases with ancient mythology and mysticism. Interestingly, however, both Daredevil and Iron Fist did this first. Despite being rooted in the grizzled, urban environment of nocturnal New York, dragons feature in both series. Iron Fist's powers were derived from a dragon, while Daredevil's villainous cabal The Hand's resurrection abilities are sourced from dragon bones. The introduction of the Egyptian gods to the MCU via Moon Knight adds a different frame of cultural reference to the universe, allowing for new and exciting storytelling possibilities in much the same manner as the earlier Netflix shows.

Meanwhile, the vigilante justice meted out by Moon Knight is not unlike that of Matt Murdock's alter-ego. Moon Knight is therefore an ideal tonal companion to the Daredevil series. The characters have a history in the comics, as part of the Marvel Knights team of street-level vigilantes, which also included Black Widow, Daredevil and Shang-Chi. Given the studio's history of crossovers and Cox's own increasing involvement in the wider MCU, it's highly likely that the characters may work together on-screen. Vincent D'Onofrio's recent appearance as Kingpin in the Hawkeye series is a further indicator of a seedier, shared Marvel cinematic underbelly. It all suggests that the former Netflix MCU shows moving to Disney+ in the same month as Moon Knight launches is no coincidence. The fact that Disney+ is complimenting it with darker, more challenging series like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Daredevil means that there's a burgeoning stable of more grown-up superhero series on the streaming service. As the MCU looks to the future, that's very exciting indeed.