After Kevin Feige's promise that Moon Knight is Marvel's most brutal show, how violent is Oscar Isaac's show and does it live up to that billing? So far, the MCU's shows may have been more adult than their Disney+ release model might have initially suggested they would be, but they have all followed Marvel's approach set in Phases 1-3. They're violent and they occasionally drop in curse words, but Marvel's MCU shows are accessible to the same audiences who loved Avengers: Endgame. Moon Knight always looked a little different.

From the first moment Oscar Isaac's Marvel training footage appeared, it looked like Moon Knight would be a new class of brutal hero. His MCU debut in the midst of Phase 4 combined with Disney+'s rehoming of Netflix's Marvel shows like Daredevil suggested a darker, more no-holds-barred spirit in the MCU. Violence had always been part of the MCU, but this is a new era and Moon Knight's brutality would bring it into the real mainline MCU in a legitimate way.

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Moon Knight is absolutely not for kids, but it isn't too much more violent than Hawkeye, Loki, and the rest of the MCU's recent releases. The difference is in the type of violence and how Marc Spector's past influences how he fights. And it's fair to say that Moon Knight earns its TV-14 rating, with a few moments in later episodes pushing it into darker territory more like Netflix's Daredevil and the Defenders Saga.

How Violent & Gory Is Moon Knight?

Moon Knight Oscar Isaac

From quite early on in Moon Knight episode 1, most of the violence is hidden off-screen. Oscar Isaac's new MCU hero is a passenger in his own story, thanks to Marc Spector's multiple alter identities - including Steven, who was introduced in the trailers. Moon Knight episode 1 is not as violent as the brutal billing from Feige, at least until the very last moments, when Moon Knight shows off his approach to superheroism in very real terms. As revealed in the Moon Knight trailers, he beats down a supernatural villain, ground-pounding in a way that few other MCU heroes would adopt. One moment of body horror gore comes thanks to a serious injury to Steven's jaw, but blood is limited to splatter and it's not shown being spilled.

Why Moon Knight Is Marvel's Most Brutal Hero

Moon Knight fighting mercenaries in the Disney+ Moon Knight series

As a significant part of Moon Knight's marketing campaign, Kevin Feige leant into the idea of Moon Knight as a brutal superhero, and that much is true of the show's later episodes. As Moon Knight himself becomes a more prominent character, the violence increases significantly, and the character's comics-accurate healing factor leads to some painful set-pieces. The healing factor set-up allows for more violence, simply because Moon Knight can survive ridiculous injuries, but it's Marc Spector's past that really compounds his violence: he is a mercenary, trained to kill, and his emotional trauma manifests as Moon Knight's Batman-like brutality when heis fighting is properly shown off in Moon Knight. He's on another level compared to other MCU heroes.

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New episodes of Moon Knight release every Wednesday on Disney+.

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