Moon Knight Episode 4, a.k.a. The Tomb,” ended on a bizarre note, even by Marvel Cinematic Universe standards. After being shot by Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow (a Moon Knight character who could have ended up being a lot different), Oscar Isaac’s Marc Spector woke up in a mental institution filled not only with people from his and Steven Grant’s lives, but also Steven as a separate individual and a hippopotamus-humanoid later revealed as the Egyptian goddess Taweret. This setting also included Harrow as a therapist, and if his office looked familiar to you, that’s because it was a revamped location that we’d visited earlier in Moon Knight’s run, with the room now serving as a twist on Marc’s sanity.
This information comes from production designer Stefania Celia, who I recently spoke with about her work on Moon Knight. When I asked about her thought process with designing the Disney+ series’ mental institution, specifically noting the decor in Arthur Harrow’s office, Cella responded:
Arthur’s office, if you remember Episode 2, when Marc and Layla are in Arthur’s commune, and they’re running up that part of the set with those arched stairs going up, then they enter in a place where it’s supposed to be Harrow’s private space where he has a collection of Egyptian artifacts that are wrapped, there are a couple of crocodiles because of Ahmet. His office, I decided specifically not to build a different office, but undress that place and paint it all in white. So in your consciousness, you are in the same space where you see him in London, but now it’s part of the hospital. And I changed the door where suddenly the door is one of the doors of the corridor, but because of all this imaginary, ‘Is it real or not real?’, I thought that was the best way to do that.
In case you need a refresher, Arthur Harrow had Steven Grant delivered to his commune in London, where he talked about his past connection with Khonshu and attempted to recruit Steven to help him resurrect the Egyptian god Ammit so she could wipe out all humans who have committed evil deeds or will do so in the future. We didn’t spend a lot of time in Arthur’s commune office, but if you look at it and then compare to his office in the mental institution, then you’ll see it’s the same set with a different paint job, a different door and some other tweaks. Because the institution represented Marc’s fractured mind, Stefania Cella felt it was a better course of action to overhaul Harrow’s existing office rather than build a new one from scratch.
Warning: SPOILERS for the Moon Knight episode “Asylum” are ahead!
However, things got even weirder with the mental institution in Moon Knight Episode 5, “a.k.a. Asylum.” That’s because the setting kept switching on and off between a legitimate hospital where Marc Spector was being treated for his mental illness, and simply window dressing for a room inside a boat Taweret was sailing through the Duat to the Field of Reeds. I won’t delve into all the craziness that unfolded in this episode, but suffice it to say that it ended on a note where it’s hard to predict what’s coming up in the finale. Well, aside from Oscar Isaac having already revealed where the final battle will take place.
Make sure your Disney+ subscription is in order so you can check out the Moon Knight finale starting May 4; it remains to be seen if this will be a season or series end. Keep track of what else the small-screen corner of the MCU is delivering by looking through the lineup of upcoming Marvel TV shows.
