Headscratchers / Moon Knight (2022)

What Day is it?

• Does Steven's phone not have a day/date visible like most phones or something?
  • Assuming Steven uses a smartphone, Marc probably changes the settings on his phone to give the incorrect date and time.
  • He might also have just coaxed Steven to turn off the time/date display or otherwise encourage Steven not to look too closely. Especially since we know Steven was previously aware of the 'sleepwalking' and timeskipping, it may also have been that Marc calls in sick, remains in control until the next week and does his job for him, and otherwise messes with Steven's perception. After all, we know that Marc setup a date for Steven with a co-worker so at some point, Marc was at Steven's job and interacting with people. The stuff Steven noticed previously is just the parts where Marc can't easily cleanup or doesn't have the opportunity to.
  • He may just have been really excited for the date and also convinced the whole Alpine thing was just a dream. Not everyone goes around staring at their phone screen, and given how his muscle memory seems to remember how to three-point land, we can assume he has situational awareness down pat regardless of which identity is fronting.
  • Freeze frame bonus from episode 5 shows that when Steven is calling his mum, he's not even actually making a call, just opening a random app. Steven is apparently very good at blocking out things that would shatter the illusion of his life, including not noticing the date on his phone.

Blackouts vs. being trapped in a mirror

• In the first episode, it's established that when Marc takes control from Steven in their body, the latter blacks out until he resurfaces later on. Yet, the second episode has Steven trapped in a mirror like Marc was for much of the episode. So what causes the different outcomes in personality switching?
  • Marc notes that the barrier between them has weakened while the alter fronting has a stronger control of the body and such. It's likely a continuation of that process along with Steven's increasing awareness of the situation. In real life DID situations, there are situations where two alters may both be present to some fuzzy degree, possibly due to a long transition or due to perceived need or stimuli. Particularly since Steven is still actively resisting Marc to various degrees may help explain why he remains close to the surface. Meanwhile for Marc, he never really saw a need to remain close especially since Steven would likely notice. Of course, it may also be a plot later as well.
  • It’s a known symptom of DID to have memory loss when an alter compartmentalizes their time in control. With time and experience, alters can grow to share memories and speak with each other in cooperation instead of blocking each other out.
  • He's not "trapped in the mirror". Steven sees his own reflection and hears Marc's voice in his head, or vice versa, and the two perceptions converge. Cinematically, it's more effective than having him hear it in voiceover. Symbolically, mirrors are often associated with the moon.

Marc setting up a date

• If Marc is still technically married to Layla, why would he try to set up a date with a random English woman? It's pretty strange to resume dating if you haven't finalized the divorce yet...
  • He wasn't setting it up for himself, he was setting it up for Steven who he sees as his own person. He probably noticed that at some point Steven was getting lonely and isolated, if nothing else.
  • Also, at the end of Episode 2, Marc promises Steven that after this last mission for Khonshu, Marc will disappear and Steven will never hear from him again. Marc already seems to be fed up with the whole thing, ready to just fade away and let Steven be the dominant personality, and may be laying the groundwork for Steven to at least try and have some kind of happy, normal life once Marc disappears.
  • There exists a possibility that Marc didn't set him up and instead it was a 3rd personality, the factor that may have changed things.
  • The third personality seems much more reasonable, since, for one, we don't know if Marc was being honest about disappearing, and two... Steven's a vegan. Why would Marc arrange a date at a STEAK restaurant?
  • Marc knows about his DID, but Steven didn't. Who's to say the third one was aware of the others? He probably meant to go on that date himself, if it was him.

Speaking of the date...

• Marc—or User No. 3—sets up a date at an expensive steakhouse for nice museum lady and Steven, who is vegan (whoops). But depending on how long someone has been vegan, meat and animal products can make them quite sick, and if it's the most expensive cut they have, it's quite likely dense, heavily marbled and possibly served with a rich sauce. Yet after the Steak of Despair, Steven seems well enough to come home and polish off almost a whole box of chocolates—which probably aren't vegan, either. So... is being vegan a new thing, or is Steven just not curious as to how he can apparently eat meat or dairy without getting ill?
  • Steven may be a vegan, but the other people using his body are clearly not. As for the chocolate, maybe he figured that since he has already eaten meat today he might as well.
  • Right, but Steven doesn't know he's sharing a body at that point—he just knows he has really weird dreams and misses big chunks of time. Maybe it just gets lost in all the chaos that follows, but he never seems to have a moment of "huh, I just ate a steak and some chocolate and I was totally fine, that's weird."
  • It's possible he did have a moment offscreen, not everything the characters do happens on screen, and with all the more significant clues were there to Steven's other life that he experiences in the subsequent scene it's probable they just overlooked it.
  • Being vegan for a while doesn't make someone deathly allergic to meat. Their body will adjust to not having it, but reintroducing it usually doesn't have much more serious physical effect than indigestion. If it did, Steven could just not know about it and/or could chalk it up to all the other weirdness going on. Or, heck, even before losing those two days he knew he woke up in strange places, so he could just think he might eat meat when sleep walking or in his fugue state or whatever he originally thought was happening.

Replacing the one-finned Gus

• Instead of going around to pet shops looking for a goldfish with a missing fin, couldn't Marc just buy a goldfish with two fins and then cut one off? Would that cause health complications (besides the obvious) to the fish? Or is Marc too softhearted to do that to an innocent animal?
  • The fish probably wouldn’t heal in one day, and the tank water being bloody would be an immediate giveaway.
  • Also probably the latter. Marc may be a bit cold and stand-offish, but he's still (nominally) one of our heroes.
  • Marc likely didn't realize Gus only had one fin. He probably missed a small detail.
  • We know for a fact that Marc did notice, he went to the pet shop specifically looking for a one-finned replacement days before Steven noticed it, the pet shop guy tells us that.
  • Marc probably figured Steven wouldn't notice right away. I don't think he was as committed to keeping his existence secret from him as we think.

Layla losing the scarab

• Why did Layla, witnessing Harrow take the scarab, merely watch and then drive away? Why didn’t she fight him for it? He doesn’t yet appear to have combat skills and it takes a while for him to summon another jackal demon.
  • She knows he's a dangerous man and she didn't have a great look to see if there were others around him. Plus, having just fought an invisible monster (which was a new thing to her), she probably decided that she was already in over her head and needed to regroup rather than just try to bum rush someone. Besides, she also just saw him cause someone to collapse just by touch, so without knowing what happened, she probably also doesn't want to just charge in without knowing the details of that too.
  • Layla just saw him kill another man just by touch. She has no reason to suspect he lacks combat skills, needs a lot of time to summon an invisible creature(if he's not surrounded by several), or really anything. Remember she lives in a world where people get dusted for five years and another dude flies with a hammer.

"Hey, Mum! So I went to the Alps the other day..."

• Steven leaves voicemails for his mother, talking about his day. Marc's not on speaking terms with his mother, so it's probably a fake number he set up to uphold the charade. Given that, has Steven not noticed that his "mother" never calls him back? Has Marc also hired somebody to act as Steven's mother and call every once in a while? Is she given details about Steven's life? This opens up a lot of questions.
  • Question answered by episode 5, which reveals his mother died a few months prior to the start of the series and Steven has been leaving messages to a number not in use and has been mentally blocking that out.
  • In episode 5 if you look closely at the phone Steven is holding to talk to his mum, it isn't open to a phone app. So his mind is making up the person responding on the other side.

How does Ammit have an Avatar?

• Ammit was sealed away, so how does she have an Avatar? Steven Grant seems to lose his powers when Khonshu is sealed, by contrast.
  • Maybe Harrow isn't actually Ammit's avatar. The only time he uses her powers is through the cane and he claims a small amount of her power was sealed in it. It's possible he just claims to be her avatar while just using her abilities through an artifact.
  • It's probably a Leaking Can of Evil situation. Notably, during the whole trial scene, Harrow nevers has his eyes light up like the others and never seems to have Ammit coming through directly. Khonshu is freshly sealed and doesn't seem to have been through it before, so he's helpless. Ammit has been locked up for millennia; especially given that the other gods aren't bothering to check on her or even know where her tomb is, she's probably managed to push just a little bit of power out into her followers.
  • Harrow even mentions in episode 2 that the artifact he uses as a cane contains "a sliver" of Ammit's power, so the item itself appears to be empowered and Harrow simply knows how to access that power for his own use.
  • Revealed as of Episode 6. Harrow wasn’t literally Ammit's avatar, it seems like he just kinda took on the role on his own. Ammit doesn't even know who freed her until Harrow explains it. As for the cane, it's possible Ammit left it as a "just in case" to her previous, true avatar, Alexander the Great, and Harrow managed to find it when he decided to free her himself.

Lack of reaction to Steven's accent

• How is it that the actual Brits on this show don't seem to care about how obviously non-authentic Steven's English accent is? If the Egyptian Layla can tell that it's fake, you'd think that Steven's museum co-workers would've noticed and commented on it at some point...
  • If they care to notice, they probably chalk it up to his general eccentricity (or maybe they assume he's an expat who's trying too hard to lean into it, which is not entirely untrue).
  • Keep in mind that Layla knows the accent is fake because she knows that Marc does not have one. It wouldn't fool her no matter how authentic it sounds, so she's not really seeing through the ruse. As for anyone else, well they can barely remember Steven's name, let alone his voice.
  • Anecdotal but where as this site has listed James Marster's accent as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an obvious fake that's blatantly easy to see through, this troper has personally known british people who thought Marsters was british & that was his real accent. So personally I always take people's ability to hear through accents as questionable at worst to highly variable at the most generous.
  • Likewise, while there are accents, there are also degrees of that accent as well as local regional variations. For instance, the Bostonian accent popular on TV and movies is actually very specifically the South Boston accent. There are upwards of five or six accents in Boston that share common features. And for those that have travelled and lived in many places, their accents will fade, change, and blend. This troper (from Boston) has been confused for having a Swedish accent by someone from Finland due to such accent drift.
  • The amount of slang he uses especially in contrast with the RP(ish) accent seems more noticeable than the accent itself. People just don't confront each other over their accents. What's more likely; that they're faking an accent, or just have an unusual one because their parents were from different places and they grew up in a third place? At most people would take the piss behind his back.
  • It should be noted many British people in London are used to hearing mixed accents due to every individual picks up a mix of different accents such as the accent of their area, the accent of their immediate family (especially those with immigrant parents) and the accent of their friends. Steven being a British Latino Jewish man in London is such a astronomically rare demography ^note  the Jewish community in the UK is smaller than the Sikh community and non-white Latinos in the UK are only a recent growing community thats still small enough to be considering an "Invisible minority" a real person with that combination of nationality, ethnicity and religion would have an unheard of accent to most Brits so its likely if they dont ask, theyll chalk it up to his unusual background.
  • Actress Lauren Cohan was born in the US and raised in the UK but would routinely live and work in both countries. As a result she has such a hybrid British American that most people from both ends would double take at her natural accent. Its likely thats how many British people reacted when they first met Steven and chalked it up to him having grown up differently.

Was it really not Marc's fault? Spoilers for Episode 5

• Episode 5 tries to depict Marc as not at fault for Randall's death, but from what was shown, Marc encouraged Randall to go into the flooding cave even when Randall had doubts, though the latter did quickly come around. I know kids aren't very rational and Wendy's hatred eventually became Disproportionate Retribution, but it still doesn't fit quite right.
  • You'd need to be very cold-hearted to assign blame to a literal child who misjudged a playground.
  • OP here, OK yeah, I guess I would have done something like that when I was their age. Sorry if I made anyone upset.
  • I'd place more of the blame on their parents (particularly Wendy) for letting them go and putting Randall's well-being in Marc's hands.
  • Given that kids should be supervised in a backyard pool, let alone a nearby cave in a freak rainstorm, I'm actually shocked that there wasn't some kind of investigation.

Best Father of the Year Spoilers for Episode 5

• Really, during his son's twelfth birthday, why did Elias Spector think that leaving him alone with his alcoholic, grief-stricken mother was a good idea if Wendy had already made clear that she now hated Marc? Thanks to Elias not being there, that ends up becoming the day in which Marc develops his DID and creates Steven to cope with Wendy's abuse. Definitely material for Father of the Year...
  • I don't think it's meant to show that his DID developed that day, but rather that she was still hateful and bitter years later. Chances are she hid the worst of her abuse when Elias was around, seeing as she stayed in the background until he left the room. He probably thought she was stand-offish to their son all the time and drowned her sorrows in alcohol, not that she actively bullied him behind his back.
  • Also, I don't think we're supposed to think Elias is Father of the Year material. Teenage Marc (and adult Marc)'s reactions suggest that he resents his father for not stepping in and doing anything to stop his mother's abuse.

Steven emerging to be abused

• If Steven was created so that he could live a carefree life without ever knowing about his mother's abuse, why did Marc cause him to emerge moments before Wendy was going to break in and beat him with a belt? That seems like it's getting Steven up close and personal with the abuse, rather than shielding him from it.
  • I guess this is technically WMG, but the way I took it is that since danger was near, Steven emerged to "have no fear". There is no indication that he took the beating, since he doesn't even remember that his mother was violent.
  • Agreed with above. I don't think Steven is meant to be the shield for Marc; he's meant to be the escape hatch. Marc created him as a way to live a normal, happy life where his mom was loving and he didn't have to confront the trauma of his brother's death, or what he did as a mercenary. For Steven, "have no fear" doesn't mean "be brave"—although he is, especially at the end of the episode—it means "has nothing to be afraid of."
  • Alternatively, it could’ve been Jake who took the beating. Given how violent he is, it’s possible that in the split second we see Wendy advance on Steven, either he or Marc created Jake to protect them both.

Mummification

• The heka priest is seen preparing a cultist to be mummified, and Layla even points to former tomb robbers who have now been mummified and displayed. But why? Mummification was supposed to be a reward for the faithful. Surely the priests didn't think random tomb robbers deserved the honor. The series has otherwise been great on Egyptian mythology (carefully lampshading the differences with Ammit), so it seems like a glaring oversight.
  • While I didn't see confirmation of this in the series, I strongly suspect that in-universe that's a matter of "that's what they want you to think", and that it was really some kind of sacrifice. But it could just have been an oversight.

The true nature of the Psychiatrist Spoilers for Episode 5 and 6

• So what is with the whole white psychiatry room? I thought it was just Marc/Steven's mind trying to help him cope with stressful stuff in their lives, but the last episode seems to portray him as a negative influence? Since And Marc and Steven rejecting him is seen as positive thing? And I don't get why his foot was bleeding?
  • He was injured from the battle, which could mean that Dr. Harrow comes from Harrow's subconscious and not necessarily Marc's.
  • Oh so it's like Harrow was trying to Mind Rape them into believing everything was just a delusion, and Marc/Steven rejecting him was the final step to defeating Harrow?
  • Mostly likely correct!
  • The bloody feet are a reference to Harrow's routine of putting broken glass in his shoes as penance.

The spiritual implications of the Duat for the MCU Spoilers for episode 5

• So at the end of episode 4 Marc and Steven literally died, and we find out in episode 5 that they are now in the Duat, the Egyptian underworld, being escorted to their final rest, and Taweret tells them the Duat is "AN afterlife" and that "many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness exist", with the Ancestral plane from Black Panther being named dropped. The show just kind of moves on from this, but it seems like this information would have tremendous cosmological implications for the entire MCU. So if multiple different afterlifes exist, what determines where a particular human actually goes? Do Marc and Steven "believe in" the Egyptian afterlife, or do they go there because they are ethnically Egyptian or because of their association with Khonshu? What happens to athiests? What about all the other wide varieties of spiritual beliefs and religions that exist on Earth? Is this a case of All Myths Are True, Clap Your Hands If You Believe, or Fantasy Kitchen Sink, all of which would be a bit out of place in the MCU we've seen up to this point? And how does this fit in with the Cosmic side of the MCU, including what is implied by the Eternals and Asgardians? So some mythologies and spiritual beliefs are true, and others are just stories about Sufficiently Advanced Aliens? Which is which?
  • I'll see if I can answer each question in order.
    1. It would seem that one's beliefs literally decide which afterlife you go to. Believe in/worship the Egyptian pantheon? Well you're headed to the Field of Reeds. Follow the Norse gods? To Valhalla with you. Same for the Ancestral Plane, possibly a Judeo-Christian Heaven as well.
    2. I'd imagine there are special rules when you become the physical vessel for the power of a god on Earth. Considering the avatar would likely have seen the afterlife already by the time they get there for good, they'd probably be okay with whichever one they were already linked to.
    3. Atheists are a big ol' shrug emoji. Maybe they get their own personalized afterlife? Maybe some sort of Afterlife HR shows up to say "here are all the options, pick one that's good for you." We really don't know but it's not particularly important to the story.
    4. As stated above, it would appear that yes, All Myths Are True, at least in the MCU. Taweret name-dropping the Ancestral Plane was likely a simple Hand Wave showing that each belief system has its own afterlife so they don't conflict with each other.
    5. Eternals and Asgardians aren't true "Gods," considering what we see Khonshu, Ammit, and the Ennead get up to on this show. Both are more on the Physical God status; extraordinarily powerful, but undoubtedly mortal to some extent. Asgardians can definitely die of old age and likely head off to Valhalla, and Eternals appear to live up to their names but can also die of outside causes.
    6. In short, none of this is "out of place" to what we've seen. We're just seeing greater parts of the overall whole, getting more into the supernatural side of the MCU and seeing all the huge powers that have been lurking in the background the whole time.
  • It seems plausible that different afterlives have a cultural claim to certain people. The Egyptian afterlife would definitely have a claim to a Priest of Khonshu. It would also make sense for the afterlives to have different rules for who gets there, such as Valhalla having a claim to those who die on the battlefield, Helheim to those who die of old age, the Sands to people who can't sort themselves out by the end of their boat ride... the Ancestral Plane to Black Panthers or possibly all Wakandan monarchs. Which concern is secondary — cultural identity or how you died — I don't know.
  • Iron Fist (2017) had one character who died and then came back state that there was only "nothingness" between his death and his resurrection, so no afterlife at all is possible. Maybe that's where the atheists go?
  • Good point, but then he was serving a cult that worships a soul-devourer, but that kinda belongs on the Iron Fist page.
• original poster; my comment with the Asgardians and Eternals is that their movies sort of imply that Norse, Roman, And Greek mythology are just stories humans made up about actual Aliens (the Asgardians and Eternals) who visited earth. So it wouldn’t really make sense that like Norse mythology would be a legitimate belief system because the Norse “Gods” are actually just super advanced Aliens and the mythology is just something humans invented to make sense of these super powerful beings. I kind of figured it would be the same with the Egyptian gods until episode 5 happened. To throw an extra wrinkle into things, Marc Specter is explicitly supposed to be Jewish (which I hear is even more explicit in the comics).
  • You don't have to define gods as spiritual beings with magical powers if you don't want to, but do note that "Ragnarok" begins in Muspelheim.
  • Correction: I should have said that Hela's presence in "Ragnarok" implies the existence of Helheim which is an afterlife world.
    • As of Thor: Love and Thunder, Asgardian Gods and Greco-Roman Gods are canonically actual Gods according to, well, Word of God.
  • Also it is not necessarily an all-or-nothing situation, especially given the scope of the MCU. You can have both true gods (eg cosmic entities, supernatural things, or spiritual beings with powers beyond technology) as well as functional gods (advanced robots, aliens, etc) existing side by side. Likewise, with that in mind, it's probably important to applied slightly different expectations of each group. For the entities like Thor and Hercules who exist within clearly elaborate and not always accurate myths, things like their afterlife may not be true afterlifes in the same way that the Ancestral Plane and Duat are. Or, given that Norse myths often treated the underworld as more of a place, it may be that there is a physical underworld (pocket dimension or whatever) which is distinct but connected to an actual (Norse) afterlife. All this also means that yes, it's possible some mythos are merely myths. How do we know? Well... we don't and there's not really a need to explain the details until it matters because trying to explain the sum total of all human religion and myth would be a truly mythical task.

So... now what? Spoilers for Episode 6

• We know that Khonshu is working with Jake, meaning Marc and Steven will be dragged back into crimefighting if/when they decide to do another series or movie. But from the Moon Bros' perspective, what happens now without the suit? Marc was about to kill himself before accepting Khonshu's deal, so it doesn't look like he has too many options, and Steven lost his job in episode 2. Are they going to team up with Layla for artifact thievery? How are they going to look after the goldfish?
  • The arrangement at the start of the series was primarily for Marc and Steven's lives to remain separate. Now that they're actively aware of and working each other each, there's probably a much easier time finding another mundane job since they don't have to worry about 'sleepwalking'. Granted, they don't know about Jake so it still will be an issue, but they don't know that at the moment. Likewise, Marc has started to process his trauma and started to accept his past along with now having a support system so it's likely that the (worst of) his self-worth issues and suicidal ideation aren't present.
  • And all of that is brilliant and heartwarming and important, but... what mundane job? Steven was able to get hired as a gift shop worker, but he's been fired from that, and Marc is an ex-Marine turned mercenary. The only thing I can see is Marc taking up work as a security guard or a private bodyguard of some kind.
  • I suppose same as anyone else trying to find a new life after some big event. They might start their own company, they might get a job at another company or museum, or something else altogether. It really comes down to what they want to do. I imagine that for both of them, they would want to move away from violence and such while also maintaining a relationship with Layla so a mundane job might be to handling import/exports for her adventures.

"I only punish those who have already done harm." Spoilers for Episode 6

• So Jake Lockley is still under Khonshu's employ. Okay, that makes sense, we already knew of a third alter. He goes to the psychiatric hospital to retrieve Arthur/Ammit to kill the two. Alright, seems logical enough. But in the process, Jake murders or at least severely hurts the hospital staff, all of whom are innocent people. Isn't the Moon Knight's whole purpose killing those who hurt the innocent?
  • We don't actually know that those staff members were innocent (abusing mentally ill patients isn't exactly uncommon), though on the surface, yes, it's much more morally ambiguous.
  • Khonshu seems like a "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs" kind of god. He likely accepted their deaths as collateral damage.
  • Harrow having mentioned that they had members all over the world, as well as Jake being selective of the bodies he dropped, instead of going full massacre. It is possible that Ammit followers where at the hospital protecting both their leader and their God. Like the security guard in the pilot, they may have taken up jobs near their target as nurses and other staff at the hospital. As to how Jake knew they where there? Thankfully they all walk around with big ass scale tattoos on their forearms making it easy for Jake to identify them.

"You know what, bae? I think I'll stay in Egypt. Cya!" Spoilers for Episode 6

• In the epilogue when our hero wakes up in the London flat, I was expecting to see his wife in bed with him. Instead, Layla is completely unaccounted for. Are they still married?^note Which lends itself to a host of its own questions: Does her marriage to Marc extend to Steven as well? Would they, at the risk of sounding crude, take turns sleeping with her? If Jake tries to go for a round, would that be rape since she's never met that personality? Did she decide to stay in Egypt and fight crime as the Scarlet Scarab like she suggested to the little girl?
  • So, at a guess for all of these:
    1. Absent any other evidence, Marc and Layla are still married, and it's a pretty safe bet they're not signing those divorce papers. Layla might not be there for logistical reasons (having her own flat, etc.), because she and Marc haven't completely worked things out yet, because Marc is still having blackouts, because their intimacy doesn't include Steven—who knows.
    2. Speaking of intimacy: "Does her marriage to Marc extend to Steven as well?" Depends on what you ship, I guess? Marc certainly didn't seem to think so, but since he and Steven have reconciled and Steven sees himself as more of a part of Marc as well as his own person... maybe? Some people dating systems (people with DID) date multiple alters, some date only one alter—who knows.
    3. (If they do have an arrangement, yes, that would probably involve taking turns for dates, kissing, and, uh, leg restraint time. And on a darker note, if Jake showed up during the act and pressed the issue or didn't introduce himself, that would be rape. As noted over on his character page, Jake restrains Layla to keep her out of the way during the battle with the cultists, so at the very least he doesn't want to see her get hurt (or is aware she's Marc's/Steven's/the duo's love interest). But Jake being present is bound to cause a lot of issues for Marc and Layla—if Marc tried to push her away because of his own actions, what will happen when he learns about Jake? What will Steven have to say about it? And what if Jake-as-Moon-Knight and Layla-as-Scarlet-Scarab come into conflict?)
    4. Speaking of the Scarlet Scarab: Layla said the arrangement was only temporary, but come on. She was badass, Tawaret was adorable, it would be too much of a waste. (And who says the Scarab has to only stay in Egypt?)
  • Layla seemed rather happy to tell the girl that she was an Egyptian superhero, so she might come around to the idea. And Tawaret is clearly less crazy than Khonshu, being more focused on actually protecting people than just killing bad people (with protection as a side benefit).

What happens to them now? Spoilers for Episode 6

• So Jake kills Arthur and Ammit. Are they now being judged by Taweret? While it would be Laser-Guided Karma for Arthur to be found unbalanced and tossed into the sands, how would Ammit, a goddess, be judged?
  • There probably isn't an afterlife for a god, just Cessation of Existence. Going by Marc's ferryman experience, Arthur will be allowed to go to the Field of Reeds.
  • Harrow was confirmed to have an unbalanced heart, and would be tossed into Duat (Steven and Marc had their chance at a spiritual/memory journey because the scales were undecided, not unbalanced). Ammit would probably be thrown there as well, where she will probably become something closer to her actual mythologic counterpart (who eats the hearts of the dead who are thrown overboard).

Was Dr. Harrow trying to help or hinder Marc and Steven?

• Maybe I'm misreading the situation but in episode 5 it seemed like Dr. Harrow was trying to help Marc and Steven come to terms with their past pains. Like getting Steven to except that his mother was dead. But in episode 6 he seemed to be trying to hinder them from leaving the mental world they were in. I'm just confused on the whole situation.
  • I took those scenes as Harrow trying to magically Mind Rape Marc/Steven and gaslight them into accepting that they're hopelessly insane and not in a state to oppose him.
  • The doctor was just a part of Marc's psyche, it was not actually Harrow. Probably a defence mechanism gone haywire that was trying to keep Marc from properly dealing with his trauma at all costs. It took the form of Harrow because it was antagonising them, just like Harrow was their enemy in the real world. If Marc had this soul-searching experience earlier in his life, the doctor would probably resemble his mother.

How was Marc balanced?

• Steven falling into the Duat caused him to be removed from Marc's headspace, which balanced Marc's heart. But how is that possible if Jake was present within the system as well? Shouldn't Marc's heart still be unbalanced for an unknown (to him or Taweret) reason?
  • Jake's soulheart thing wasn't on the scales and therefore was not taken into account. Why Marc and Steven weren't being weighed separately however is beyond me.
  • That just begs the question of what would've happened to Jake if Marc and Steven hadn't come back to life. Would he have been stuck in his sarcophagus forever, or would he have eventually been judged as well?
  • I'd say Jake was awaiting his own judgment, as was Steven before Marc let him out. Clearly, whatever souls are in the Marvel universe, it is edible (to gods and some mutants) and separable. Taweret referred to Marc and Steven as twins, which I took to means they were something like spiritual identical twins. In the same vein as conjoined twins probably would get judged separately. As to the inexplicable balance of the scales, my guess is: if Marc had left Steven in his sarcophagus, he would have been condemned to the Sands, and Steven would have gone to the Field of Reeds. Since Steven took Marc's place in the Sands, Marc took Steven's place in the Field.

Khonshu growing giant

• In their final battle, Ammit is explicitly shown to absorb a huge number of souls in order to grow to gigantic proportions. Then how was Khonshu able to do the same thing?
  • Presumably, Ammit had to absorb those souls to recover her full powers, having been locked up for a long time and all. Khonshu had only been imprisoned for a few days at most, so he came back at full power already.
  • Ammit's domain is the soul, at least in that she is a judge of them. So presumably they both empower her and she has control over them. Khonshu is of the moon and of the night. So he probably can draw power from the night (which it was). If nothing else, the moon shrinks and grows (metaphorically speaking) as it waxes and wanes. That said, given that Khonshu has only ever been invisible to everyone other than a few people, one wonders if Ammit looked like she was fighting nothing or if Khonshu had to pull out a source of power he doesn't like tapping into.
  • Let's also not forget that Khonshu got his ass beat. Maybe Ammit was powering up, and Khonshu grew to match her, but he couldn't actually increase in power and was a paper tiger.

I'll do you one better: why is Taweret?

• Why would Taweret, a maternity goddess, be acting as a guide to the afterlife? Shouldn't that be Anubis's job?
  • In the myths, that seems to be the case. However, in the myths it is Odin who is Loki's adopted brother, and Hela is Loki's daughter with a giantess, not Odin's with Frigga, so I think the MCU is past that concern. Taweret is the goddess of rebirth, and that kind of fits better with the episode.
    • Also, Taweret is explicitly filling in for Anubis because of Harrow's shenanigans (hence the papyrus-scroll cheat sheets).
  • Anubis can be one of the gods imprisoned within one of those little statues. Meaning that Taweret is doing his job in his absence.

More than one soul

• How can Steven and presumably Jake have their own souls when they're just parts of Marc?
  • Alters in dissociative identity disorder are considered separate people, not fragments of a whole. Steven and Jake are real, just as much as Marc.
    • Okay, sure, but does that mean DID can literally create multiple souls within a single body? A personality and a soul are very different things.
    • Does the fictional take on a real condition affect real-world ecumenics? That's up to your faith to decide. If you're asking about in-universe, then yes, one person has one soul, and even if you get possessed that doesn't automatically mean you get kicked out of your body.
  • If we assume that everyone is born with a soul, which seems to be the case in the MCU, then presumably when Steven and Jake first appeared they came with their own souls. Alternatively, we know very little about how souls work, only that they exist, so it's possible that souls grow alongside people and that the soul that Marc was born with fragmented as it grew and became Marc's soul, Steven's soul and Jake's soul.

Skill transference

• How did Steven learn Marc's martial arts skills?
  • Muscle memory.
  • It's a part of them accepting each other and becoming more of a positive, seamless system, rather than fighting for control. Steven is able to get past the mental block and access skills that he always had, but were previously locked away with Marc.

Ammit's "death"

• Upon Jake Lockley shooting Arthur in the head, is Ammit Deader than Dead now or something else entirely? Can a god die if trapped in a mortal vessel that's perishing?
  • Maybe it will happen like in the Kane Chronicles in which she will slowly (or not so slowly) reform in the Duat after dying, specially since she is a goddess.
  • Her being trapped in the Duat would make sense. She may end up feeding on the damned souls there, becoming more in line with her original mythological counterpart.

Egyptian superheroes and the Sokovian accords

• Are they affected by it?
  • Seemed pretty international to me. If Egypt didn't feel the need to sign because of the lack of Egyptian super-heroes, it'll come up at some point.
  • In She-Hulk, Matt Murdock reveals the Sokovia Accords have been repealed at some unknown point, so if they were before, they no longer are.

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