I hope the next season further emphasizes Marc's Jewish heritage.
Especially using the famous monologue from the current Mc Kay run where his feelings towards his heritage is one of the reasons why he chose to serve Khonshu.
"I put aside a God who had let terrible things happen to his people. A God who I had never seen, never heard, in favor of a God who spoke right to me and promised: Join me. Be my son. And together we will get things done."
Edited by slimcoder on May 29th 2022 at 12:44:02 PM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."IIRC Kate Bishop is implied to be Jewish by way of her aunt having a mezuzah and menorah in her apartment (unless Moira converted). Since Jewishness is automatically inherited through the maternal line regardless of upbringing, she'd be the first on a technicality.
Layla's been highlighted for being the first Arab woman in the MCU, or at least one of them, since I could've sworn there were other non-villainous Arabs. Might've only been in Marvel TV works though, and she's definitely the first to hold a central role as opposed to a secondary or tertiary character, and probably one of the few where her ethnicity is overt.
Edited by AlleyOop on May 29th 2022 at 8:20:12 AM
Well, there's Kingo in The Eternals, who is Indian... although I'm not sure that counts, since he's not strictly speaking human. And of course we're getting Kamala Khan in Miss Marvel.
Still, I enjoy how the writers of these shows aren't tokenizing the characters' ethnicity by making a big deal of it. They just are those things.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Yes, it's actually quite surprising how Marc is Jewish, Latino and has DID and none of those qualities has anything to do with his powers as an avatar of Khonshu in a Captain Ethnic way.
Edited by good-morning on May 29th 2022 at 11:13:47 AM
oh hey how are you doing?I do genuinly live that. I diverse superhero who's asthetic and powers are divorced from their demographics, even though those things are allowed to be important to the character.
Wild to me that Marc (and technically Kate Bishop) are the first MCU Jewish superheroes, because the MCU is 14 years old and the comics it's adapting has a number of Jewish characters.
I think a lot of superhero characters have Ambiguously Jewish strains of characterization, given the people who were making the comics, but comparatively few are explicitly Jewish. There's MK, the Thing, Kate Pryde, and probably some others I'm not aware of.
Ambiguously Jewish maybe, but this is the first time we've seen an MCU hero (or "hero") wear a yarmulke and explicitly show Jewish cultural imagery on screen.
As I think about the show and watch some reaction videos, I keep going back and forth on the "Jake" blackout scenes. On the one hand, they are perfectly synchronous with the DID memory loss theme, since we're seeing these events through the characters' eyes, not through some omniscient, third-person perspective. On the other hand, we don't get to see what happens, so it's almost like a Deus ex Machina.
Overall I think it works, since we've seen plenty of fight scenes already. They're doing something different here, and that means taking a risk that audiences won't like it.
The fifth episode, in which Marc and Steven reconcile their memories, is by far the most emotionally powerful. It almost made Episode 6 feel like a letdown since we're back to comic book fight scenes instead of character drama, but I think that was inevitable. The action scenes are perfectly satisfactory but the audience investment is in Marc's character development.
I think the best part is that we see Marc and Steven start to work together instead of against each other, as a payoff for all that effort. And, of course, we get Layla. I like how her becoming an avatar was foreshadowed from the start but she ended up being Taweret's avatar instead of Khonshu's. Nice twist. I also like that the outcome of her deal with Taweret is left ambiguous, meaning she could still be Scarlet Scarab in a hypothetical second season.
I do have a question: Harrow claims to be an avatar of Ammit, but she's sealed in an ushabti. Going by what happened to Marc after Khonshu was imprisoned, how is it that Harrow has any power at all? I guess it's the staff, implying that the gods can leave bits of their power in artifacts, but I asked myself that question several times. He doesn't seem to actually become her avatar until she's released, so I guess he's just a cult leader with a magical artifact before then.
Edited by Fighteer on May 29th 2022 at 12:08:35 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I do remember describing the show as a potential "representation minefield" before it came out, given the MCU's often-iffy track record on that and its tendency to engage in a lot of "girlbossy"-type shallow representation that ends up feeling like a backhanded complement (see: Captain Marvel).
Does Moon Knight have the best representation? Not really, but I'd argue it does a serviceable if not particularly deep job, and more importantly avoids most of the really obvious pitfalls (well, the jury is still out there on Jake but I have reasonable faith). To be fair, given how it barely managed to finish telling the story it wanted to, it frankly didn't have the time to do the kinds of ultra-deep dives on several of these representation aspects some people were hoping for and may have ended up being underwhelmed by the lack of.
I did not expect for it to go quite as in-depth with its efforts at Middle Eastern and Egyptian representation though, considering I don't really remember the Egyptian elements being that prominent in the comics I read outside of set-dressing, and Oscar Isaac is neither (though, you'd also think with how much Disney loves to promote itself as "diverse" that they'd have gone out of their way to highlight his being a Latino man). I do think though that it's fitting that some Arab folks have apparently likened it to their Black Panther, in that one of the reasons for Black Panther's success IMO is that for all its celebration of black excellence, it also put effort into just trying to be a solid narrative piece first.
Contrast that with the aforementioned Captain Marvel, which tacked a lot of feminist messaging onto one of the most competently bland pieces of Product to come from the MCU, resulting in a film that feels very token. Or with Shang-Chi, which admittedly was a more adventurous film and didn't advertise its Asian representation credentials to quite the same degree, but had an issue where it was a an incredible performance by Tony Leung with a plot that just didn't seem to try to be interesting or unique.
Edited by AlleyOop on May 29th 2022 at 6:43:37 AM
The more overt Egyptian elements is pretty funny since its pretty downplayed in most Moon Knight stories. MK for the most part is a grounded vigilante who largely deals with low-scale threats like serial killers targeting the homeless or minorities or ghost ruffians beating people up for jollies.
He doesn't really deal with Egyptian Gods stuff very often.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
This is the MCU, though. If you aren't dealing with gods, space wizards, or other world-ending threats, you go to the back of the class.
Edited by Fighteer on May 29th 2022 at 5:57:07 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"We could do with less of that and more boots to the ground superheroing. We haven't even ever had a good serial killer plot.
Luckily Ms. Marvel looks to be sufficiently low-key and hopefully next of Moon Knight has less end of the world stuff. Maybe something about Marc, Steven, and Jake all in conflict while chasing the Slasher or dealing with Black Specter's crime boss stuff.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Anyway, I liked Captain Marvel in part because of its overtly feminist messaging, not in spite of it. It got a little heavy-handed at times but I'm all for some girl power now and then. It's certainly a nice change from the overtly masculine fantasy of most of the other shows. Considering how badly the film triggered the Chads of the world, I'd say it was entirely justified.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I liked Captain Marvel both as a movie and as a character, though I will concede that they are flawed and not the best showings of Marvel's repertoire. I totally buy Carol as a tough-as-nails woman who is professional, yet dorky at times, though I do think her emotional breakdown after learning who the Kree really are was very weak and forced.
In terms of the movie itself, I really like the whole "Earth gets caught up in interstellar affairs" and has to help a group of flawed, but good aliens fight more evil aliens. It reminded me a lot of Animorphs, just with less shapeshifting. Talos and his family were genuinely neat characters too, and I'm glad that they seem to have a bit of a future going ahead with them.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."![]()
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I must be a bit blind to it then. I never felt like Captain Marvel was preachy. There's some bits where people are sexist against it but it felt natural and well incorporated not like it was stopping and lecturing you or anything.
On rewatching the only bit that really felt OTT was the shilling speech Maria gives Carol before the mission to Mar-Vell's ship.
For what it's worth I felt like Rey was a weakly written character buffeted by a very likeable performance from Daisy Ridley, whereas Carol was a character who could've been potentially more interesting, but Brie Larson's performance while certainly passable was rather unexciting. I can understand that the story might've justified it, but there's ways to make characters who are deliberately the The Stoic or forced into it still charismatic which were lacking from that movie.
Calling Carol the stoic is weird
She’s constantly cracking little remarks and smirking
She’s quietly amused at herself a lot
Forever liveblogging the AvengersCarol is having a one-woman comedy show inside her brain and I can respect that.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrI'd imagine that being (former) military Marc would probably be pretty okay with her, Steven would probably find her a bit intimidating.
Although given her own past with gaslighting by an authority figure and having her memories and personality played with, they might all get on pretty well actually.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Might be a touch late to the party, but I found the Jewish rep kind of insulting in how little Marvel or Mohamed Diab cared about it. Bringing up Kate and her aunt goes to that point, as Kate...puts up a Christmas Tree in the very Jewish apartment with a mezuzah, and Marc...
If the one scene of your character being explicitly Jewish is him taking off his kippah and hitting it on the ground, and reducing his issues to "abusive momn", particularly with the character's deeper comic origins and relation to his heritage. And as great as Isaac is, I'm really unhappy with Diab's hypocrisy with him playing Marc.
The show is extremely well written with great antagonists, acting and some of the coolest mythology of the Marvel 'verse, so it does have that going for it.

That’s also accurate to the experience of DID, as alters are made to compartmentalize memories. Until they learn to cooperate, one alter “blacking out” while another fronts is the norm. So the viewer wouldn’t see what’s happened under Jake’s control unless Jake or another character has the POV.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on May 29th 2022 at 12:32:55 PM