This past week Marvel Studios released a new show, Moon Knight, to add to their wide variety of shows for the MCU. This show, like all the others, is streaming on Disney+ and is part of Phase 4 of the MCU, through which Marvel is adding TV shows to their cinematic universe other in addition to the normal movies they release in theaters. The first show, WandaVision, released in January 2021, changed the way we view the MCU. It was a sitcom/mystery show with surprises, cameos, and huge character development.

Marvel’s new shows show a lot more character development than the movies, which attracts us to watch them. All of the shows released so far, though, have had the same formula. From WandaVision to Hawkeye, these shows follow the basic MCU formula, which has been the same for years, even with the movies. We have never got to see the darker characters in the Marvel Universe. All these shows revolve around the same storytelling and having the villain not have a clear motive. For example, in Hawkeye, the main villain of the show, Kingpin, doesn’t have any motives that we are told other than building a criminal empire.

With Moon Knight releasing this past March, it completely changed the basic MCU formula that we see. To start off, Moon Knight is a very complex character. Moon Knight has multiple personalities: his real name is Steven Grant, but his other personality is known as Marc Spector. He has a ton of powers/abilities such as enhanced strength during nights, the ability to drain people’s lives by just touching them, and prophetic dreams and visions. He is one of the best-written characters in Marvel Comics and is finally on the big screen.

This show immediately starts off different from any of the other MCU shows. We see Steven Grant having one of the nightmares that he can’t control, but we see a much darker side of the MCU, a side we have not seen before. Throughout the show, we see a ton of action with no consequences; for example, in one of his hallucinations, we see him in the Alps, where he doesn’t have complete control of his body due to the other personality he has. We can see him being held down by multiple people, and then we cut to a black screen and then him again with blood on his hands and people on the floor.

This is really showing the darker side of the MCU, and this could be the start of a new trend. We also see through his dreams the pain he is going through and the darkness he has in him. He has no sense of time or where he is. Seeing him trying to live his daily life with another personality shows something we have not seen before.

We also get to see only a bit of the antagonist in this show since it is the first episode, but we can very easily see his motives. The villain, Arthur Harrow, is trying to reclaim the Earth and make the world pure in his own view. We can understand why he has these motives and how he is doing it.

So, for now, this show has proven to be completely different than the normal MCU formula, and this could be a good thing. Moving on from the basic formula can attract more viewers, especially a darker story, which people tend to like more after watching movies such as “The Batman” or “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” So even though only the first episode is out of Moon Knight, the future is looking bright for the character and the whole universe.