Ultimate Spider-Man Episode One Hundred and Two: The Moon Knight Before Christmas

The Moon Knight Before Christmas

First Aired: December 17th, 2016

Synopsis: Spider-Man is housesitting the Sanctum Sanctorum for Doctor Strange on Christmas when he hears a scream from outside. Checking outside he sees a small girl being attacked by a mysterious figure calling himself Moon Knight, who himself says that he's trying to stop a demon. Spider-Man listens to the girl, Francie, and takes her inside the Sanctum Sanctorum which is warded to only let in who he allows. Francie ends up entering a room Spider-Man was forbidden from entering and she finds the helmet of an old villain of Spider-Man's, Mysterio. The helmet allowed Mysterio to make his illusions real, but during Spider-Man's final fight with him Mysterio disappeared, leaving Spider-Man with the helmet which he took to Doctor Strange. Spider-Man is briefly distracted by Moon Knight trying to break into the Sanctum Sanctorum, but on returning to Francie finds her grown up and wearing a Mysterio costume. She's actually his daughter, and intends on claiming the helmet to become the new Mysterio.

Spider-Man realises that Moon Knight was right and that he needs his help and lets him into the Sanctum Sanctorum. Francie opens up a portal and disappears, and Moon Knight reveals that the moon told him that there's a wand that can stop her. They get it and then head outside the Sanctum, where Francie creates assorted monsters for the heroes to fight. Moon Knight manages to jam the wand into the helmet and she collapses, but Spider-Man's worried that it'll kill her. He tells Moon Knight that he can also hear the moon and it's ordering them to keep her alive, so Moon Knight holds off monsters as Spider-Man approaches the helmet. He's sucked inside it where he finds an illusion of Francie and her father, but it soon turns out to be the real Mysterio, trapped inside the helmet. He tells Spider-Man that he neglected his family and regrets it, but wants to spend time with his daughter. As the world inside the helmet starts collapsing he says he doesn't deserve to leave, but Spider-Man convinces him to and he, Francie, and Spider-Man appear back in the real world. The three of them, and Moon Knight, go to the FEAST shelter where Aunt May helps homeless people, and they all have Christmas dinner together.

Marc Spector is Actually the Best:

• Let's be real, if Spider-Man had listened to Moon Knight at the start of this episode it would have lasted, what, five minutes, tops?
• At the end of the episode, as Spider-Man breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience, Moon Knight calls him out on how weird it is.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• While fighting a giant snow golem that Francie's made, Moon Knight allows it to hit him, and explains to Spider-Man that "I'd rather take a hit than waste time blocking it." This is true in the comics, too; Taskmaster explicitly noted that he hates Moon Knight's fighting style because of it.
• Spider-Man says to Moon Knight at one points, "Also with you, Mr. Knight." It's possibly unintentional, but in the comics Moon Knight's got an alias of Mr. Knight, running around in a snazzy white suit.
• At one point in the episode, Spider-Man sees Moon Knight in the Sanctum Sanctorum before he lets him in, and when he tries interacting with him he's intangible. Moon Knight says that he's "moonlight, reflecting off a pool of water" and it turns out to be some sort of illusion he's projecting from outside. This is not ability of Moon Knight's in the comics.
  

Review: The biggest issue with this episode is easy to pinpoint: it crams in all of this backstory with Mysterio that's never been seen or even alluded to before, and it feels a bit jarring as a result. Francie shows up and is declaring that she'll be the new Mysterio, even though we haven't seen the old one before on the show. We've got this whole arc with the original Mysterio about how he lost sight of what was important and is just now realising that his family was important, even though we've never seen him obsessed before and so we're being told, not shown, all that happened. It's clunky, and on top of all that the show can't seem to decide whether both Mysterios just do illusions or whether they know magic on top of that.

But anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is MOON KNIGHT! MOTHERFUCKING MOON KNIGHT! I love Moon Knight so much, you guys - it's been a personal goal of mine for about five or six years now to collect every issue of his solo series (I've got about seventeen issues to go at time of writing). Honestly, while Spider-Man is my favourite superhero - my favourite fictional character, really - I can't deny that Moon Knight's got a really special spot in my heart. Thankfully, this episode does the character justice - he's competent, badass, and a little unhinged. I've got mixed feelings on him talking to the moon - I can handle Khonshu being cut out for simplicity, and it is kind of funny, but it's also kind of playing up his mental issues for laughs - but I think it's ultimately something that I can forgive. There's also a great shot of him having Christmas dinner at the end where he's completely stoic compared to everyone around him which is pretty great.

Honestly, the episode's got a few places where the script could do with some tightening up, but it's also got more than a few good bits. Moon Knight's consistently delightful, and Spider-Man pretending that he can hear the moon isn't a bad trick. Even the general idea of Mysterio turning his back on crime to focus on his family isn't bad, it just needs more space than this episode has. Overall I'd call this episode acceptable enough, but Moon Knight being in it brings its rating up to being great. Yeah, I'm biased, but who are you? The review police?