Moon Knight season 1, episode 3 recap – “The Friendly Type”

By Jonathon Wilson
Published: April 13, 2022
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Moon Knight season 1, episode 3 recap - "The Friendly Type"
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Summary

“The Friendly Type” was the most action-packed episode yet, with a fair helping of worldbuilding and weirdness that helped to cement Moon Knight as very much its own thing within the MCU.

This recap of Moon Knight season 1, episode 3, “The Friendly Type”, contains spoilers.


“The Friendly Type” is the first episode of Moon Knight to find Marc Spector fully in control, and weirdly enough it’s the one that best establishes the usefulness of Steven Grant. It took a while, but the hapless Brit gift shop employee has some real expertise that will be presumably vital to stopping Arthur Harrow’s plot to revive Ammit and cleanse the world, even if his incessant moaning about Marc’s violence is wearing a little thin.

Moon Knight season 1, episode 3 recap

If I’m being truthful, the entire personality-switching gimmick, at least in the action sequences, is starting to feel a little overused and frustrating. While it works on a character level, it’s a bit aggravating to not get the full extent of Marc’s capabilities as Moon Knight. “The Friendly Type” showcases all this more clearly than previous episodes have, but it also ends by taking those powers away. It’ll only be temporarily, I’m sure, but it’s easy to feel like we haven’t quite gotten to see enough of them yet.

The good news is that Marc being in control allows Layla more time in the spotlight since she follows him to Egypt. There is, again, a bit of annoyance here, since we still know very little about Layla’s backstory or her relationship with Marc; we don’t know how they met, how long they’ve been together, how Marc was able to keep Steven’s presence a secret from her, or how much Layla knew about Khonshu. Throughout this episode, what we see of her suggests that she’s better at being a globe-trotting mercenary than even Marc is, but then again, I think we’re supposed to buy into the idea that Steven not being “under control” is causing Marc to not be able to perform at his best.

It’s in the dynamic between Marc and Steven that it feels like Moon Knight is sometimes trying to prioritize comedy and quirkiness over coherence since it really doesn’t make much sense that Steven is vying for control given the stakes of the plot and his general uselessness in times of crisis (he gets a brief moment as Mr. Knight again to emphasize this point.) He actually works better as a source of background expertise, and I found myself actively hoping he wouldn’t regain control for any great length of time just so the plot could move forward at Marc’s pace.

Through Marc, we also get some more details about the Egyptian pantheon, with Osiris, Horus, Isis, and Hathor all convening in the Great Pyramid at Giza, in the forms of their avatars, to hold a trial for Khonshu given his recent behavior while trying to track down Harrow. We’re to understand that the avatars of these Gods aren’t supposed to interfere in human affairs, at least not in a way that would expose them, and Khonshu thinks this is a terrible idea because it allows room for people like Harrow to scheme unmolested. But since none of the other Gods – with the exception of Hathor – care much for Khonshu, they’re eager to write off everything he says, and since Marc/Steven’s mental health woes make him an unreliable witness, his testimony doesn’t count for much either.

What they make clear is that if Khonshu acts out again, he’ll be imprisoned in stone, so when he later decides to rotate the entire night sky back through time so that Layla can work out some coordinates based on the position of a constellation, we understand he’s making a sacrifice. What that means going forwards, though, is that Khonshu needs to be rescued by Steven/Marc and Layla, though without the help of his powers. It’s an interesting predicament, but given how stingy the show has been with proper action sequences until this point, I hope it doesn’t go on too long.

You can stream Moon Knight season 1, episode 3, “The Friendly Type”, exclusively on Disney+.

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