Marvel Studios’ upcoming Disney+ series will introduce us to a very different type of hero. Moon Knight will introduce us to Steven Grant, who realizes that he may have multiple personalities locked within his head in addition to a deity haunting him every day. Of course, if you have a hero that is struggling with his own mental illness, it does twist the usual hero-villain dynamic from other stories. That new take was what pulled Ethan Hawke to tackle the role of a villain in the series, especially with how the story embraces the mental illness to “create an unreliable narrator.”
I mean, there [are] countless stories of mentally ill villains, and we have a mentally ill hero. And that’s fascinating because we’ve now inverted the whole process. And so now as the antagonist, I can’t be crazy because the hero’s crazy. So, I have to kind of find a sane lunatic or a sane malevolent force. And that was an interesting riddle for me to figure out how to be dynamic with what Oscar was doing. And Mohamed was really embracing his mental illness as a way to create an unreliable narrator.
Ethan Hawke
He also goes on to tease that once “the prism of reality” breaks down, we’ll very likely face quite a different kind of story than what we at first expected, especially when even his own character is trapped in his own beliefs.
Once you’ve broken the prism of reality, everything that the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view. And that’s really interesting for the villain because am I even being seen as I am? And it’s also, I think, that was our riddle, and we came up with somebody who was trying to save the world. And in his mind, he’s Saint Harrow, you know? I mean, he thinks he’s gonna be part of the great solution.
Ethan Hawke
We’re only a week away from the first episode releasing on Disney+, which will finally give us a clearer look at how unreliable Steven is, especially if we see him fight his other personalities for control. Oscar Isaac also was pulled in as this project “was a real opportunity to do something completely different” not only for a comic book adaptation but also within the MCU. So, we’ll see if the series will force our hands to rewatch it to get the full picture once all six episodes premiere starting March 30th.
