Moon Knight ending?

[ratcreature]

I'm a bit confused.


I don't really understand what happened after the fight. Konshu pretends to give up Marc and Steven as his avatars, but secretly holds onto Jake, of whom the other two are unaware? And then what happened?

Why the switch to the psychiatric hospital again? If that is because in the reality Jake takes over their body, why is Jake killing Harrow in the post credit scene, rather than right away?

Also, how was their heart balanced after they reconciled their Marc and Steven alters, but not Jake? Or I guess Marc might know about Jake and just keeps his existence from Steven? Though if Steven is still regularly tying himself to his bed to notice hostile takeovers, he is assuming that another alter besides Marc is still active. Why he still bothers with these measures when they clearly aren't working except to make him trip in the mornings when he forgets, since it's not sleepwalking but an alter taking over, is weird too.


Can somebody explain this to me?

Comments

[marcelo]

I have the same questions.

[ratcreature]

Well, it's at least a comfort that it's not just me missing something obvious. :/

[buggery]

Konshu pretends to give up Marc and Steven as his avatars, but secretly holds onto Jake, of whom the other two are unaware?
I believe that's correct, yes.

Why the switch to the psychiatric hospital again?
I think that was just how Marc/Steven/Jake interpreted their exit from the afterlife, like how they interpreted their arrival in the afterlife as appearing like a psych ward.

why is Jake killing Harrow in the post credit scene, rather than right away?
The post-credits scene takes place not in the afterlife, but in the real world. It's just a bit of dramatic irony that Harrow wound up in a real psych ward after *fake* Harrow was running the imaginary ward M/S/J perceived the afterlife as.

Also, how was their heart balanced after they reconciled their Marc and Steven alters, but not Jake?
That is a question I have too!

Marc might know about Jake and just keeps his existence from Steven?
I don't think so; at least once he 'blacks out' and regains control to discover -- to his confusion -- he's surrounded by bodies he apparently took out, and even asks Steven if he did that.

That's what I've got after watching the series once through. A more detailed response should be forthcoming from a friend who I watched it with!

[ratcreature]

I realized Harrow was in a real psych ward, what I didn't get is why Jake didn't finish killing him in the fight rather than leaving him alive, letting the two other alters lock Harrow up, and then killing him later.

[hushpiper]

*waves cheerfully*

[hushpiper]

Sorry to reply to a post this late--I only just found it! I had all of those questions too, and I still don't know what I think about all of them exactly, because it was not explained well at all. But I think I have some good guesses. So disclaimer these are only my guesses etc etc.

Re: the switch to the psych hospital-
As near as I can tell, the gleaming white psych ward is supposed to be the "organizing principle" Dr. Harrow describes that Marc&co's mind uses to shelter from BSOD-inducing things, but also what it uses to try to figure things out and essentially talk to itself, via the Dr. Harrow character. It's probably similar in some ways to the concept of a headspace in plural communities. The afterlife on Taweret's boat looks like it because the construct in Marc&co's head is what it's based on. The switch to that psych ward again at the end was (I think) a dream that turned lucid: Dr. Harrow's bloody footprints were the reality check that made them realize they were dreaming. From a storytelling standpoint it served to show that 1. that psych ward wasn't reality, and 2. that Marc and Steven have progressed emotionally and in their relationships to each other enough that they no longer need that construct to help them process things. Jake showed up only in the post-credits scene because the director is a tease.

Re: hearts balancing-
This explanation is courtesy of some random person on Reddit, but it's the best I've heard so far: the scales going wildly up and down was due to how much Marc was hiding from Steven (weighed against The Feather of Truth, right?) and the general chaos in their mind ("there is chaos in you"), but the scales failing to balance at all was purely a numbers issue. They had three soul fragments but only two hearts. When Steven fell into the Duat and froze, they had two hearts and two soul fragments. Insta-balance.

Re: the last pre-credits scene-
Marc definitely didn't know about Jake at least as of the final battle. He might've had some suspicions due to the blackouts in episode 3 and the sarcophagus in episode 4, but that's all. I'm guessing the sand on the floor and the ankle brace and so on is basically a visual storytelling thing, a fun visual callback to the start, and a quick way to communicate that Marc and Steven are now in the same situation re: Jake that Steven started in re: Marc without feeling like the story is unfinished. Buuuuut for fanfic purposes I would probably say that they're sort of grasping at straws for things they can do short of actually checking into a psych ward or asking Layla to watch them sleep, thus exposing her to an alter who is demonstrably very dangerous. I think I had also heard that the sand was some kind of Egyptian protection ceremony but no idea if that's actually true or not.

[ratcreature]

But why just two hearts then? Wouldn't a deity also notice a third heart? Or have suspicious if it balances after one was thrown out without their heart?

The visual storytelling aspect for the sand makes sense.

[hushpiper]

Taweret seems to have never run into a dead person with DID or anything like it before, so I think Marc et al are basically an edge case. These Egyptian deities seem to be relatively limited in capabilities--certainly they aren't omniscient--so I've been refraining from making any assumptions about what they should or shouldn't be able to notice or sense.

With that said though, that is no longer my favorite explanation for the scales! My new favorite explanation (and the one the writer favors) is that the scales balanced because Steven had come to an understanding of who he really was, and had stepped up to protect Marc. Steven falling off the boat around the same time was a coincidence, basically. Of course, that still leaves questions around what happened to Jake and how did he get out of the afterlife and into their body again, but so do the other theories I've heard.