Marvel’s latest Disney Plus series, Moon Knight, took its bows with its final episode in classic Marvel fashion: A shocking revelation delivered via credits scene. Also in classic Marvel fashion, Moon Knight’s credits scene opens many more questions than it answers, and its final episode is long on hints and short on concrete resolution.
Has Khonshu recovered any of his status among the other gods after being right about Ammit? What’s the status of Marc and Layla’s strained relationship? And what is in store for Layla’s future?
Here’s everything we were left wondering at the end of Moon Knight’s finale, and how Marvel Comics might have the answers.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for all of Moon Knight, in case you hadn’t figured that out.]
Image: Marvel Studios
Who is this Jake Lockley guy in the credits scene?
Moon Knight’s credits scene reveals a secret the show has been keeping since its second episode: Marc and Steven are not the only people in their head. There’s a third personality neither of them are aware of, and his name is Jake Lockley.
In the course of Marvel Comics’ history, Marc Spector’s head has belonged to many people (including, in 2011’s Moon Knight series from Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, personalities based on Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine). But in the character’s first comics, he had only three aspects: Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Jake Lockley.
The three personalities allowed the hero to have a life in every strata of superhero society: Moon Knight/Marc Spector as the trained mercenary turned vigilante/avatar; Steven Grant as the billionaire who funded all that; and salt-of-the-earth cab driver Jake Lockley as the eyes and ears of the criminal underworld.
Image: Doug Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz/Marvel Comics
Moon Knight has been hinting at the existence of a third personality since early in the series, sprinkling the story with moments when both Steven and Marc experienced the blackouts that usually indicated the other one was taking over. In Steven’s asylum-like mindscape, director and executive producer Mohamed Diab made sure to include several shots of a sinister black sarcophagus standing upright and shaking from side to side as if someone was trapped in it.
Now we know exactly who was in there: The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s take on Jake Lockley. There’s not much we know about him at this point. Jake’s distinguishing mannerism appears to be speaking Spanish, where Marc speaks English with an American accent, and Steven with a British accent. Driving a limousine around matches the character’s comic origins as a cabbie, but he’s known for developing Moon Knight’s network of underworld informants, not for being the personality who is most comfortable with killing people.
Then again, the Steven of the show is a far cry from the suave billionaire of the comics. At the moment, Marvel has not announced any future Moon Knight projects, so it’s unclear when we’ll learn more about Jake.
What’s up with the gods and Khonshu?
Jake isn’t the only star of Moon Knight’s credits scene: Khonshu has picked up some modern threads and modern conveyance. A nattily-suited Khonshu is a staple of Moon Knight comics, and he looks just as good in live action as on the page. But while Jake kills Harrow (with Ammit inside him), resolving Khonshu’s quest to defeat his rival goddess, the finale doesn’t give much more on his new godly status.
Have the other gods acknowledged that Khonshu was right about Ammit? Are they grateful for his intercession? Or mad that he broke out of confinement? The answers are anyone’s guess. Though the fact that he’s tooling around in a crisp suit and a limousine would seem to indicate a step up in the world.
Is Layla a superhero now?
Image: Marvel Studios
Moon Knight’s finale episode gives us no hints as to the future of Marc Spector and Layla El-Faouly’s marriage. And comics can’t help us much here, because Layla is an almost entirely original character to the Moon Knight TV series. With the show’s final episode, however, she also becomes a loose adaptation and significant update of an obscure Egyptian Marvel superhero: the Scarlet Scarab.
First introduced in the pages of the World War II-set series Invaders in 1977 (created by Roy Thomas, Frank Robbins, and Frank Springer), the Scarlet Scarab’s powers of strength, flight, and energy absorbing/blasting were conferred by an artifact known as the Ruby Scarab. He guest-starred in a couple of issues, fighting against European rule in Egypt, but wouldn’t appear again until the early 1980s, when his son took up the mantle of the Scarlet Scarab for … one issue of Thor. And that’s pretty much it for the character’s history.
Where this all connects to Layla is in her name. The original Scarlet Scarab hit the pages of Marvel Comics with the name Abdul Faoul — and the name of Layla’s late father in Moon Knight was Abdallah El-Faouly. Nobody actually calls her the Scarlet Scarab in the show, but the folks behind Moon Knight have confirmed that the connection is deliberate.
While Layla told Tawaret that her new powers were a temporary situation, you can bet that if Moon Knight returns in a future Marvel Cinematic Universe project, the Scarlet Scarab will return as well.