Moon Knight Episode 4 Ending Explained: Who is Tawaret, The Egyptian Hippo Goddess?
Moon Knight Episode 4 Ending Explained: In the third episode of the Marvel Studios Moon Knight TV series, whose programming is entrusted to Disney+ the protagonists travel to Egypt to search for Ammit ‘s tomb. At the end of the episode, it happens that Khonshu is imprisoned by some of the Enneade and that therefore separates from the body of Marc and Steven not being able to offer him the protection of the Moon Knight costume anymore. The fourth episode titled “The Tomb” always opens in Egypt with Steven and Layla looking for Ammit’s tomb.
Moon Knight Episode 4 Ending Explained: Who is Tawaret, The Egyptian Hippo Goddess?
After finding Ammit’s statuette/prison, Arthur Harrow fires two pistol shots in Marc Spector’s chest. The impression is that Harrow hit him right in the heart. Let us then try to examine what happens and why it seems that it was all an illusion of Marc.
After what is thought to be Marc’s death he finds himself in a mental health institution along with other patients, whose faces are known since they saw each other in the first 3 episodes of Moon Knight. There’s also Layla, the statue man Steven confides in, the museum’s gift shop boss, and more. Finally, we also see Arthur Harrow, with a completely different look, in the role of the director and we see several objects and photographs that have a precise correspondence in everything that has been seen in the first 4 episodes of Moon Knight. What is real and what is not?
The first thing that comes to mind is that Marc actually nearly died on his previous mission to Egypt and ended up in the psychiatric institution due to the psychic trauma he suffered. Here he has seen the movie Tomb Buster several times and has identified with a fictional character who risks his life to find treasure. In all likelihood, however, this did not happen.
The first hypothesis is that Marc did not die in the Tomb of Alexander the Great and that he was taken, rescued, drugged / hypnotized by Arthur Harrow. But this hypothesis is weak if we ask ourselves the following question: why would Harrow want to save Marc or Steven? If he had wanted to save him he would certainly not have shot him in the heart.
The second hypothesis is that in my opinion Marc cannot die. When he was first saved by Khonshu, Marc was probably already dead. The magic of the Egyptian deity brought him back to life and bound / condemned him to a continuous rebirth. This was anticipated in the first episode of Moon Knight: when inside the museum Steven talks to a little girl, explaining what happens to her souls after her body dies. The little girl promptly tells him: “You went wrong, they didn’t let you into Iaru’s fields” and Steven replies: “This doesn’t make sense because I’m not dead.” According to my theory, however, it is and the little girl’s line is an important clue written by the writers of the series.
Returning to the finale of the fourth episode of Moon Knight, when Marc is killed, he moves into a limbo from which to be reborn thanks to the deity Tueret. This is an Egyptian Goddess with the features of a female hippo. In the cult, Tueret helped the sun to be reborn every day and served as an aid to the rebirth of the deceased, who was living in a new life.
My explanation is that Marc after he died the first time and saved by Khonshu was reborn as a third identity that we have not yet seen and that he does not remember having. This identity is most likely inside the third sarcophagus, the one that Marc and Steven don’t open. In a later death, Marc may have fathered the alter ego, Steven Grant. Obviously after being reborn, Marc doesn’t remember anything that happened inside his mind or his soul. Here, as we have seen, there are fragments of memories: the faces of the people Marc know, the places where he has been, the Moon Knight action figure and other things related to Egypt.
What Happens In The Comics
What happens at the end of the fourth episode of Moon Knight is almost identical to how readers of the Marvel comics found Marc Spector at the beginning of the 2016 series written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Greg Smallwood. But the succession of the story differs a lot from what the Marvel Studios series is.
In the first issue of the comic run, Marc finds himself in a mental health institution. He talks to Khonshu and believes himself to be the vigilante Moon Knight but the director of the place reveals that it is all a figment of his imagination, that he suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder and that Moon Knight is just a vigilante that he has been inventing since when he was a kid.
After the interview with the director, Khonshu tells Marc that it’s time to rise again, Marc uses the sheets on his bedroom bed to improvise a Moon Knight dress. When the guards arrive, attracted by the noises, Marc sees what he thinks to be the real look of the guards or the Egyptian jackals. But when other hospital attendants join him and remove his mask, Marc sees everything as before, unable to understand what is true and what is not. The whole comic story is a succession of real scenes and dream scenes that obviously confuse the reader and Marc’s own three identities. The ending reveals that it was actually all real and that everything that was seen corresponds to the experiences of Marc / Steven / Jack (the three identities of Moon Knight), which came together,
The authors of the show were clearly inspired by this comic series. According to their own admission (they talked about it on Marvel.com) the hug between Marc and Steven was visually taken from the Lemire and Smallwood series.
What that hug is, it’s actually inspired by the end of Moon Knight’s Jeff Lemire run. There’s this wonderful moment where he hugs himself. We were so in love with the idea of someone hugging another part of themselves and saying words of comfort that we really, really wanted to put that hug moment into one of our episodes and that moment was right.
We Know More About The Origin Of Layla
Layla is one of the main characters in Moon Knight. The love trio between Marc, Steven and Layla is one of the main plots of Moon Knight and in this chapter we have been able to see how that has exploded since she is not so sure who she wants to be with of the two personalities. Apart from that we can see her fighting in one of the most action-packed moments of the entire episode.
We have seen that Arthur Harrow is here to do evil in Ammit’s name. But apart from doing evil, this character seems to know much more about Layla’s past and what happened to her father. The threat that haunts throughout the chapter is that there is someone who does know what happened to Layla’s father, Marc.
A Mental Hospital?
There is one thing for sure in the Marvel series or in its movies and that is that we can never take anything for granted. When a character gets shot in the chest, he’s supposed to die, I’m supposed to insist. In this case we can see that Marc receives a bullet in the chest and when he wakes up he appears locked up in what looks like a psychiatric hospital.
There we can see that his acquaintances and enemies are everywhere, which could indicate that everything he has experienced is the fruit of his imagination. This scene is clearly inspired by the Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood comic book arc in which Marc Spector appears directly in a mental hospital. In this comic we can see how Marc has really been there since he was 12 years old and everything has been the fruit of his imagination. Ammit is supposedly his doctor and in the series we can see that Arthur Harrow acts as his psychiatrist. Curious to say the least.
The Eye of Horus and the Arrival of Tueris
So is Marc really crazy and locked up and everything we’ve seen so far is the product of his imagination? It won’t be known until the next episode really. What we have been able to see is the introduction of new characters and myths of Egypt and its gods.
During this chapter we have been able to see that the Eye of Horus represents the senses and that there are up to six of them. This sixth sense could be classified as something more mental or psychic, does it have something to do with that of Doctor Strange? You can also see several sarcophagi in which we see Steven’s personality trapped and there is a third sarcophagus that could be the third personality that we could “see” in the third chapter of Moon Knight. Tueris can be seen at the end of the episode gratefully receiving Marc and Steven, probably as an ally to defeat Harrow and Ammit. Tueris is a great friend of Khonshu and now that he is not there, she could be the one to help the protagonists.
Arthur Harrow And His Plan Falls Apart
We could say that Arthur Harrow is fighting to be the worst villain in all of Marvel. And not because he’s badly built or anything like that, but because he’s really bad. After having caught Marc with Ammit’s amulet, this fight with him. He fights until he tells Layla the truth and without further delay he pulls out a gun and shoots her in the chest, without eating or drinking it.
After having seen what we have seen, we can also come to think that this character does not have everything as closed as he thought and that Ammit is using him more than he should. This manipulation is something that it seems that the character has already suffered since on several occasions we have been able to hear him saying that he already knows what it feels like to be with Khonshu. Although ending the world or half the world is not something that a very stable person does, we have been able to see that Arthur is not very sane. Khonshu and now Ammit seem to have done what they wanted with their bodies and more with their minds.
