I watch this show with my kids as I have watched *almost* all MCU shows with my kids. So, my youngest is admittedly too young to watch this show, but she was playing with toys in the same room as my son and myself and slowly put enough together over the first 3 episodes until she was hooked and needed to know more.

If you watch this show with your kids, these spoilers are worth the education, you may want to discuss these difficult and important concepts with your family. But don’t spoil it for others, spoilers are a personal decision.

Check out a full comprehensive review from IGN.com here: Moon Knight: Episode 5 Review – “Asylum” for more about the story of episode 5.

This episode has content warnings (in my family) for violence, suicide, domestic violence, child death, and more. These are the things you should Pause and Convo about as soon as they happen on screen, every time.

Here are a few moments where I recommend an opportunity to discuss some cinematic elements and family-led discussions:

Foreshadowing:

When Steven is walking after the two young boys into the cave, he steps on a bird skeleton. Talk with your family about how foreshadowing is a cinematic element that allows you to guard your heart. Similar to music swelling, the warnings from Mom, “Watch your brother,” and Marc’s little brother’s warning that going into a cave in the rain may be too dangerous – there is cinematic and storytelling foreshadowing everywhere. These are all signs of danger and death, it’s ok to stop and diffuse the tension and fear and talk it out so you can be prepared for what’s about to happen.

Child Responsibilities:

Discuss with your family how children are not responsible for mistakes that end is tragedy. Children are not capable of understanding the scope of life & death fully, their wiring to push boundaries is a part of their development, and no child should be made to feel that they are responsible for another person’s safety. Adults, on the other hand, are responsible for allowing other adults to hurt others. A parent is fully capable of protecting a child from the abuses of their spouse. A parent/ adult is responsible for their actions in ways that children are not responsible for people outside of their control. Life is complicated beyond the understanding of a developing mind.

Domestic Violence:

Marc has a full crisis and meltdown over the protection of his darkest, most painful, and horrific memories. Marc indicates over and over to the audience that Marc’s childhood has one moment too painful to reveal to Steven, too powerful to walk into without a fight. Marc is broken. “Mind in the Media: What Moon Knight Gets Right About Dissociative Identity Disorder” Cynthia Vinney explains that Marc experiences a dissociative identity disorder.

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder? 

A person with dissociative identity disorder has two or more distinct personalities. This is something Moon Knight illustrates through the character of Steven Grant, played by Isaac, who in the first episode learns he has another personality, also played by Isaac, who he soon discovers is named Marc Spector.

Susan Hatters Friedman, MD, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, says that DID happens as the result of “extreme and repeated trauma” during childhood. To cope with that terrible trauma, a child may protect themselves by dissociating.

Dissociation, in which a person disconnects their mind from what their body is experiencing, exists on a spectrum. While we all experience dissociation to some extent (if you’ve ever been driving and suddenly found yourself at home, you’ve experienced this phenomenon), dissociation disorders often happen as a result of stress and trauma, with DID at the far end of the spectrum. In fact, as Dr. Robert T. Muller, author of Trauma and the Struggle to Open Up, observes, DID is a subclass of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or developmental trauma.

Mind in the Media: What Moon Knight Gets Right About Dissociative Identity Disorder by Cynthia Vinney

It’s important to note that this is an explanation of the disorder – but this show is a fiction. Marc and Steven encounter Ancient Egyptian Gods, Avatars, and Marc is a mercenary in response to his dramatic life. These are NOT things to associate with real disorders.

Suspension of Disbelief:

Movies are pretend. Suspension of disbelief is the audience participation in a show in which the audience will “go along” with whatever is happening in a non-academic, prescriptive, or immersive way. We are all playing pretend. It is a safe exchange of entertainment, Philosophy, and contradictions. Movies are fun.

Reality, grounded facts, and true lessons can be taken from fiction. But please remind your children that this show can either be an eye-opening conversation about how mental health is a part of our world and so this superhero show also handles characters who exhibit real mental health issues OR you may accidentally reinforce a dangerous prejudice that people who are different are bad or dangerous. These characters are not real and people in real life who suffer from mental disorders are not being portrayed on screen.

Coin Analogy:

I encourage you to read more of Cynthia Vinney‘s article:

Yet, while Moon Knight makes it seem as though Steven is the host personality, comics fans will know that Marc is really the host. Caniglia says that host personalities can switch over time and it’s also possible that two or more personalities may come out regularly while others only appear if they’re needed.

The key is that each personality in what’s called a DID “system” usually has a role. There are protectors, there’s often a system manager, and there can even be child personalities, with the number of personalities depending on how fragmented the system is.

Moon Knight hints that Marc Spector has had a very complete life for a long period of time before the start of the show, including a complicated job as a mercenary and a marriage to Layla, but then something happened that brought Steven out more. “You can have a host that’s been around for a very long time,” Caniglia observes, “and suddenly there’s a shift for whatever reason and somebody else starts hosting more regularly.”

Mind in the Media: What Moon Knight Gets Right About Dissociative Identity Disorder by Cynthia Vinney

Instead of explaining how this very real disorder works in this show, I chose to use a separate analogy to help my kids understand that the character of Marc will not resemble the people he will encounter in real life who have dissociative identity disorder.

• Marc is like a dime. A dime represents 10 cents. 10 cents is the whole of Marc.
• Marc walks around in life as a dime.
• Marc has something so painful and terrifying happen that he must hide. He splits himself into a 7 cent coin and a 3 cent coin covering him, like a shield. Marc lives as a 7 cent coin while Steven is his 3 cent coin.
• There is no such whole person walking around as a 7 cent coin or a 3 cent coin. But Marc is entirely one 10 cent collection of a 7 cent coin and 3 cent coin stuck together in the world. Some ways he walks and people will see the 7 cent coin and if he walks in another direction, he will look and act like a 3 cent coin. But he is still both stuck together.
• If and when Marc no longer needs Steven’s protection, Marc and Steven will need to be made whole again. Steven will have to change in such a way that Marc can walk around whole, as a 10 cent piece, as a dime. A dime is his most whole form.

There is nothing like this in real life, people are not characters in a show and characters are not fully real, they just feel that way to us. Which is why responsible viewing and audience discussions with family is important.

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