I fear for the future of the MCU at this point. Up until recently, the standout fact about the MCU for me was that there were almost no truly bad MCU entries. Sure, the Incredible Hulk and Thor: the Dark World are oft-cited as low-points... but I don't see either as truly BAD. These were mediocre at worst. But, phase 4 of the MCU has some of the best and most thoughtful entries to date (Spiderman: No Way Home, Wandavision, Loki), standing alongside some of the most disappointing ones (Black Widow, Hawkeye).

I have no idea what to expect from the MCU moving forward. More concerning, perhaps, is that I don't think fans know what they want, either. Reviews coloring Falcon and the Winter Soldier as worse than Hawkeye have me truly puzzled, as the former at least had some truly character development and performances and a bold storyline, even if they couldn't ever really figure out how to make it work in the end (because Marvel perhaps couldn't decide what it wanted either?). Then... there is Eternals. What I would call the first truly, unabashedly bad. Not just "bad" in the sense that it was not good... very close to being unwatchably bad.

Going into Moon Knight, though, I was hopeful. I had heard that this was Marvel attempting to get more gritty and dark. "Pulling no punches" is, I think how Kevin Feige put in according to an interview I read. GREAT. That's what I wanted to see to freshen up and add some much-needed edginess to the MCU roster. As a character, Moon Knight seemed like an interesting and sensible choice for leading this push. Lots of interesting territory to explore there... and with a character most of the non-comicbook-reading public hasn't heard of, there'd be tons of room for character exploration.

What I got was lots of pulled punches. It's still squarely in the PG-13 space and as far as I saw didn't push the envelope one bit, unless you count a slightly less self-conscious kill count... there are lots of deaths in Moon Knight and they are acknowledged ones, many at the hands of the main character, which is for the MCU I GUESS a step toward grittiness considering that usually the heroes are laying down enormous destruction and doing away with lots of "bad guys", in a script that encourages the audience to not think to hard about their fate. But, otherwise, what violence there is, is still very sanitized probably falling short of Venom, let alone a Deadpool movie. The "bad boy" vibe they put out in anticipation of this series is neither earned nor delivered upon.

OK, but I wouldn't care if the tone didn't fit the expectations they set up if the end result was still good. It's not. Up until the last episode it was a pretty much on par with Hawk Eye, which itself resembled a bowl of Lucky Charms: a very bland and disappointing filler, with some tasty bits here and there. But, for me it's high point (the culmination of Mark and Steven wrestling with their inner conflict and shared origin) was also it's low point (it was a good plot line that was presented in a style that didn't do justice to its gravity). And then it jumped the shark with the introduction of a really bad CGI hippo god voice acted in a way that simultaneously reminded me that the MCU is under the Disney umbrella, and triggered me to have memories of the moment in the Phantom Menace when Jar Jar Binks first appeared and I sat there thinking "what the hell are they doing".

But, even then, this was still hovering around the pre-Eternals watermark of failure for me. It was the last episode that catapulted this to new heights. I'm glad it was the finale, because if there were more episodes to come I would have to seriously debate whether to throw in the towel and stop watching. The editing of this episode is plain bad. With abrupt and nonsensical transitions at some point to where it breaks continuity, let alone pacing, which itself was as rushed as any season finale's "oh crap, we've got to wrap this up fast" mess I've had to sit through.

This is still better than Eternals overall... But as it was several times the time investment almost makes me more disappointed in Moon Knight. They could have told a much smaller, more intimate story here that would have done much more justice to the more intimate internal character conflict. They could have followed Wandavision or Loki by truly keeping the audience guessing as to what was going on, what was real. They seem to have tried that a bit, but it's hard to excel at that if you're too busy working around yet another tired "save the world" plot. They could have shed more light on the relationship between Mark/Steven and his wife, their past, why they care about each other. But instead, we got a female-Egyptian version of Falcon thrown in. Well, at least they still managed to hit whatever representation quotas they were trying to fill there, even though the story gives us virtually no reason to care about this character even as a regular person.

So, I'm leaving Moon Knight with my morale shaken. I've going forward having decided to not even bother with Morbius after seeing the overwhelmingly bad reviews. And now, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, one of my most anticipated films of this year, is starting to trickle out an increasingly distressing reception. I can't forgo that one, because I've been too hyped up for it... but if that one is anywhere near the level of Moon Knight, let alone Eternals, it may be what gets me to tune out of the MCU for a while.