As someone only familiar with the character of Moon Knight through sheer word-of-mouth from friends of mine who told me that he’s a character I would be obsessed with, my anticipation for the show only grew as more and more creatives I love started to get attached to the series. Jeremy Slater previously created The Exorcist, a series I love. Then arguably, my favourite directing duo, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, was attached to direct two episodes. My excitement went through the roof. Not to mention Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke. That’s why I was disappointed in the show at first.

Moon Knight is Marvel’s latest Disney Plus series, and following the tradition of every other series they’ve released (excluding WandaVision), it’s a show that slowly builds up to something better than what the first episode promised or instead teased. Teased would be the better word in this case, as it gives us a brief taste of what’s in store for both Steven Grant and the audience. Steven Grant (Isaac) works at a gift shop in a museum where he has too much information and would rather be a tour guide. Grant suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which causes Grant to blackout and wakes up in strange places, not knowing how he got there. There’s also Marc Spector, another one of Grant’s personalities that is a mercenary. He is almost like The Narrator in Fight Club but also has a persona that believes he’s an avatar for Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the Moon.

For this review, we were sent the first episodes of the series. While I truly have no clue where the show’s final two episodes will leave Grant & Spector, I’m finally excited to find out, which wasn’t the case at the beginning of the show. I won’t be going into more detail about the actual plot of the series because that is a journey better to experience than reading, but that’s the unfortunate thing. It sometimes feels like a journey taking too long to get to its ending. Some of the episodes feel more like teasers than anything else, getting glimpses of what can and might be possible. And that’s the thing, those glimpses make the series shine brighter than even the best of the Marvel shows, but it’s the other moments that bring it back down. It’s a show that ends up getting better with each episode, which might bug some viewers who might opt out until they’re able to binge it, but until then, I expect some viewers to walk away very dissatisfied or even bored.

Oscar Isaac, as his personalities vary enough to show some of the range, we already knew he was capable of, and his counterpart, Ethan Hawke, doesn’t get to shine quite as much as I was hoping or expecting him to do so. I suspect that more of his performance will be seen as we find out what else the show has hidden up its sleeves. As the show continues, there aren’t many moments with that “MCU feel” we’ve become very familiar with, which is good. Some aspects make it stand out, which are the fascinating parts. I suspect that, as a whole, people are going to respond positively to the show, and for those who don’t after watching the first episode, just wait. The journey is just beginning.