Moon Knight tackles some serious topics over its six episodes, but a psych professor has explained how the series is one big Sigmund Freud nightmare.
While its dominant themes are trauma, loss, and self-discovery, Moon Knight also includes its fair share of tropes from different genres and ideas. One of the more cerebral underlying themes has been called out on Reddit, with a user likening it to typical Freudian tales.
It’s fittingly quite a literary theory from Educational-Corgi-11, who explained the philosophical side of Freud and how it relates to Moon Knight and his alter-egos. It matches up perfectly with what’s shown in the Disney Plus series, reflecting the source material’s philosophical nature.
Essentially, Moon Knight is based on Freud’s less insane ideas around morality and persona. It’s not quite on the same wavelength as, say, a giant green monster punching aliens. Shockingly, the fan theory doesn’t tackle Marc’s tumultuous relationship with his mother, which would typically welcome Freudian analysis.
Moon Knight has been praised for its portrayal of dissociative identity disorder (DID), which otherwise has been sidelined in film and TV to cartoonish comparisons. One example is Split, a series that depicts a DID patient as a monstrous werewolf.
The Lunar Lunatic’s debut outing still has left mysteries and hints towards a potential second season, and there’s still plenty of discussion over who Khonshu truly is and if he’s more embedded in Marc Spector than we realize.
Moon Knight is currently available to stream in full on Disney Plus.