Warning: SPOILERS for the Moon Knight episode “Gods and Monsters” are ahead!
Just like his comic book counterpart, Oscar Isaac’s version of Marc Spector has dissociative identity disorder, which primarily manifested itself through Steven Grant in the Moon Knight series. However, there were hints of a third personality throughout the episodes, and in “Gods and Monsters,” a.k.a. the Moon Knight finale, we finally met the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s take on Jake Lockley. I had the opportunity to speak with Moon Knight executive producer Grant Curtis and director Mohamed Diab about their work on the Marvel show, and they went over how the plans to spotlight Jake ended up changing, resulting in him being saved for the finale.
To provide some context in case you haven’t seen “Gods and Monsters” with your Disney+ subscription, in the Moon Knight finale’s post-credits scene, Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow, who was now bonded to Ammit, was taken out of the psychiatric hospital he’d been put into following his defeat. The mysterious, Spanish-speaking individual who abducted Harrow put him into the back of a limousine, where Khonshu (whose scenes were shot Hulk-style) awaited. Harrow soon learned that while Marc Spector and Steven Grant were no longer bonded to Khonshu, that didn’t hold true for Jake, who executed the show’s main antagonist on behalf of the bird-faced Egyptian god. When I asked Grant Curtis about if their had been any discussion about featuring Jake earlier in Moon Knight’s run, he responded:
… Yeah, earlier on, there were other aspects, other components where Jake was part of the storyline earlier… We had an embarrassment of riches. We had Marc Spector, we had Steven Grant, we had Jake Lockley at some point, we had Arthur Harrow, we had Layla El-Faouly, we had Khonshu, we had Ammit, and all these other places. And we realized to focus on the most emotional journey we could send Marc Spector on, it became a little bit more of a two-hander with Marc Spector and Steven Grant rather than a three-hander. So that’s how that played out. Yes, there were iterations where we saw Jake Lockley earlier, but to tell the best story, we realized he was best used as a tag than something that was first and foremost from Frame #1.
Moon Knight did throw in a handful of hints that there was a third personality within the mix, such as in Episode 3, a.k.a. “The Friendly Type,” when neither Marc nor Steven had any memory of killing some adversaries in Cairo. However, it wasn’t until the final minutes of “Gods and Monsters” that Jake Lockley’s existence in the MCU was finally confirmed. As Grant Curtis explained, with so much on this show’s plate already, they wouldn’t have been able to do proper justice to Jake by just shoehorning him in at an earlier point. So instead, he was saved as one last surprise for Moon Knight viewers.
Mohamed Diab, who directed the Moon Knight finale and three other episodes (including the premiere), and is also credited as an executive producer, echoed Grant Curtis’ sentiments, noting that Jake Lockley deserves just as big a platform to shine on as Marc Spector and Steven Grant received. As he put it:
It was trial and error. Jeremy Slater came up with this idea, let’s focus on two of them. And when we tried at some point to put in more Jake, we felt it’s not fair for Jake. He should be given the chance to be like Marc and Steven, given the chance to know his story and know everything about him. So that tease works as a middle ground, and people loved it. He was trending without ever showing up, Jake, and I think now we have the chance to think about it, if there’s ever an expansion to that world… I myself as a spectator, I want to see what’s Jake’s world, what’s his life, and I’m so interested to see how different he is from them.
In the Moon Knight comics, Jake Lockley drives a taxicab and procures handy information that aids in Moon Knight’s crimefighting endeavors. Having Oscar Isaac’s Jake drive the limousine was a nice nod to his comic book counterpart’s profession, but this version of the character was also set up as being more ruthless than both Marc Spector and Steven Grant, and the former used to be a mercenary! Going back to my conversation with Grant Curtis, here’s what the executive producer had to say when I inquired about the thought process of depicting Jake as a “cold-blooded killer”:
I think ‘cold-blooded killer’ is one way to say it. One thing that was particularly focused on with the Jake Lockley you see at the end of Moon Knight, in the comics, although Marc Spector’s admittedly a mercenary, Jake Lockley is gritty, and when you need the word on the street, you go to Jake Lockley. So that’s how we started with this version of Jake Lockley, and that kind of grittiness that with the ‘man on the street’ is what morphed into the Jake Lockley you see at the end of Moon Knight.
At the time of publication, it hasn’t been announced if “Gods and Monsters” served as the Moon Knight series finale or it another batch of episodes will air in the future. Either way, I doubt this is the last we’ve seen on Oscar Isaac in the MCU (whether Isaac will eventually sneak in an f-bomb is less certain). If Moon Knight Season 2 does greenlit, you can be sure Jake Lockley will have a prominent role in it, and with that will ideally come details about how long he’s existed, why he’s ok allying with Khonshu and more. We’ve gotten an appetizer of what kind of a person the MCU’s Jake is, now we wait to see if a main course is coming.
CinemaBlend will share more Moon Knight coverage in the days ahead. Until then, see what else lies ahead in the small screen corner of the MCU by looking through our guide detailing upcoming Marvel TV shows.
