Who The Hell is Moon Knight, Marvel’s Latest Headlining Super-Hero Played by Oscar Isaac

Marvel’s influx of their most popular and recognizable characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the purchase of Fox hasn’t stopped their efforts to turn minor characters like The Guardians of the Galaxy or Iron Man into household names.

The latest relatively unknown character to get a big Marvel push is Moon Knight, who will be played by Oscar Isaac in a Disney+ series.

But what’s the character’s deal? This one is actually pretty easy. I assume you’ve heard of Batman, right? Imagine you were working at Marvel but really wanted to write Batman. You might create a character who is basically Batman but with just enough changed to prevent you from getting sued. That’s Moon Knight in a nutshell, with changing being he, not his parents, is the one who was killed in his origin, giving the character a supernatural element as Egyptian god Konshu restored him to life to fight crime.

Of course, Moon Knight is more than just a Batman rip-off, and the character is best known today for exploring dissociative identity disorder, something you would think would be a more common theme in comic books that focus on characters with double lives and secret identities.

Rumors swirling on social media just before Deadline announced the casting of Oscar Isaac in the title role suggested Nick Kroll would be the star of Moon Knight. A lot of people have egg on their face for that one, and it wasn’t that believable of a rumor.

Moon Knight isn’t a popular character, but he’s also not a joke character. He’s a Batman rip-off, but not an Adam West Batman rip-off; his stories tend to be played straight and deal with serious issues.

And that meme image going around has photoshopped text. Rumors of Kroll being cast and earlier that Dracula would appear in the TV series lead people to believe the show would essentially be based on this one internet meme of the character, but I’m guessing it will be something closer in tone to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe fare, which is still pretty campy and comedy-fronted but is not the Airplane! levels of goofy this show would have been if it starred Nick Kroll.