One Moment in Moon Knight Episode 3 Teases a Big Twist Ahead

This article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Moon Knight episode 3, and potential spoilers for future episodes.

It was easy to forget in the midst of all the action, but when Marc Spector and his alternate identity Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) were done brawling with a gang of men who had information on the villainous Arthur Harrow’s whereabouts in Moon Knight’s third episode, something very important occurred, and it may well have been the first step towards a big twist later in the series.

Marc and Steven didn’t get the details they wanted during the encounter, and they were very confused about how it wrapped up: with two of the gang dead, seemingly by their hand. Both claimed they didn’t kill the men, but who else could have slaughtered them in pursuit of answers? If you’re new to the character of Moon Knight, you might wonder if it was the moon god Khonshu, but as the series has established, Khonshu can’t really make Marc do anything, and merely blusters around supernaturally while Marc does his bidding consensually as his willing avatar on earth. While Marc and Khonshu do share a psychic link, and Khonshu may own the deed to the car, Marc’s the one driving.

With no other suspects to blame, we can deduce that there is likely to be a third identity inside Marc’s head who hasn’t yet made themselves known – one who is far more deadly than Marc.

Who is Jake Lockley?

Admittedly, when Marvel Studios first began to promote Moon Knight, fans of the character’s comics were confused. Canonically, Marc Spector has TWO other main alternate identities that aren’t the costumed Fist of Khonshu: Steven Grant, who we’ve become familiar with in the first half of the series, and Jake Lockley, who is known to be a bit more morally murky than Marc and Steven. But the trailers for the show have only featured Marc and Steven, with the possibility of Jake’s inclusion unaddressed.

The third episode seems to suggest that Marvel didn’t ditch Jake Lockley after all, and that Marc and Steven will become aware of his presence soon enough now that he has emerged to bring about the kind of violence that they weren’t capable of while fighting the street gang in Egypt. Jake appears to have been able to keep himself hidden from the other two thus far, but perhaps there was even a hint that he had been using their body back in episode one, when Steven couldn’t remember asking out his attractive co-worker.

The show has definitely reshaped some of the characters inspired by Marvel Comics, with the Steven identity now a timid gift stop employee rather than a flamboyant millionaire, and Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy) taking the place of Marc’s long-term love interest Marlene Alraune, so we can probably assume that if we do get to meet the Jake Lockley identity before the show ends, he will be quite different from the comics.

In those stories, Jake is a New York cabbie who keeps his ear to the ground for any street level information that will help Moon Knight deal out vengeance to the criminal underworld. In later comics, it also becomes apparent that Jake is capable of keeping huge secrets from Marc and Steven. He even starts a family with Marlene that they don’t find out about until many years later.

What will the MCU’s more dangerous version of Jake Lockley be like? Certainly from what little we know about him so far, anyone that gets in his way should be worried.

Moon Knight is now streaming weekly on Disney+, and will conclude on May 4. At the time of writing, there has been no official confirmation of a second season in the works at Marvel Studios.