Moon Knight Episode 4 Directors Break Down Indiana Jones Homage in “The Tomb”

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Moon Knight’s “The Tomb” episode. Moon Knight gets fortune and gory with a homage to Indiana Jones in Wednesday’s Episode 4, “The Tomb.” When adventurers Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) and Layla (May Calamawy) go digging for the long-lost tomb of Ammit, it’s to prevent Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) from freeing the Egyptian deity and unleashing her unmerciful judgment on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though there’s no heart-tearing Mola Ram, the episode plays like Steven Grant and the Tomb of Doom as Steven and Layla are pursued by Harrow’s raiders and long-entombed zombified Heka priests. 

After Arthur shoots and seemingly kills mercenary Marc Spector (Isaac), the currently-powerless avatar of Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham) awakes in Putnam Psychiatric Ward. The facility’s television plays an aged VHS copy of Tomb Buster, a low-budget Raiders of the Lost Ark knockoff starring Dr. Steven Grant (Joseph Millson). 

In an interview with EW, Episode 4 directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson broke down how they whipped up an Indiana Jones homage on Marvel’s Moon Knight: 

“We’ve talked about this scene feeling like it’s underwater, not just because he’s been sedated, but because the entire audience has just been subjected to an entire worldview shift of what this show is. Why is there a weird Indiana Jones knockoff movie right in the middle of Moon Knight?” said Moorhead of the trippy psychiatric sequence inspired by Jeff Lamire and Greg Smallwood’s comic book story set in an asylum. 

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“Production on that was really interesting because you’re working on a Marvel show with literally the greatest filmmaking technicians in the world, and now you’re asking everyone to intentionally make something that looks like it was made with toothpicks and papier-mache,” Moorhead said of Tomb Buster. “That was a very interesting experience. Everyone had a lot of good laughs that morning. Everybody was just having an absolute blast, being as cheesy as we possibly could.” 

To ensure the Indy homage with “Dr. Steven Grant” standing in for Harrison Ford’s famed archaeologist adventurer ended up in the episode, Moorhead explained, “We realized that we didn’t know if we would see the TV again [later in the episode]. So we actually asked the writers to write an extra minute of the scene so that it could play in the background as needed. We actually got to shoot twice as much of that.”

“Now we want to make a whole series of it,” he said. “It has some of the most ridiculous dialogue that they could come up with.” 

Moon Knight Episode 4, “The Tomb,” is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes air on Wednesdays.