Moon Knight Has Lowest MCU Show RT Score - But Highest Audience Score So Far
The critics have weighed in on episode 1 of Moon Knight and given the show the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the MCU's TV division, though fans disagree. Moon Knight is the first live-action Disney+ series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to introduce a brand new lead hero. The show premiered on the platform on March 30, 2022, with the remaining five episodes set to air weekly every Wednesday.
Moon Knight stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant, a shy British man who works at a museum gift shop. What he thinks is a tendency toward sleepwalking is actually the emergence of another identity, American mercenary Marc Spector. Although episode 1 left plenty of mysteries unsolved, he will soon find out that Spector is channeling the power of the Egyptian moon god Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham) to become the caped crusader Moon Knight. Episode 1 also introduced Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow, the sinister cult leader who worships the goddess Ammit.
Following the premiere of the first episode of Moon Knight yesterday, Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated an official score for where the series currently stands. Out of 95 critic ratings - which is a substantial collection for any series on the platform - critics have ended up giving the series an 85% rating. As is to be expected, the audience rated the show considerably higher than critics, giving the new series a 93% positive rating.
Unfortunately, even though 85% is enough for it to eventually earn a Certified Fresh rating, this is still the lowest score that any MCU Disney+ series has gotten from the aggregator. It's just one percentage point behind the previous lowest scorer, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (86%). Nevertheless, it was left in the dust by WandaVision (91%), Loki (92%), and Hawkeye (92%).
However, the fans clearly diverge from the critics on this one, giving Moon Knight the highest rating of them all. While audiences have largely hewed close to critics on Loki (91%) and Hawkeye (91%), they were slightly down on WandaVision (88%) and Falcon (85%). In fact, not only is Moon Knight's 93% audience score the highest of any MCU Disney+ series, it's also the only audience score in the run of series that is higher than the critics' consensus.
One potential cause for this divergence in opinions on Moon Knight could be superhero fatigue, and how it operates differently with critics and fans. Critics may see Moon Knight as just another Marvel product, in which their interest is waning. While Marvel fans might still be tiring of having so much superhero content to contend with, they clearly are picking up on the many ways that the show is moving away from the typical superhero formula and wanting to reward that.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes