After a six-week journey, Moon Knight has finally come to an end. The final installment of the Oscar Isaac-led show delivered a satisfying conclusion to Marc Spector and Steven Grant's journey, while also giving some standout moments to May Calamawy's Layla. Episode 6 even answered one question on many viewers' minds after weeks of teases, hints, and Easter eggs: is Moon Knight setting up Jake Lockley?
Warning - the rest of this article contains spoilers for the season finale of Moon Knight.
In the closing moments of the series, a third persona was indeed revealed. Audiences didn’t get much time with him, but in those short few minutes, it became pretty clear that he’s far more buddy-buddy with Khonshu than Marc or Steven.
But one has to wonder, what might his Moon Knight suit look like? Well, The Direct was able to sit down with the show’s costume designer to ask just that.
What Would Jake Lockley's Suit Look Like?
In an exclusive interview, The Direct's Russ Milheim got to sit down with Moon Knight costume designer Meghan Kasperlik, where she theorized what a new Jake Lockley Moon Knight suit could look like, while also commenting on how she went about working with all that white.
When asked if there was ever a unique costume crafted or brainstormed for Jack Lockley, Kasperlik revealed that "there wasn't another [suit] for Jake" at any point:
“No, there wasn’t another one for Jake. That was kept pretty hush-hush, Jake coming in at the end, so nobody had [that] little spoiler. But when he came everyone was really excited.”
She went on to reveal what design choices she might have hypothetically made when crafting a new suit for Lockley, noting how she "think[s] that [she] would make it dark," probably taking influence from "the black costume that's in the comics"
“I think that I would make it darker. I would make it probably the black one, the black costume that’s in the comics. I would definitely start there. This is nothing that they’ve ever done, this is just me. Those suits are so amazing, and you just never know. But there was nothing that was ever, ever done.”
There are many interpretations of the Moon Knight costume, one of which is a far more armored appearance; so how close was Oscar Isaac to donning something akin to that? The costume designer pointed out how "there's lots of iterations of the same suit," but one of Moon Knight's directors, Mohamed Diab, "really wanted to focus on the mummy aspect of it, and being really Egyptian:"
“Just like any type of superhero thing, there’s lots of iterations of the same suit. Mohamed Diab is one of the directors, and he’s Egyptian. He really wanted to focus on the mummy aspect of it, and being really Egyptian. So it was more about incorporating the strength of the armor and also the mummy aspect. But I think it was a beautiful bridge because it brings in Khonshu from thousands of years ago to what we would probably think of today as being a very strong suit. So I think it was an amazing blend because there is that [part of] both worlds. Like you have kind of that old world, but you also have the new…”
One of the hardest parts of working on the costumes, Kasperlik admitted, was how they incorporated so much white, a classically difficult color to work with. She revealed that when she initially came on, she was "a little bit concerned about the three-piece [Mr. Knight]" because of that very reason:
“When I came on, I was a little bit concerned about the three-piece suit because it can go so flat. So my team searched far and wide for a fabric that could give—that had a little texture to it. I love to put a lot of texture to any of the designs I do. So, there’s texture in it, and it’s actually an upholstery fabric because I knew that we would be outside with it, and the costume would be getting dirty and we would need to keep it clean and keep that freshness."
The costume designer cited "[all of the] texture" as a key reason for why the white worked, with elements like "a silver lemay" that creates "a little luminescence" helping to keep the white from becoming flat:
"So between the texture in there, the upholstery fabric giving it a little extra help—there’s also a silver lemay that is woven into the fabric, so when the light hits it, it doesn’t just go flat. There’s a little luminescence that comes off of it, so that was really important. We kept that texture going in the waistcoat, and then there’s a texture on the tie and everything. So [along with] having a lot of texture on the mask it just really helps the character."
Kasperlik then shifted the topic to Khonshu, who, despite being CGI, had an entire costume built for him from the ground up. The biggest element of the design was how she "didn't want anything to be perfect on that costume," since he was "very old, [and] has been around the block:"
“I didn’t want anything to be perfect on that costume. He’s very old, he’s been around the block. It shouldn’t be super fresh. But also, all the costumes are functional. So the actor that was in the suit needed to be able to wear the suit [and] be able to move. I had an amazing team in Budapest where we filmed, and those amazing tailors hand sewed the entire costume because the actor was very slim and I wanted to very much accentuate a gauntness. So [they] hand-sewed and hand-stitched everything on stretch, and there’s about six different fabrics on there that were layered on top of one another to give that kind of mummy look."
The fabric is far from the only part of the Moon God's attire, as she "had an amazing leatherworker and... metalsmith" helping her create more details across the costume:
"And then I had an amazing leather worker and a metal smith. So the leather worker made—if you look closely, there’s almost like bandoliers that are in leather that are like criss-cross on the chest, and it has Khonshu’s—there’s a symbol in there, like a feathering, and that’s the same symbol that is then on the Mr. Knight suit, on the lapels. And a leather collar. And then we made a Moon Knight crest in the middle, so it was definitely an in-house labor of love, and everyone did an amazing job.”
Other Gods who made their appearances in the six installments of the series also had costumes. Taweret was "one of the only costumes that [had] color in [the] show," a very specific choice to make sure "there was a lot of excitement and life" throughout:
“So, this is one of the only costumes that has color in our show, and I was very suggestive in keeping the color. She was very light and happy, Taweret means like birth or mother in the Egyptian colors, so in her costume, I had an in-house metalsmith who was hammering in—like there’s a, almost like a symbol on the headpiece that’s about birthing, and there’s all the different hieroglyphs that are hand-hammered into the leather, and hand-painted. So I really wanted to bring in all those details, but also the skirt is colorful—she’s quirky and fun. We didn’t tarnish the gold, we wanted to make it—so that you could see everything, and there was a lot of excitement and life in her costume.”
The big bad of Oscar Isaac's MCU debut, Ammit, finally made her crocodile snout seen in the finale. A key aspect of her look was her "hand-beaded dress," which was based on "[a very famous] Egyptian dress:"
"I wanted—there is an Egyptian dress that is [very famous] that’s like… hand-beaded, the whole thing. So I was pretty determined to make sure that sort of thing was in our show. But also that there had to be power and some interest to the costume, and it not just being pretty. So I really had a lot of images from vis-dev department and also the visual department, the VFX team, and that was a lot working together. And so underneath that hand-beaded dress—we hand-beaded that dress, I had an amazing person who in-house made that whole thing, and underneath there’s kinda like a really shimmery fabric. I’m always about the light bouncing off of the costume, and the costume [can help] the lighting. So there’s that, and then my metalsmith made this amazing cobra that looked pretty scary in real life, so I think that really helped. And then my friends in VFX really helped with the rest of it."
The Many Designs of Moon Knight
The idea of giving Jake Lockley a darker suit works really well. From what fans have seen so far, the persona is far more brutal and violent than either of his counterparts. Moon Knight's (mostly) black look from the comics would be the perfect way to go. Leaning into a more armored style, in general, would be good as well, seeing how active he is in fights.
While fans will have to wait for whatever may be ahead for Lockley, at least they got all the other super suits that appeared throughout the show—all of which were incredible. The fact that even CGI characters had incredibly detailed and practical outfits created is relatively unheard of.
Fingers crossed that the fractured mind of Marc Spector gets to continue its story in the future, hopefully soon rather than later.
Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+.
