Disclaimer the First: This post contains spoilers for Moon Knight. If you don't wish to be spoiled, please feel free to leave the page. This post will still be here after you've caught up, patiently awaiting your return.
Disclaimer the Second: I wanted to try and find the various interviews with cast and crew of Moon Knight for references, but for some reason the ones I've read seem to have disappeared, or at least I'm failing at Googling them. Everything I'm coming across is second hand with no link back to the original interviews, so I'm going based on memory here (which mainly means I know what was said, but I can't recall who said it). My apologies...
In mid-January of 2012 Sherlock Holmes leapt to his death from the roof of Bart's Hospital in London, driven to do so by his arch-nemesis, Jim Moriarty, who had assassins in place to murder Sherlock's friends if he was disinclined to commit suicide in a final act of disgrace. Unlike 'The Final Problem', the short story it is (mostly) based on (wherein Holmes was actually supposed to be dead, dead), 'The Reichenbach Fall' gave the audience a glimpse of Sherlock in the final moments of the episode, allowing us to know that he was, in fact, not actually dead despite doing a bang up job of pretending to be very unalive earlier.
For two years the Sherlock fandom went absolutely mental with theories about how he pulled it off, the most common of which involved Sherlock's homeless network and a squash ball in the armpit. The next series did not air until January of 2014 with the episode 'The Empty Hearse', which did the delightfully evil thing of not actually explaining how he did it, though they did use some of the fan theories as possibilities, including the squash ball one, to pretend like they were explaining it.
I was very active in the fandom at the time, especially on Reddit, but I never postulated a theory of my own. Rather, my fun came in debunking other people's theories (especially ones that revolved around confirmation of Sherlock's death via the sniper trained on John Watson, because that still makes no fucking sense).
... And perhaps you now see where I'm going with this? Eh heh.
A lot of people went into the Moon Knight series knowing that Marc Spector has (at least) two other identities living within his head (not counting Khonshu): Steven Grant and Jake Lockley. Those that didn't know were soon to find out if they hung out in any online space where the show was being discussed, especially in meme groups. Even I, who didn't read my first Moon Knight comic until after I watched episode one, knew about Steven and Jake, and so I, like so many others, was excited to see them both.
But both we did not see. The series starts us off with Steven, intending to lead the audience, especially those who only know the characters through this series, to believe that he is the original owner of the body. As episodes passed with no Jake, it was coming into question as to whether he was actually going to show at all, or if he was going to be relegated to being a fun little Easter egg for those in the know. As it turns out, because the series is character driven and was focusing on the dynamic between Marc and Steven, Jake was intentionally left out until the very last minute (that 'minute' being the post credits scene of the final episode).
However! It has been confirmed in various interviews with various crew members of the programme that there were, in fact, instances of Jake right from the start! However, the point of this post is to go over the instances that were, in fact, not Jake, despite fans insisting they were (in my opinion, anyway).
So let the debunking begin! (Or not... we'll see how this goes, yeh?)
The Man in the Mirror:
Reflections in mirrored surfaces are a big deal in Moon Knight, as that is, up until the very end, the only way Marc and Steven can communicate with each other. These reflections were also used to foreshadow to the audience that there might be someone else lurking under that mop of curls, as there are often instances of double or triple reflections.
In the first episode, when Steven is waking up after the events in the Alps, we see him through a mirrored surface that shows him and two reflections (which has been identified as being an allusion to Jake by one of the crew). One of the mirrors in his flat is a fold out bit that has three mirrors when opened (this is the mirror where he's checking himself out before his date, and also the one he uses to try to talk to Marc after the incident in the toilet). There is a double reflection in the panes of glass around one of the displays while Steven is being stalked by the jackal, and there's a very nice infinity effect in the museum toilet mirrors. When Marc is entering the Great Pyramid of Giza and Steven has his little nerdgasm, there is a hint of a double reflection in the wall there, too (which I could not find a screenshot of, apologies).
There is also the mirrored centrepiece in the courtyard where Steven speaks through the mirror for the first time, after Marc has dispatched the jackal. The centrepiece has three mirrored sides, and as Marc walks around it you see that the mirrors get progressively more cracked... Which is something I had noticed but not thought anything of until I was reading an interview where the crewmember (one of the producers, maybe?) pointed it out as also being a symbolic hint of Jake's existence.
Sometimes we also get broken or overlapping reflections in the mirrored surfaces, which is a neat little visual trick.
So, yeah. There is definitely symbolism about the reflections in the mirrors. Confirmed, intentional symbolism. However! None of this actually implies that Jake ever speaks to Steven (or Marc) through said mirrors or mirrored surfaces, or that he is even actively presenting in any of them.
One of the big theories I've seen is that Jake talks to Steven through the little round mirror in his toilet in episode one. Both times the reflection moves independently it is in shadow. One idea is that the reflection shaking their head is Jake, as proponents of this theory say it looks like he's wearing a newsboy cap, which Jake is known for wearing in the comics. However, if you turn the brightness all the way up (and the settings get it light enough), you can see it's just Marc's hair. It is also worthy of note that, seeing as the show opted to use reflections, they were just that: actual reflections with no variation to the image they were reflecting other than they moved and spoke on their own.
Other people say that it's Jake when he speaks to Steven ('Stop looking!') because his voice sounds different, more gravelly, from Marc's normal. There is a twofold problem with this particular theory. First off, we don't have near enough information about Jake, and there was significantly less when this theory first popped up in the first place, to assume what he'd sound like (when speaking English). Secondly, Marc's voice isn't actually consistent in the slightest. The 'Stop looking!' line has the same kind of growl Marc uses when he tells Steven to stay out of his way in episode three, but you also have the oddly high pitched way he says 'Go! Find it! I'll hold them off!' in episode four, and his general tone is somewhere in between those. Considering the fact that the dialogue in the scene in Steven's flat is consistent in that it is Marc telling Steven to stop looking into the weird shit going on, there's no real reason to think either of these reflections are Jake.
The next mirrored surface postulated to hold an active Jake reflection is the display case in the museum, but if you pay attention, both reflections move exactly the same way. The display case gives us two images of Marc because there are two panes of glass that Steven's body was reflecting off of (though I will admit, how multiple reflections deal with an alter in them isn't exactly consistent, as seen in the museum toilet scene). Again, though, the double reflection is alluding to Jake, but it isn't actually Jake.
There is also a theory that the reflection on Steven's right in the museum toilet is Jake. (I'm honestly starting to wonder if people can't follow dialogue, or if they're just ignoring it in liu of the Jake-spotting.) The idea here is that the reflection on Steven's right has a different accent, and that the reflection on Steven's left holds himself differently. (Yes, I linked the same image twice.)
Okay, so... I need to point out that the reflection on Steven's right says one thing, and one thing only: 'Steven!' As such, there is not enough dialogue from the reflection on the right to gauge any sort of change of accent (unless it was obviously foreign from Marc's natural one, which it isn't). However, if you follow what Marc is saying to get Steven's attention and calm him down enough to let him take control of the body and save their collective butt, it's obvious it's only one person speaking.
As to the reflection on the right holding himself differently? When Marc jumped reflections, his starting position again mirrored Steven holding his elbow, so he had to move out of that stance again. That isn't quite the same thing as holding himself differently...
(Though, none of this is to say none of those reflections were Jake being a passive observer.)
Welcome to Cairo:
Another very popular Jake theory is that he is the one seen drinking straight from the bottle in the room in Cairo (though fans do seem to be divided as to who would be in the mirror). This theory has gained much excited traction since the season finale aired and we actually did see Jake. This stems from the fact that, in the post credits scene, Jake is wearing a pair of leather gloves with little crescent moons on the knuckles. Proponents of this theory say that the gloves on the bedside table in Cairo are the same ones, that they are Jake's gloves specifically, and so obviously it is Jake in the scene.
(As an aside, this is one of two instances in the series where you can clearly see their Star of David pendant. The other time you can see it is in episode six, when Marc's body is in the water in Alexander's tomb. The chain is visible pretty often, though.)
We're going to start with the less obvious evidence and work backwards, 'cause otherwise this section would be super short (and where's the fun in that?).
Okay, so in a previous scene, when Steven is trapped inside and speaking to Marc through the mirror, he gets very assholey. He's not dealing well with discovering he shares a body with Marc, and everything he keeps finding out about him isn't exactly good in the first place, and he is being an absolute fucking prick. He is going on about how he doesn't trust anything Marc says, that all Marc does is hurt people and ruin people's lives. One of the things he tells him is that he won't ever give Marc a moment's peace (assumingly as long as he not allowed to be front in the body). Marc loses his temper, pretty understandably, and smashes the mirror by kicking it repeatedly.
The scene in Cairo starts out with a cloth slipping from the mirror Steven is in, sat on the edge of the bed looking absolutely miserable. This mirror looks to have been angled towards a wall, has also been shattered, and, as mentioned, had been covered up with a sheet of some sort. The camera then pans over a bit, showing us that the room has been wrecked, and then we see Marc sitting on the floor with a bottle of some sort of liquor that is at least half empty. There's blood on his hand, which suggests that he broke the mirror by punching it (and, going back to the point about reflections, Steven's hand also is covered in blood). Marc also has a rather pained expression on his face as he's looking back at the mirror, then he looks away and takes another swig from his bottle.
It is not too much of a leap then, at all, to assume that Steven decided to try and make good on his threat and started in on Marc again, causing Marc to have a breakdown and flip his shit on the room.
The second thing to point out is that those aren't the same gloves you see Jake wearing in the post credits scene. Jake's gloves, which I linked to above, are full fingered gloves. The gloves on Marc's bedside table are fingerless. Besides, even if they had been the same gloves, there is nothing to say that they weren't actually Marc's gloves to begin with and Jake just borrowed them.
The final nail in the coffin (and the only one actually needed, honestly) for this theory, though? The recap at the start of episode three labels him as Marc. Part of the recap has Harrow speaking to Steven from episode two: 'It must be very difficult, having all those voices inside one head. Marc Spector... Steven Grant... Khonshu.' With each name, the recap shows a corresponding clip of the character mentioned, and the shot of him drinking from the bottle in Cairo is used for Marc.
Therapy:
One of the theories that a good chunk of the fandom is so absolutely sure is 100% positively Jake in a scene is from the beginning of episode five, where a rather beat up looking Marc is in one of his 'therapy sessions' with Dr Harrow.
Now, I've touched on this scene before, as part of my bonus theory at the end of my Review (of sorts) about scenes where Jake actually does show up, but I want to go a little more in depth here. I'm not really of the mind that Jake is actually in this scene at all, but with this particular theory, I can see the logic of the arguments used... to a point.
So, one of the points made by people who adhere to this theory is that Jake, in the comics, is sometimes drawn with a bandage over his nose, like Marc has in this scene. I will freely admit that I am new to the comics, and while this isn't something I'm familiar with, it may just be something I haven't run across before. (On a slightly unrelated note, currently I'm trying to decide whether to finish the Bendis run from 2010... 'cause I'm not overly keen on him randomly changing Marc's alters to Captain America, Wolverine, and Spider-Man... That's not how this shit works, man.)
The second Moon Knight run I read, though, was the Lumire run, which the show very obviously takes inspiration from (and is my favourite arc so far). (It may have actually been stated officially somewhere that they borrowed from this run, but I haven't seen anything on it myself.) In Moon Knight (2016), Marc Spector wakes up in Putnam Psychiatric Hospital as a patient of Dr Emmet, who, like Dr Harrow, is trying to convince Marc he isn't actually a superhero, that Moon Knight is part of his psychosis. There are two orderlies at the hospital that are a bit familiar to viewers of the show, Billy and Bobby, however their MCU counterparts are a hell of a lot nicer to Marc than these two.
Billy and Bobby take a certain amount of glee in abusing Marc. Well, downright torturing, really. They would physically assault him, then threaten him with further, worse violence to keep him from reporting the abuse to Dr Emmet. They were also shown abusing him via electroshock therapy. As a result, he pretty much looks like shit the whole time.
Basically, he spends the entire time in this comic arc looking pretty much like he did in Dr Harrow's office at the start of episode five. It seems more likely that Marc having facial injuries and the bandage over his nose (due to starting imaginary fights in the hospital, says Dr Harrow) is a callback to the Lumire comics, in which he sports facial injuries and a bandage over his nose, rather than to Jake.
Another thing brought up is that his accent changes pretty noticeably about halfway through this scene. The session starts out, after Dr Harrow gets him to stop screaming, with Marc being somewhat hostilely distrustful of Harrow, accusing him outright of not being a real doctor. Harrow is able to talk him down a bit, attempting to get Marc to see that his 'delusions' are nonsense, then explaining to him the concept of a mind creating a mental space to run away to (which he calls an organising principle, but with the way he describes it, it sounds a bit more like a repurposed mind palace).
He goes on to say he hopes that Marc's new animal character (Marc: '... Hippopotamus.') can help break down the wall between him and Steven (which did turn out to be true), so maybe they can finally understand. Marc then questions, 'Understand what?' Dr Harrow tells him that before he had his breakdown and started screaming, Marc was telling him about a little boy, then attempts to gently prompt Marc to talk about the boy again.
The mention of the little boy (pretty sure said little boy is Randall) is what causes the shift in Marc's countenance and demeanor. The tone of voice he uses and his accent do in fact change here. He suddenly starts feigning a happy mood (badly), saying that he feels great and is going to leave, but then grabs the glass pyramid off of Dr Harrow's desk, prompting him to buzz Billy and Bobbi to come in. When they do, Marc becomes downright belligerent, again accusing Harrow of not being a real doctor. When Harrow insists that he doesn't want to lose the progress he and Marc have made, Marc tries to turn the pyramid on himself, saying he'll destroy everything.
It's at this point that Bobbi is able to sedate him.
One piece of evidence against Jake being in this scene is that Marc remembers what happened during it. The scene immediately following this one has Marc and Steven in the Duat hospital hallway learning from Taweret that they are, in fact, 'quite dead'. Marc isn't quite convinced that this is the reality, though, and at one point makes the comment, 'Dr Harrow's right... This is an organising principle.' (Steven: 'Doctor Harrow? Is- is he a doctor now?') This, of course, turns out to not be the case, and Marc and Steven actually are very much dead.
If you're going with the idea, however, that Jake doesn't show up in the therapy session until the mention of Randall, it doesn't seem odd that Marc would know about the organising principle bit. However, towards the end of his and Steven's journey down memory lane, when Steven is trying to convince him to let him see the memory in the bedroom, Marc has a rather bad meltdown and 'wakes up' back in Dr Harrow's office. After Harrow gets him to stop beating himself, Marc sort of pulls away from him, rubs the area of his neck where Bobbi stuck him with the needle to sedate him, and asks Harrow if he injected him with something. Marc, then, remembers this happening, which would imply that Marc is the one who experienced it.
There is one other thing that I would like to point out, and I am aware that this point of mine relies entirely on a theory of my own. Jake would not have tried to turn the pyramid on himself, but Marc would have. Jake is a protector (every time he does actually show up it is to prevent further harm to the body, and I'm thinking the reason he was sending Marc to the airport from Cairo was for the same reason: to get him out of harm's way). Jake would have turned his aggressions on Harrow and the orderlies before himself. Marc, on the other hand, has a definite streak of self-hatred, and considering his mental state wasn't the greatest during that session, I could see him attempting self-harm.
As for the accent, this part of the theory comes from the fact that in the comics Jake is a New York cabbie, and Marc's accent did start toeing into New Yorker there. I could definitely see this holding as legitimate evidence to the theory, save for the fact that, considering how drastically Steven was changed for the show, you can't really hold onto assumptions based on the comics (you can't do that for any of the MCU projects, really, as it's its own thing)... Couple that with the fact that we've now met Jake (sort of), and he spoke Spanish the entire time, so there's no telling what he might sound like if he were speaking English (naturally, as opposed to masking so as to present as one of the others). This insistence that the change in accent is proof of Jake, however, has persisted even after the post credits scene, but... I don't really buy it.
There is also the point that, seeing as neither Marc nor Steven are aware he exists, Jake was not released from his sarcophagus. It is possible then, even probable, that he would be impotent during anything happening in Marc's psyche at the time.
The biggest piece of evidence against any of these theories about Jake being actively, visually in the show, even the smaller ones that I haven't touched on here (of which there are apparently quite a few), is that it has been confirmed that Jake was intentionally left out. (I really wish I could have found the interview... I think it may have been with Mohamed Diab, but I'm not sure.)
Diab opted to take the story in a much more character driven direction, and it is centred on the relationship between Steven and Marc and the two of them coming to accept each other. To have Jake in the story could detract from Marc and Steven's bonding. One thing that stuck with me from the previously mentioned interview I read was the interviewee pointing out that, for example, Steven sacrificing himself to save Marc from being dragged into the sands of the Duat would not have been as impactful if Marc had had Jake there to comfort him.
(As an aside, knowing this makes me feel that Moon Knight should absolutely have a second series, because Jake deserves to be acknowledged and accepted by Marc and Steven, too...)
So, basically, due to the nature of the storytelling, there is no way that Jake would have been blatantly anywhere in any scene in any episode, physically, until he was revealed in the post credits scene of episode six. He was there, don't get me wrong... I do believe it was him taking over to keep Steven alive in the Alps in the first episode. It was him keeping Marc from becoming dead because Steven was distracting him in episode three. It was definitely him in the cheap copout in the final battle with Arthur Harrow in the finale. Otherwise, though? Nah.
Though, who knows... I could be wrong.
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