Moon Knight: How Scarlet Scarab Has a Falcon Issue
Warning: This article might contain spoilers for Moon Knight Episodes 5-6, now streaming on Disney+.
Over Moon Knight’s entire run, Marc Spector’s love interest, Layla El-Faouly proved a lot more than just merely Marc Spector’s wife. Cutting a heroic figure at the end and taking on Steven Grant and Marc Spector’s mission to stop Ammit and Arthur Harrow after Marc/Steven got killed by Harrow in the fourth episode.
Layla’s massive and extremely useful contributions to the showdown against Ammit and Harrow took place in the finale of the series when she went on to gain her own powers, thanks to Goddess Tawaret, going on to become an updated version of the Scarlet Scarab.
Layla Turned Into Scarlet Scarab In Moon Knight
To the absolute delight of MCU fans, Layla played a massive role in helping to defeat Harrow’s cult – something all superhero fans had wanted Layla to be. There was an idea at Marvel that she should get her own spinoff solo series, especially as Moon Knight is not returning for another season for now. However, her all-new costume looked a lot like the one worn by Sam Wilson as Falcon.
How Scarab’s Suit Was Similar To MCU’s Falcon!
The wings attached to the costume looked very similar to what Falcon had employed, from the design’s functionality to its overall aesthetic. While Scarlet Scarab uses the golden armor than using a jetpack, the wings’ positioning on both the two suits also looks different, however, they still look very similar visually. In a way, they also serve the same purpose as Moon Knight could have gone on to give Layla energy-based or mystical wings instead. It is quite understandable that the creators of the series wanted to keep the character closer to the Egyptian gods and give Scarlet Scarab a much regal feel, however, the character did deserve her own look.
Even the way Layla takes off, flies, and lands was also quite similar to the way Falcon used his wings. This meant that her overall style in combat also feels like a rip-off when she deserved her own choreography and flight style to suit the character of Scarab. Right from throwing the wings up to use it as a shield to her spin attacks on the ground or its blades, Scarlet Scarab came as nothing but a Falcon pastiche.
Falcon’s signature fight and the flight was something that most MCU fans had already seen in Captain America and Avengers films, so repeating this diminished Layla’s overall impact when she had been quite a progressive character throughout the series. She did deserve better, especially as the Scarlet Scarab costume didn’t really have to resemble a medieval bird.
The creators should have incorporated more of Taweret in Layla; if she was influenced by the goddess, her look would have completely changed, and this would also have given more freedom to show the powers of the hippo. This would have carved Layla’s heroic identity with more personality, rather than having her look like yet another Falcon iteration.
Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+.
