Khonshu Has Blessed Moon Knight With A 'Certified Fresh' Rating On Rotten Tomatoes
The Disney+ era of live-action Marvel series is now five for five: "Moon Knight" has officially reached Certified Fresh status on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The show joins "WandaVision," "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," "Loki," and "Hawkeye" in the designation, which signifies acclaim across the board with over 20 positive reviews. Additionally, the Certified Fresh designation requires at least 5 positive (or "fresh") reviews from the site's top critics.
With a Certified Fresh badge, "Moon Knight" stands among the best-reviewed shows of the year so far, joining a list that includes titles ranging from mockumentary sitcom "Abbott Elementary" to eerie corporate sci-fi series "Severance." It should be noted that Disney+ only made the first four episodes of "Moon Knight" available as of review publication time, meaning all this praise does not guarantee the still-unfolding show will stick its landing.
Here's why this matters
Less than a week after its premiere, "Moon Knight" — which follows a man (Oscar Isaac) dealing with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and the demands of an Egyptian god — has already garnered strong responses from audiences. It's nearly impossible to quantify audiences' genuine reactions to the show's first episode, since the series has already been subject to an increasingly common practice called "review bombing." As noted by ScreenRant, sites that allow viewer reviews, like IMDb, have been taken over by people who take issue with a character's one-line mention of the Armenian genocide.
This isn't the first time a highly anticipated project has been torpedoed online by viewers over a single detail. Sometimes, the detail isn't even from the project itself. In 2019, Rotten Tomatoes changed its policies to prevent users from reviewing titles they couldn't have possibly seen yet, a change that came a week after trolls started targeting "Captain Marvel" after star Brie Larson made comments about press day inclusivity. Another Oscar Isaac project, "The Promise," was review bombed in 2016 for addressing the exact same topic as "Moon Knight."
All of this is to say that the function of critics and aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes is more clear than ever. Of course, there's no such thing as complete objectivity, even among professional critics. But the user rating section of websites seem like a total crapshoot at this point; the average user won't check each score they see for complex ulterior motives, nor should they have to. Designations like the Certified Fresh marker can more clearly indicate whether a show is worth checking out or not. So far, critics agree: "Moon Knight," in all its weird glory, is worth checking out.
"Moon Knight" is now streaming on Disney+, with new episodes dropping each Wednesday.