WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Moonshot, now streaming on HBO Max.
HBO Max’s Moonshot painted an endearing picture of Walt (Cole Sprouse) as he hid on a spaceship to get to Mars. He wanted to chase after a girl he just met, Ginny, thinking she was the woman of his dreams. But a big part of him needed to escape Earth and what he thought was a pitiful, meaningless existence.
It led to him finding Sophie (Lana Condor) and tricking her into helping him remain incognito on the vessel. Obviously, with it being a rom-com and all, they fell for each other instead, with Sophie realizing her beau on the red planet, Calvin, wasn’t her real soulmate and Walt accepting that Sophie was the one he was meant to be with. However, as their journeys intertwined, helping them achieve much-needed clarity, Moonshot took the “himbo” archetype to new heights.
A himbo is basically a hunky guy who, while he may look like a typical jerk, is actually sweet, respectful and kind. The kicker is, they’re not that smart. It’s seen across many mediums, with Marvel Studios’ Thor, Joey from Friends, Scooby-Doo‘s Fred, Riverdale‘s Archie, Naruto‘s Might Guy and Frozen‘s Kristoff among the many.
Walt cut a similar figure, being told time and time again how naive and unintelligent he was. It occurred with his robot boss on Earth, Gary, with Captain Tarter on the ship, who made it clear he needed to be thankful he was handsome, and even with Sophie herself. In fact, they all kept reminding him that he lacked brains, which felt kind of annoying at first but was functional in terms of the plot.
The audience knew Walt wasn’t dumb — he just lacked ambition. It’s why he fumbled through school, kept switching degrees, got stuck as a barista and didn’t max out his potential. This made him less confident, but he was smart when it came to talking about Mars, the space station’s makeup and other things regarding his dream of visiting the red planet. In that sense, he was clever, but only about things that mattered.
As for why Moonshot painted this goofy image, well, it led to the magnate who ran Mars, Leon Kovi (Zach Braff), wanting to use Walt as a PR campaign. He had all the footage of Walt sneaking onto the ship, so he turned it into a marketing scheme, duping Walt by offering to let him stay on Mars in exchange for his likeness. It’d be used to lure people to spend millions to come to Mars and other colonies Leon was eyeing, such as Ceres. Any bright person would have turned down clear exploitation, but Walt accepted because he was desperate to escape his past. This was ultimately done to create distance between him and Sophie on Mars, with Walt working another menial job while she felt trapped in Calvin’s home.
Admittedly, Moonshot could have dialed it back when the two reunited and Walt professed his love for Sophie by saying she made him feel dumb in the best possible way. Still, with his emotional intelligence and sentimental vibe balancing it out, Walt was intelligent where it counted — heart and soul. It showed in his thoughtful gifts for her, their spacewalk, engineering a party and that brilliant line where he told the budding scientist she was his “new adventure,” which she fell for hook, line and sinker. These all compounded how he planted seeds in her mind that she was following Calvin’s academic path on Mars and not her own, ultimately being the cure she sought all along. Thus, even though he was a himbo who couldn’t spot a cryo-chamber with ice cream, Walt awakened Sophie’s spirit and got her to follow her dreams of going back to Earth to heal the environment.
See how Walt makes the himbo trope work in Moonshot, now available on HBO Max.
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