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Every Marvel hero needs a villain, an archenemy who can be highly entertaining while also threatening all of existence. And at this point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s pop culture reign, playing a bad guy in a Marvel project is kind of reserved for icons only. Cate Blanchett, Michael Keaton, Jude Law, Michael B. Jordan — and now Ethan Hawke.
The Oscar-nominated actor makes his Marvel debut in Moon Knight on Disney+ where he goes up against Oscar Isaac as the titular vengeance-seeker. But who is Ethan Hawke playing? Arthur Harrow? Who is Arthur Harrow? Even if you’ve watched the first episode, you might still have some questions. Here are some answers!
Who is Arthur Harrow on Moon Knight?
Ethan Hawke plays Arthur Harrow on Moon Knight, a methodical cult leader who’s out to “make the Earth as much like Heaven as possible.” However, what with his whole cult-leader vibe, it’s very likely that his idea of Heaven doesn’t align with anything good. As we see in the first episode of Moon Knight, Harrow worships the Egyptian goddess Ammit.
Arthur Harrow does Ammit’s bidding, judging others by clasping their hands, placing a cane with a pair of crocodile heads as its handle between the person’s arms, and letting his tattoo of a scale on his wrist do the work. If the tattoo errs on the side of justice, the person is free to join Harrow’s cult. If the tattoo finds the person guilty, they are almost immediately drained of all life. And the scale doesn’t just care about what you’ve done in your past; Ammit’s whole gig was taking into account what a person would do in the future as well. Yeah, Arthur’s making Minority Report happen on a godly scale — uh, and also HYDRA’s whole Project Insight scheme from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
As Harrow explains, Ammit was betrayed by her fellow gods as well as her avatar (reminder: Moon Knight is Khonshu’s avatar). Now Harrow has plans for the goddess, and Marc/Steven/Moon Knight is in his way. Harrow has to take this threat seriously because, after reading Steven Grant, Harrow says that he “feels chaos” inside of this deeply conflicted gift shop worker.
Who is Ammit? Is Ammit really an Egyptian deity?
Yes she was. She had the head of a crocodile and her body was half lion and hippopotamus. Ammit was known as the “Devourer of the Dead” and the “Eater of Hearts,” nicknames she got due to her role in the rituals of the afterlife. Upon death, a person’s heart was believed to be judged by Anubis (the Egyptian god of death). If that heart was found to not be pure, it would be fed to Ammit and the person would die a second time. Two deaths! Because of this, Ammit was not worshipped, but rather she was feared. And then Arthur Harrow comes along and decides to worship her!
Who is Arthur Harrow in the Marvel comics?
The series has taken a number of liberties with Arthur Harrow, but it’s unlikely that even the biggest of Marvel Comics fans would notice. Arthur Harrow has appeared in precisely one comic book: 1985’s Moon Knight vol. 2 #2 by Alan Zelenetz and Chris Warner. That’s it. And in that comic, Harrow was depicted as a Nobel Prize-nominated doctor who was working on a way to eliminate the sensation of pain, as he was afflicted with a condition — trigeminal neuralgia — that left him in constant agony. All that sounds fine, except Harrow was building upon methods developed by Nazi doctors at Auschwitz and testing them on people. Moon Knight stepped in and stopped Harrow’s operation in Yucatan, but it was implied at the end of the issue that Harrow just picked up his studies again in Paraguay. He hasn’t been seen since.
So MCU Arthur Harrow is just Arthur Harrow in name only. Otherwise, he is a wholly original character who worships a demoness from ancient Egypt. It is, however, entirely possible that Ethan Hawke’s character will go on a journey and become something else entirely. After all, literally every other live-action Disney+/Marvel series has had a big bad reveal in it.
New episodes of Moon Knight premiere on Disney+ on Wednesdays at 3 a.m.
