Moon Knight star Ethan Hawke has opened up about how he crafted the character of Arthur Harrow, creepy cult leader and nemesis to Oscar Isaac’s eponymous hero. Some Marvel TV shows hold back on unveiling their big bads, but Moon Knight has heavily featured Hawke’s Harrow from the off, with the villain getting a lot of screentime in the show’s first two episodes. While we’ve still yet to learn the full extent of his plan, Hawke’s already made an impression as the quietly spoken yet ruthless rogue.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Hawke explained that he deliberately underplayed the character in this way because he envisioned Harrow as the opposite of Steven Grant. So while Isaac’s protagonist is psychologically troubled and a nervous wreck most of the time, Harrow conducts himself like a wise and patient doctor, despite his sinister true intentions. As the Dead Poets Society star said:
“I always feel like in some way, the villain has to be the opposite of the hero. He has to be the hurdle that the hero needs to realize himself [and] become fully actualized in the hero’s journey. When you think about these things on a metaphoric level, the villain’s job is to create the hero, right? So, if you have a mentally ill hero, what’s the opposite of that? Well, one version would be a doctor, right? Somebody trying to alleviate the pain of the world — that’s what doctors do. So, I kind of saw him as a doctor, and at the same time, I saw him as a kind of spiritual entity. I started visualizing him kind of as a monk.”
Hawke, who has previously revealed a list of unlikely inspirations for his performance, explained that he was influenced by the mindset of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and also the more abstract idea of Harrow being like the “constant” sun in contrast to Steven being the “inconstant” moon.
“I remember reading a bunch of Tolstoy, and at the end of his life, he became a little megalomaniacal in a benevolent way,” Hawke continued. “He kind of thought he was smarter than anybody else on the planet, and he could teach the world what the right way to be is. I’m always nervous when people think they’re smarter than everybody else — it’s generally creepy. But I thought that was a good place to build from. If [Moon Knight] has this fractured mind, I would be whole. If he was the moon and inconstant, I would try to be the sun and constant. If he’s going to have all these sharp edges as a broken thing, I should be soft and gentle — and that’s how I built him.”
The actor’s explanation of his process is fascinating to hear as what he wanted to achieve very much comes across on screen. Steven and Harrow’s scenes together are so interesting because the latter appears so much wiser and more knowledgeable than Marc Spector’s muddled alter, which leaves the viewer wondering if Harrow could actually get the better of the hero. It’s also worth pointing out that Hawke’s sun comparison will only fuel those theories that Harrow will ultimately become the Sun King, a powerful comics supervillain.
The six-part Moon Knight unfolds Wednesdays on Disney Plus.