Moon Knight Made Major Change to Arthur Harrow After Casting Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke was fated to play a Marvel villain in Moon Knight. The four-time Oscar-nominated actor stars opposite Oscar Isaac as Arthur Harrow, a cult leader resolved to unleash the Egyptian god Ammit and her “divine retribution.” As Ammit’s most devoted follower — and the former “fist of vengeance” avatar of Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham), the vengeful moon god now served by Marc Spector / Steven Grant (Isaac) — Arthur Harrow is balancing the scales of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by being the harbinger of Ammit’s merciless judgment. But head writer Jeremy Slater envisioned the character differently before a chance encounter with Isaac cast Hawke in Moon Knight.  

“I pitched and wrote a draft where he was much [older],’” Slater told Marvel.com of Hawke’s middle-aged zealot. “In that version, it was very much someone looking at their own mortality, reaching the end of the road, being terrified of that, and desperate to do anything to capture it.”

Slater added of the Training Day actor, “The second Oscar came to everyone and said, ‘Look, I think I can get Ethan Hawke in this.’ We quickly abandoned the idea of an older Harrow because when you get a chance to get Ethan Hawke, you take it.”

Hawke, who was Oscar-nominated for roles in the Before trilogy and Boyhood, approached Arthur with “a really fascinating take,” Slater said. “He had a lot of ideas of things he hadn’t necessarily done yet in his career, and things that he could really bring to the character.”

Calling his MCU role “one of the simplest, most organic things that has ever happened to me in my career,” Hawke told Marvel.com he was in talks with director and executive producer Mohamed Diab about a different project that went on the backburner when Marvel Studios hired Diab to direct Moon Knight. 

“I said to Mohamed, ‘Look, that’s great. You got to do that. Call me when you’re done, we’ll meet again,” Hawke recalled. But then, as if by fate, Hawke ran into Isaac while out getting coffee. 

“[Oscar’s like], ‘Hey, you know, I’m doing this Marvel show. You should play the villain.’ I’m like, ‘Who’s directing?’” Hawke said. “Before dinner, I’d gotten a call from my agent saying, ‘Hey, we just got this offer from Marvel’ (laughs).” 

See new images from Moon Knight Episode 3, “The Friendly Type.” New episodes of Marvel’s Moon Knight are streaming Wednesdays on Disney+.

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