Who Is The Main Moon Knight Villain? Arthur Harrow Explained

Last night Disney+ dropped the trailer for the upcoming "Moon Knight" series starring Oscar Isaac as the eponymous vigilante hero, and people are rightfully stoked. The new show will be the first new series from Marvel Studios in 2022, and while the trailer focused heavily on Isaac as Marc Spector/Moon Knight, it finally gave us our first look at the mysterious villain played by Ethan Hawke. Not much was known about his character until now, with the exception of an interview last year on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" where Hawke spoke about his inspiration for the character, citing former leader of the Branch Davidians cult, David Koresh.

"I've based my character on David Koresh. Yeah, so I mean, I guess it's working. I totally wanted a Camaro, you know? I want to ride in on a Camaro. I can't believe you, I mean, you're good Seth. Or maybe I'm not out of character yet ... I don't know if we want to be on record saying that. But, I will say, he is the basis of great character inspiration, however."

While the trailer doesn't explicitly tell us who his character is, the closed captioning on the trailer gave us a look at the bigger picture. As it turns out, Hawke is playing Arthur Harrow, a fan-favorite albeit obscure villain who only appeared in a single issue of the "Moon Knight" series, and in the Marvel Comics universe as a whole. 

So who is Arthur Harrow?

First introduced in 1985 during the second run of the "Moon Knight" series, Arthur Harrow was a selected candidate for the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work in the field of pain theory. However, in true villainous fashion, he was only able to reach his conclusions by secretly using data obtained from Nazi experiments performed at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Harrow was obsessed with the experimental work, even stating in the comments that the Nazis "didn't go far enough," calling their work "brilliant." 

Sorry, Thanos, but there's officially a new Marvel villain I hate more than you. God, I hope Moon Knight takes out this dude's knee caps and sells them on Craigslist. In the comics, Harrow crossed paths with Moon Knight but escaped, and never appeared in the comics again.

The trailer shows Harrow as a cult leader, with members bowing at his feet, which looks a lot less like the Harrow we know from the comics, and a lot more like the Sun King cult leader villain from the Max Bemis and Jacen Burrows run of "Moon Knight" comics. Hawke's appearance in the show doesn't resemble Harrow but does look a bit like Sun King. While this is obviously all speculatory for the time being, it seems like Hawke's character may be a hybrid of both villains' storylines.

"Moon Knight" will premiere on Disney+ on March 30, 2022. The six-part series will be released in weekly installments, much like other Marvel TV shows like "Hawkeye" and "WandaVision."