Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for Moon Knight. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please feel free to leave the page. This post will still be here after you've caught up on the series, jovially awaiting your return.
The very first character we are introduced to in Moon Knight is Arthur Harrow. He's sat in the abandoned building in London that later becomes his cult's little commune (I'm rather curious as to how far back this scene predates the events of the series) performing what looks to be some sort of ritual which involves using Ammit's staff to shatter a short glass tumbler, then dividing the resulting shards between his two sandals. He then slides said sandals on and exits stage left, as it were, to the sound of crunching glass with each step.
... Ow.
We find out in episode two, during Arthur's little impromptu date with (a kidnapped) Steven, that he was once Khonshu's avatar, that before Marc took up the mantle, he was the god's Fist of Vengence. Apparently, as with Marc, doing Khonshu's dirty work for him took its toll on Arthur. Despite enjoying the job, he grew tired of punishing people after the fact, after they'd already committed whatever atrocity against the travellers of the night that warranted Khonshu's interference in their continued state of living.
The show doesn't go into what caused the pair of them to part ways, just that Harrow felt a sense of relief once they had. I have a theory, though, that Harrow took things too far. While he is speaking to Steven in the aforementioned scene he mentioned that Khonshu 'always tries to ensnare those with a strong moral conscience', to which Khonshu ejaculates, with no small amount of venom, that Harrow has no conscience. This could be construed as Khonshu having rejected Harrow in the end because his ideals no longer matched up with the god's goal of punishing evildoers.
Whatever caused their breakup, Arthur Harrow went on the rebound and ended up finding a new godly bae: Ammit. Ammit's schtick, of course, is that she wants to punish those who choose to do evil before they actually do it. The other gods of Egypt did, in fact, take a dim view of her being so... proactive, as it were, and so, with the help of her last avatar (fucking Alexander the Great) they trapped her in an ushabti and, just for added good measure, hid that ushabti away where no one would find it, not even themselves.
Or so they thought.
Having decided that Ammit actually had the right idea, Arthur does what any good zealot does: he goes out to acquire a following to assist him in his search for his elusive new girlfriend. Using the power of Ammit's staff that he somehow came into possession of (Marvel should do a comic with the story leading up to the events of the show, maybe?) and a façade of physician-like compassion (he wants to 'heal the world', after all), Arthur is able to grow his cult in relatively high numbers in areas all over the world.
The thing is, though, that Arthur Harrow, like many in his position, is a hypocrite, and apparently Ammit's criteria for eradicating evil from the world is not only callous, but kind of fucked up.
I've seen various people online make mention of the fact that Arthur can be very gentle and kind with people he doesn't see as an enemy (or at least, as a threat), pointing out the affable, almost tender way he sometimes interacts with Steven or the fatherly way he is towards his followers. These mannerisms, however, do not actually indicate any sort of actual benevolence. Rather, they are carefully constructed attempts to conceal his manipulative tendencies, a mask meant to cover the fact that he is angry, impatient, and even malicious at his core. They attempt to hide the fact that he relies on aggression and intimidation to get what he wants. They don't quite work, though.
I love the impatient bit, to be honest, because Ethan Hawke plays it off in an almost-subtle-but-not-quite way that just comes across so naturally. In his first encounter with Steven, when (possibly) Jake prevents him from handing over the scarab by closing his fist around it, Harrow huffs and rolls his eyes, dropping his outstretched hand in irritation. When Harrow confronts Steven at the National Art Gallery (which is apparently just an MCU variant of the actual National Art Gallery?) and mentions that Ammit was betrayed by her own avatar, Steven begins to stutter about James Cameron's film and the Avatar: the Last Airbender anime, to which Arthur, with thinly veiled annoyance, very straightforwardly commands him to 'stop it'.
He does manage to practice a bit more patience in episode two, though. Sending his hounds, Billy and Bobbi (who are a lot nicer in the show than in the comics), to collect Steven, his plan is obviously to woo him over to his cult (or, at least, woo him enough to give over the scarab), as he's done with so many others, by feigning camaraderie and solicitude. You can tell in his body language when Steven questions Ammit's methods that his patience is wearing thin, but he still pushes through to try and coerce the whereabouts of the scarab in a peaceable manner.
It isn't until Steven balks at the idea of murdering children (quite rightly, might I add) that Arthur's patience runs out completely and he switches tactics. You can actually see the changing of gears in his face, and it is punctuated by a sort of apathy which is pretty indicative of the nature of Arthur Harrow's character. When he couldn't get what he wanted with honey he immediately went on the offensive, threatening to use the power of Ammit's staff against Steven if he continued to refuse to give him what he wanted.
He does make good on this threat, summoning one of the lanky jackal monsters from whatever realm they normally lurk in (maybe they're from the Overvoid, too?) and unleashing it against Steven and Layla (who very fucking unwisely showed up with the scarab in hand). Sending a berserk otherworldly canine against his enemies in the middle of London just shows that Harrow does not have much regard for the bystanders caught in the middle of the fight for his mission, whether they have balanced scales or not.
Then again, I question his actual commitment to the scales in the first place. The scarab ended up falling out of Steven's pocket when the jackal defenestrated him, and it was found by a random man, implied to be homeless, passing by. Arthur had also come looking for the scarab, and he informs the man that it belongs to him. He says he can give him food and clothing, but won't give up the scarab... But then he 'judges' the man, and the man dies. However! There is no indication that Arthur actually read his scales (I mean, yeah, his sleeve was rolled up, but still), so... did he just straight up murder the guy? And doesn't that sort of draw into question any of the other people he's killed with the staff?
That, of course, was not the first time Arthur threatened Steven with grievous bodily harm via magical jackal, but I'm thinking that there's a little more nuance in what happened at the museum than one might initially think. Harrow starts this meeting off by making sure Steven is effectively trapped (an intimidation tactic), then feigns amicability to try and convince Steven to return the scarab. After he commands Steven to stop talking nonsense ('Avatars. Blue people. Love that film.'), Steven asks if Harrow is going to kill him.
To which the lights of the museum flicker.
It is here that Arthur Harrow starts whispering to Steven about the perpetually unsatisfied voice in his head. It is here that he realised Steven had a possible connection to Khonshu, assuming him to be the god's avatar.
This realisation, I'm convinced, is why he read Steven's scales, and also why he let him go when he got the opportunity to flee. While setting the jackal on Steven in the museum definitely keeps with his habit of turning straight to violence when things don't go his way, I have a feeling a secondary purpose of the attack was to verify whether or not Steven truly was Moon Knight. (And he does assume it's Steven, as he tells him when he kidnaps him that he'd like to show him around the commune before Steven 'get[s] excited and put[s] on the cape'. Can't judge him for thinking that, though, I suppose.)
Episode three does a great job at highlighting just how manipulative Harrow is. During his farce of a 'trial' in the Chamber of the Gods, Arthur effectively turns the tables on Marc and Khonshu by using Marc's dissociative identity disorder and Khonshu's own poor standing in the eyes of the other gods against them while playing himself off as a victim of Khonshu's abuses. I will say, out of the two gems of manipulation in this episode, this one, though good, isn't the best one... In part because Osiris was thick and opted to not actually listen to anything Marc or Khonshu had to say (then again, whether either of them could have actually said anything useful is another matter, considering how obviously Khonshu's possession of Marc was causing him pain and issues communicating), so it wasn't too hard for Harrow to manipulate him.
You'd think someone there might have questioned why Harrow had been doing a fucking background check on Marc to have seen his marriage certificate and Steven's employment records, though... I mean, that's sus in and of itself. But, whatever...
The manipulation that shines, though, is at Anton Mogart's. Having kept Marc under surveillance, Harrow was able to follow him and Layla to Mogart's estate. There, despite playing himself almost as if he were just a mildly interested passerby who just so happens to have something to offer to the situation, he makes a point to sow the seeds of discord between Layla and Marc by implying that Marc knows something about Layla's father's death (which, to be fair, is true), then, turning to Anton and playing on his greed for Egyptian antiquities, he offers to show him an example of the power of the staff, enticing his curiosity and possibly even his loyalty.
How Arthur knew about Senfu's sarcophagus is unclear, but this fucker does a beautiful job of making a point of destroying it under the guise of an innocent display of the magics Ammit's staff holds. Arthur Harrow could have chosen anything on that property, anything at all, but he chose the one thing that would help his enemies find Ammit's tomb. 'This sarcophagus doesn't belong to anyone,' he says, and while this could be taken as a general musing, it is very blatantly aimed at Marc. And so he manages to destroy a prized piece of Mogart's collection, the one relic that could give him grief, in such a way that he suffers no repercussions from doing so. Clever, sneaky little bastard.
Well, Steven and Layla manage to find Ammit's tomb anyway. Lucky for them, Harrow and his crew hadn't found the ushabti yet, as they're having trouble dealing with the Heka priests running around disemboweling anyone they can get their hands on. Arthur does manage to get in some tending on those seeds of discord he planted, however, as he ends up goading Layla into letting him tell her what he had seen when he read Marc's scales... At least, he tells her enough to manipulate her anger and sadness over her father's murder while leaving out the crucial detail about Marc almost dying himself because he was trying to save Dr el-Faouly and the rest.
And so, because her emotions are running high and she demands to get her answers about her father right then and there instead of leaving to find somewhere a bit more safe to have that conversation (which probably could have been avoided if Marc hadn't blatantly lied to her about things in the first place), she and Marc are caught with nowhere to run when Arthur and his little pack of heavily armed sheep find Alexander's tomb. And though Marc makes a valiant, though futile stand against him, the last of Arthur Harrow's patience runs out and he just straight up shoots Marc dead.
He has completely dropped the façade of a benevolent disciple of Ammit and the eradication of evil from the world here. Harrow's face when he shoots Marc isn't one of someone regretfully doing something he feels he has to do for the greater good or even one of indifference. He's fed up at being thwarted. He's pissed off at dealing with Marc and Steven and Khonshu and Moon Knight. It is a face full of cold malice. This is punctuated by the fact that he didn't even have to shoot Marc the second time, but he did it anyway. He did it out of spite.
None of this actually makes him a hypocrite, though, not really. Just makes him a shit person, and even shit people can be proper disciples to a judge-y, murder-happy crocodile goddess who eat hearts (I'm supposing). So what does make him a hypocrite? Well...
At the end of episode three, after the remaining gods have trapped Khonshu in his ushabti, Arthur makes a visit to the Ennead's chamber. After Selim leaves him alone with the ushabti, Arthur proceeds to tell Khonshu that what he is doing, that his victory in releasing Ammit, is all thanks to Khonshu's abuse. But he also says that if Khonshu hadn't broken him, he wouldn't know the 'value of healing'. Fast forward to when he has broken Ammit's ushabti and released her. She points out that his scales lack balance, and he says that he was hoping his penance would correct his imbalance. She goes on to tell him that they lack balance because of what is to come (him simping for her), which means that, were he not to enter into her service, his penance had, in fact, (quite possibly) corrected his imbalance.
Which means Arthur Harrow, who oh so compassionately wants to cleanse the world of abusers and evildoers and create a veritable heaven on Earth, gave himself a chance to make up for all the wrongs he's committed without giving other people the same chance. Fucking. Hypocrite.
I will grant that he was willing to accept his scales being unbalanced. (One reason I use 'simp' in relation to Harrow and Ammit is because it wasn't even that he was willing to accept his death, but that it was almost like he desired it at her hand.) This does not change the fact that he gave himself every chance to change his fate before the end, but he doesn't think that anyone else should have this opportunity, to the point that he compared children to diseased limbs in speaking to Steven about culling them for potential evils they may do in the future.
However, while I find his motives and convictions questionable, I do believe that, at least on some level, Harrow has convinced himself that what he's doing is truly for the greater good. Despite the fact that, when you get to the core of it, he seems to be simply trying to wash away his own sin, he has deluded himself into thinking that what he's doing is righteous, though sometimes, with the way he acts, I wonder how deep that belief goes. Hypocrisy of such magnitude can create quite the cognitive dissonance, after all.
His 'heaven on Earth' thing is very subjective, though, 'cause we're now going to go over how Ammit's ideals are fucking mental. Or, at the very least, Harrow's interpretation of them is.
In the episode that shatters your heart (I really need to tweak that entry...) we learn that Marc had a younger brother, Randall, who drowned while they were playing in a cave. It was a tragic accident that broke the Spector family and drove Wendy to abuse her remaining son, to beat him and blame him for Randall's death to the point of suggesting he did it on purpose. Assuming that the first birthday memory Steven sees is the first one after Randall's death (which makes sense given the context from the scene), Marc was nine years old when this tragedy happened.
During the final battle, Harrow makes the statement that had Ammit been free, Randall would not have died and Marc's family would have been happy... All that had to happen was Ammit 'need only remove one weed from the garden' by preemptively murdering Marc. The implication here is that Ammit does not differentiate between accidents and intentional evils. The idea that Ammit would kill children who are not wise enough to make a decision to not do something dangerous (such as what happened with Marc and Randall), or that she would kill someone who might, say, end up panic swerving to miss a deer and accidentally hitting another car... Or anyone that caused an accident with no malicious intent behind it? That's just absolutely fucked up.
And where does that end? Would she consider an abuse victim who kills their abuser in self defense an evildoer? Or a child taking their sick parent off life support to spare them more suffering? Where exactly is her line drawn?
One can hope that the jab was just another attempt at manipulation, because otherwise Ammit being unleashed on the world would have been a million times worse had they not been able to stop her.
Bonus Theory: Okay, so... Being a cult leader requires a certain level of charisma, yes? Arthur Harrow has this charisma, for the most part, but I also am thinking that Ammit's staff enhances his powers of persuasion. There are three instances in the show that give me this idea, one in episode two and two in episode six.
So, again, in episode two Arthur had his hounds kidnap Steven and bring him to their commune. He tries to convince Steven to give him the scarab by explaining why it would be oh so grand for Ammit to be freed from her little stone statue prison, but Steven isn't buying it. Arthur falls back to threatening Steven to try and get the information, but Steven insists that he can't help him. Arthur responds, 'Yes, you can. I need to know, where is the scarab? Where is the scarab? Where is the scarab?'
Steven is backing away, and starts saying 'no' as Arthur gets more insistent. The crystals on Ammit's staff are also glowing at this point, and Arthur's hair starts moving as if it's in a breeze, which is often indicative of some sort of power being present. It seems to me that he was using the power in the staff to try and compel Steven to give him the information he wanted, whether Steven wanted to or not.
In episode six, when the cult's little caravan is stopped by the Egyptian border control, Harrow uses the upgraded magics in the staff to judge all the guards at once. There is only one left standing, dazed and confused. Arthur labels him a good man and tosses away his walkie-talkie, which this man sort of just accepts. Almost as if he's lost his own will and is compelled to follow Ammit.
A very similar thing happens when Arthur uses Ammit's power to imbue everyone with balanced scales in Cairo with the capability to judge other people's scales. Ammit's power enters her new followers, and it's like they all lose their own will and only act on the will of her judgement. Not a single one of them even questioned their instructions or hesistated to follow them when Bobbi told them to 'judge everyone'.
Both of those instances imply that part of Ammit's powers lie in the ability to control people's minds, which would also imply that that's exactly what Harrow was trying to do with Steven in episode two. Just a thought, though...
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