The First Scene of 'Moon Knight' Reveals More Than We Thought About Arthur Harrow (SPOILERS)

Mar. 30 2022, Published 11:Forty seven a.m. ET

Spoiler alert: This article incorporates spoilers for Moon Knight Episode 1.

The first episode of Moon Knight opens with an unforgettable scene. A person’s fingers ruin a glass within a serviette to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain of Sand.” We can’t glance away as the man then proceeds to funnel the shards of damaged glass into his shoes, after which willingly step into those shoes. As he walks away and we watch the rest of the episode, we be informed that that man is Arthur Harrow.

Throughout the first episode of Moon Knight, Marvel’s newest Disney Plus sequence, Arthur Harrow is each mystifying and terrifying. We can’t lend a hand but wish to know extra about him — how did he gain the power to decide and act upon any person’s virtue? What is his relationship with the goddess Ammit? And why does he put glass in his shoes?

When Arthur puts damaged glass in his shoes, it can be a demonstration of devotion to Ammit.

As we learn right through the episode, Arthur is a disciple of the Egyptian goddess, Ammit. Through his connection to her, he’s able to discern whether or not any person is of good or evil virtue, and then Ammit devours their middle if they're of evil distinctive feature. With this power, Arthur builds up a cult following; the actor at the back of Arthur, Ethan Hawke, compares his following to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. (For reference, David Koresh’s “management” resulted in the notorious 1993 Waco raid and siege).

Many religions and cults continuously ask followers to hurt themselves as a show of devotion to the deity. In Christianity and Judaism, this is named self-flagellation, which is “the disciplinary and devotional practice of flogging oneself with whips or different instruments that inflict pain.”

It’s ceaselessly used as some way for the flagellant to proportion in the sufferings of other disciples or to remind them of their devotion to God. This used to be also practiced through several Greco-Roman and Egyptian cults, most importantly the cult of Isis in Egypt. So it’s possible that Arthur’s self-harm is a display of devotion to Ammit.

It’s more likely that Arthur Harrow places damaged glass in his shoes as some type of punishment.

Although it’s clear that Arthur is a villain, the MCU is doing something in reality distinctive with his character by making him extra morally ambiguous (a minimum of in the beginning). Arthur explains to Steven that the goddess Ammit, the Egyptian deity he’s a disciple of, is in a position to discern and eat those who are not natural of center. This technically signifies that she may have taken Hitler from the world prior to he committed the bleak atrocities of the Holocaust. So is Arthur in point of fact a bad man?

Throughout historical past, many devoted folks have used self-harm so to punish themselves in the face of their deities. Self-flagellation has been seen as having different purposes: using out evil spirits, purification, healing, sadism, and extra. However, in the early Christian church, it was once supposedly used so that you could punish disobedient clergy and laity. In fiction, acts of self-harm from trustworthy characters are most often proven as a form of self-punishment.

So what did Arthur Harrow do? What is so evil in his previous (or his long term) that he has a ritual of willingly stepping on damaged glass? Is his agreement with Ammit tied to the potentially evil virtue that he atones for via this distinctive form of self-flagellation? Understanding why Arthur places glass in his shoes simplest results in extra questions, but happily, Moon Knight must resolution they all.

New episodes of Moon Knight drop each Wednesday on Disney Plus.

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