While the fate of Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow in Disney+’s Moon Knight was left somewhat ambiguous, Jeremy Slater — who served as head writer on the series — recently said that the ending of the series was meant to be very concrete.
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In the closing moments of Disney+’s Moon Knight series, fans are introduced to the third personality of Marc Spector/Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), Jake Lockley, as he seemingly kills off Ethan Hawke’s charismatic villain, who served as one of the main antagonists of the series. According to Slater in an interview with The Playlist, however, it was always meant to be more definitive.
“That’s the way I wrote it on the page,” said Slater when asked if he really meant for Arthur Harrow to die in the series. “Again, because you don’t actually see a body, no one’s ever dead until you see the body. We had that teaser pretty early on in our story. I didn’t want to introduce Jake until the very end because I knew that it was going to be hard enough to make the audience care about the relationship between Marc and Steven if it was just the two of them. And I knew that if you put three personalities in there, it would just become a mess and that it would be too hard for the audience to track.”
Slater went on to say that their goal from the start was to save the appearance of Jake Lockley until a possible teaser moment. However, the fact that no body is ever shown is something Slater chalks up to Marvel Studios wanting to keep the possibility open.
“So the goal from the very beginning was we’re going to save Jake for the teaser. He’s going to be the one who kills Harrow,” Slater said. “But the fact that we don’t see a body, and I think the fact that everyone loved Ethan Hawke so much and had so much fun working with him on this project, I think they’re just kind of keeping a few cards in their deck just in case the circumstances are ever right. It could have been a flesh wound. It could have been a warning shot. I don’t know. In my mind, he’s dead. But again, the person who gets to answer that is whoever kind of tells the next Moon Knight story.”
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Based on the character created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin, Moon Knight hails from head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater (The Umbrella Academy). The episodes were directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mohamed Diab, along with Synchronic duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.
