When it was announced that Ethan Hawke had been cast as the villain in the Disney+ Moon Knight series, fans began to speculate wildly about which character he could be playing, and some were convinced that he might even be portraying Dracula following an online rumor.
We soon found out that Marvel Studios had actually gone will a relatively obscure baddie named Arthur Harrow, although Hawke's interpretation bore little resemblance to his comic book counterpart.
Head writer/EP Jeremey Slater has previously revealed that Marc Spector's nemesis, Bushman, did appear in early drafts of the script, and it's now come to light that both Stained Glass Scarlet and Zodiac were also considered at one point.
"And we really looked at all of the sort of classic villains," Slater tells The Direct. "There was a couple that we talked about; Stained Glass Scarlet, and you know, Zodiac, and different characters like that. No one really kind of fit the parameters of the story we were telling, so we were just like, ‘You know what, can we just introduce a guy, and we’ll grab a name from some’—you know, they gave me a list of [like] every villain whose ever appeared in a Moon Knight comic. I just went through and went like, ‘Arthur Harrow, that sounds like a cool villain name, let’s go with that.’"
So, despite keeping the name of a character from the comics, Harrow was, for all intents and purposes, created for the show.
Stained Glass Scarlet, a former nun-turned ruthless vigilante, could have worked very well, while aspects of Zodiac (we assume he means the more recent incarnation of the character and not the LMD from the '70s) appear to have been used for this take on Harrow, anyway.
If Moon Knight does return for a second season, it'll be very interesting to see who is introduced as a new antagonist. Of course, there's a chance we may not see Spector again until he's fighting alongside The Avengers (or the Midnight Sons?) on the big screen.