The MCU Just Retconned Its Magic Rules For The 2nd Time In Phase 4

Caution: spoilers ahead for Moon Knight

Did Moon Knight just readjust the rules surrounding magic in the MCU? Casting spells is nothing new to Marvel's live-action universe. From Asgard's "science we don't understand" to the multiversal conjuring of Doctor Strange, all manner of magic powers exist within MCU continuity. To help signal when a specific brand of sorcery is being woven, different strands of magic have long been denoted by different colors. The eldritch magic of Sanctum Sanctorum is an orange-yellow blend, the Eternals' cosmic magic is golden, Scarlet Witch's chaos magic is red, etc.

According to WandaVision, purple magic is dark magic - the kind practiced by Agatha Harkness. Flashbacks to Agatha's youth in Salem show Kathryn Hahn's villain sentenced to death on charges of secretly wielding the blackest of magicks, but she escapes by crushing her coven's blue spells with purple. Appearing in the present day - her power amplified by the Darkhold - Agatha's purple conjuring has become her trademark weapon. In Moon Knight episode 2, however, Ethan Hawke's Arthur Harrow summons a jackal using the gifts of Egyptian god Ammit... and the visual effect borrows a very similar shade to that of Agatha Harkness.

In theory, the castings of a witch like Agatha should sit wholly separate to an avatar channeling divine power, since both energies hail from completely different sources and are utilized in completely different ways. This wouldn't be the first time Marvel has switched around its live-action magic rules either. Wanda Maximoff's abilities were initially presented (in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron) as a consequence of scientific experimentation with the Mind Stone, but WandaVision retconned that explanation, revealing red chaos magic was the true source - present long before Wanda's exposure to an Infinity Stone. Maybe a similar revision is now happening with Moon Knight and purple magic?

Another possibility is that the color of Arthur Harrow's Moon Knight jackal summoning is entirely coincidental, not intended to confirm or contradict any past events whatsoever. Thus far, Moon Knight has barely connected to wider MCU continuity, with Harrow not even including Thanos on his list of mass murderers from throughout history. The purple of Ammit's magic may, therefore, be nothing more than a design choice that just so happens to resemble the style of sorcery Agatha Harkness was shown using in WandaVision.

Though seemingly wildly separate characters, MCU canon does provide a path toward connecting Agatha Harkness and Arthur Harrow (beyond sharing the same initials, obviously). WandaVision didn't precisely explain where Agatha's powerful dark magic comes from, but we know the mystical Darkhold amplified her potency. Essentially a big, super-dark spell book, Marvel comics' Darkhold is connected to the Elder God Chthon. We can theorize that something similar is true in the MCU, which means Agatha's magic might be drawn from Chthon in the same manner Arthur Harrow's is drawn from Ammit. The idea of purple magic as "dark" would be something of a misnomer - a label perpetuated by the witches of Salem and other heathen human sorcerers. Instead, the true meaning of purple sorcery could be 'power drawn from gods.' That would still represent a retcon to established MCU magic rules, but does explain why Harkness and Harrow both share similar tricks.

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Moon Knight continues Wednesdays on Disney+.