Bizarre Prince Harry move we never saw coming in 2025

The Duke of Sussex has well and truly flipped the script and is trying something completely new, leaving many agahst.

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We love a mystery. A gone girl, a podcast, a true crime investigation, which is handy because we are faced with a Sherlockian puzzler that will require a magnifying glass and everyone bringing a packed lunch to try and solve.

Have you noticed? Something strange and unusual of late? Something missing? A certain silence, a space, a void? A one time super glued-on fixture of news headlines, a mainstay of People covers and all round general thorn in the side of the British royal family?

Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex has disappeared.

The DoS is MIA.

So far, 2025 has to be the quietest year on record for the 40-year-old who appears to have vanished into the honeysuckled thin air of Montecito.

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The royal father-of-two has, this year, seem to have become something of a comparative recluse, keeping his head firmly down.

There have been no denunciations of the press in interviews or speeches given on New York stages where, dark blue-suited, he passionately rails against the ills of social media or him, tan-blazered, raising funds for his mainstay charities.

Ditto, no polo, no red carpets, no TV projects, no books, no podcasts, no beachy holidays, no Katy Perry concerts, no private jets, no drinks at Ellen’s place and no even being papped leaving a local Santa Barbara restaurant after putting away a T-bone.

We are living in a very strange Sussex-y time indeed.

Prince Harry is making a change. Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage

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By and large this year, the vast majority of the times the duke has been seen, it has been being one half of a double act with his wife Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex. In January the couple found themselves, wholly unfairly, at the centre of a bit of a s**tstorm after they turned up to lend a hand during the LA fires before Harry, very much on the down low, occasionally popped up to thank first responders.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visited victims of the Eaton Fire in LA. Picture: FOX 11 Los Angeles

Prince Harry stopped & thanked South Dakota firefighters in S. Cal. Monday asking q's & chatting--no media in sight. He also talked with CalFire personnel. SDWF and 3 VFD’s (Whispering Pines, Black Hawk, and Fairburn) are part of a task force assisting with wildfires in S. Cal. pic.twitter.com/6GmsVEnjzM

— SD Wildland Fire (SDWF) (@SDWildlandFire) January 23, 2025

He also made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance at One805’s Rock for Responders

fundraiser in LA.

He met with first responders during the One805 Rock for First Responders benefit at The Granada Theatre on March 08, 2025. Picture: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

In February, for one week, it was High Wattage Harry A-Go-Go at the Invictus Games in Vancouver.

Prince Harry with Team Nigeria at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025. Picture: Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images for Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025

In March he earned himself not even an IMDB credit with a cameo in the final episode of his wife’s generally critically panned With Love, Meghan playing his favourite role, beamingly adoring husband.

The prince popped up on episode 108 of With Love, Meghan. Picture: Netflix

In April he flew to London to attend court where he is legally challenging what is technically his father’s government over his security arrangements, having lost his automatic police protection in 2020.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex waves as he departs the Royal Courts of Justice, on April 9, 2025. Picture: Henry Nicholls/AFP

Last week, we got another chance to really prove he’s the world’s proudest Wife Guy when he played supportive plus one when the duchess spoke at the TIME100 Summit in New York.

The dup attended the 2025 TIME100 Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 23, 2025. Picture: Craig Barritt/Getty Images for TIME

Also during that trip, the Sussexes unveiled the Lost Screen Memorial which remembers 50 young people who have lost their lives due to harms of social media.

Harry, as far as I can tell, has not done a day of publicly facing paid work. Despite being the Chief Impact Officer of coaching platform BetterUp he did not appear at their recent Uplift Summit, an event he spoke at for the previous four years.

We are at least 120 days into 2025 so far and Harry has been seen on fewer of them than there have been UFO sightings in New Jersey. (Because where else would the alien invasion begin but in the birthplace of disco fries and Danny DeVito?)

Never has there been a time in the last two decades, by and large, that the world has seen so little of the Duke of Sussex.

Meghan waves while attending a welcome celebration during the 2025 Invictus Games. Picture: Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP

Prince Harry during a visit to the Superhumans Centre in Lviv, Ukraine on April 10, 2025. Picture: Yana Stukach/The Duke and Duchess of Sussex 2021/AFP

Has Harry, I wonder, pulled off something truly extraordinary – by and large is this the shockingly quiet, peaceful life he always dreamed about? Where he can do Dad things like pickups and drop offs and where no one is busy defining him as the Boy Who Will Never Be King?

After all, he has told his story, cashed the cheques and, maybe, given up on expectantly waiting by the phone for his father King Charles to stutter out some sort of half-hearted ‘sorry’ over the yapping of the Jack Russells.

That’s one view. Another is that, five years on from Megxit, the Duke of Sussex’s life has ended up in something of a cul-de-sac.

Last month he revealed he was ‘heartbroken’ to have parted ways with Sentebale, the charity that he and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho co-founded nearly 20 years ago, the duo along with the rest of the trustees having resigned in protest over chairwoman Dr Sophie Chandauka. Dr Chandauka has accused Harry and the organisation of “bullying and harassment at scale”.

Board Chair Dr. Sophie Chandauka MBE, Prince Harry and a guest in Johannesburg, South Africa. Picture: Brian Otieno/Getty Images for Sentebale

The UK’s Charity Commission is currently investigating concerns about the Sentebale.

I’m absolutely sure that Harry does a hell of a lot of work behind the scenes for the Invictus and the Sussexes’ Archewell Foundation’s projects, we are a hell of long way off the 152 engagements, at least, that he clocked up in his final full year of official royal life in 2019.

The interesting contrast here is that Harry appears to have withdrawn from view while Meghan is more out there and in the limiest of lights, appearing on podcasts (her own and a friend’s), being interviewed by the New York Times, debuting her Netflix show, launching her As Ever range of food products and posting, posting, posting over on Instagram.

As anyone who lives near a fault line knows, the thing to do in an earthquake is “duck and cover”. Who knew he would seemingly take it so very literally?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Bizarre Prince Harry move we never saw coming in 2025