Jeremy Slater, head writer of Marvel’s Moon Knight, has revealed the Disney Plus series almost featured Kit Harrington’s Black Knight and talked about why the cameo was ultimately dropped.
Marvel Studios’ latest Disney Plus series, Moon Knight, has been markedly different from the majority of other Marvel Cinematic Universe projects in just how little it connected to the broader MCU. There were a few inevitable Marvel Easter eggs, but no familiar faces cropping up nor any established locations visited. However, that wasn’t always the plan, as head writer Jeremy Slater has revealed.
Recently, Jeremy Slater revealed plans for a cameo from the Eternals in Moon Knight, which would have seen the team joining forces with a former avatar of Khonshu in a flashback to ancient Egypt. Those ideas were due to budget constraints, but now Slater has revealed another member of the Eternals cast was also considered for a Moon Knight cameo – Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman, whose transformation into the hero Black Knight was teased in Eternals‘ post-credits scene.
Talking to ComicBook.com, Jeremy Slater revealed that as both Oscar Isaac’s Steven Grant and Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman are London-based museum employees, the Moon Knight writers considered having the two cross paths early on in the series. However, Slater felt that a glancing cameo from Whitman without the opportunity for him to suit up wouldn’t satisfy fans and wouldn’t be worth the cost of having Kit Harrington appear:
“We talked about Dane Whitman a little bit just because he works in a history museum and that could be a natural interaction. My feeling was if we got Kit Harington to show up and he doesn’t suit up and he doesn’t kick ass, as a fan I’m pissed off…
“If I see him show up I want to see him go full Black Knight. Just seeing an interaction where he walks past and goes ‘Oh hey Steven,’ who responds ‘Oh, hey Professor Whitman!’ It felt like that would be a waste of the money it would cost Kit Harington in there…
“Also, there’s only so much you can do to tease those reveals before people get frustrated… There was no space in those first two episodes to have him suit up and play Black Knight in the storyline, so we ultimately decided that it didn’t make sense to make this connection. But it was something we definitely talked about a couple days in the room.”
Ultimately, the writers probably made the right call here. Avoiding cameos such as the one they had considered for Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman allowed the series to remain focused on Moon Knight himself – something that certainly would have been harder to do with the MCU’s first Black Knight appearance worked into the series as well.
Here is the synopsis for Moon Knight:
The series follows Steven Grant, a mild-mannered gift-shop employee, who becomes plagued with blackouts and memories of another life. Steven discovers he has dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with mercenary Marc Spector. As Steven/Marc’s enemies converge upon them, they must navigate their complex identities while thrust into a deadly mystery among the powerful gods of Egypt.
Created by Jeremy Slater, the Disney Plus series stars Oscar Isaac, May Calamawy, Karim El Hakim, F. Murray Abraham, Ethan Hawke, Ann Akinjirin, David Ganly, Khalid Abdalla, Gaspard Ulliel, Antonia Salib, Fernanda Andrade, Rey Lucas, Sofia Danu, and Saba Mubarak.
Moon Knight is now steaming on Disney Plus. Stay tuned for all the latest news surrounding the future of the series and the MCU and be sure to subscribe to Heroic Hollywood’s YouTube channel for more original video content.
Source: ComicBook.com
