Kit Harington is feeling pragmatic about his future in the Marvel movies after Eternals. In an interview with Variety, he said; “Nothing is certain. That’s the first thing you learn in this industry. There is no certainty. To go in with any kind of feeling that something’s certain is setting yourself up for failure.”
Harington plays a seemingly normal human character in Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, which will be released on Friday. He gradually discovers the existence of a band of immortal superheroes, not least of which is his girlfriend Sirsi (Gemma Chan). However, Harington’s character name – Dane Whitman – suggests that the MCU may have more in store for him.
In the comics, Dane Whitman family heritage stretches back to King Arthur and a persona called the Black Knight, a warrior connected to the cursed Ebony Blade. Those who wield it gain incredible power, at the cost of their sanity. Dane ends up fighting alongside the Avengers, but he is pulled between being a hero and villain, due to the cursed Ebony Blade.
The Game of Thrones star doesn’t know what Kevin Feige and the rest of the MCU team have planned for him, however. Harington did his own research into the character and is intrigued at where he could go; “the essence of the character and his powers seem to me very interesting. God knows where it’s gonna go. So I don’t know, I can’t predict whether, where, if anywhere, they’ll take the character. But the basics of him having something that seems to be cursed, I thought, had a lot of meat to get into.”
He also got to stand by and watch the rest of the cast be put through the wringer; “I turn up at the read through at the start, saw them all fresh faced. Then I came in at the end, saw them all haggard and knackered, and did my bit.”
As to how Game of Thrones and the MCU compares, Harington says that; “it is a different beast, in more subtle ways than you’d imagine. What I like about the differences, for me, about these two things is I get to have lightness of touch in this, which I think is really important. It’s what I really loved about the Marvel movies — those little moments of kind of lightness, comedy, in amongst everything.”