In another life, the Disney Plus TV series Moon Knight may have had a surprising crossover with the Marvel movie Eternals. In a recent interview with The Direct, head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater, revealed that in early drafts of the Oscar Isaac series, the immortal band of superheroes – the Eternals – were scheduled to appear in the show via a flashback sequence that ended up getting scrapped.
Moon Knight is the latest TV outing for the MCU and sees Isaac star as the titular hero – who is essentially the avatar for the ancient Egyptian god Khonshu. Unlike most of Marvel’s projects which are now tackling the multiverse, the drama series was relatively self-contained, having no cameos from other Marvel characters. However, its isolation from the MCU wasn’t always the case.
Slater has shared that originally he had pictured The Eternals, specifically Kumail Nanjiani’s character, from the 2021 science fiction movie to show up in Moon Knight. But, due to budget concerns, the cameo idea never came to fruition. “I tried very hard to get the Eternals into the show, just because I’m buddies with Kumail Nanjiani,” Slater said.
“I want[ed] some Kingo. At one point, there was a flashback on the page that sort of showed one of Khonshu’s Avatars back in ancient Egypt, sort of dealing with Ammit being locked away, and Alexander the Great, and all of that stuff. ”
“You sort of saw this Avatar team-up with the Eternals,” he continued. “It was a really fun scene, but again, it was so massively expensive to recreate Ancient Egypt, to sort of bring in three or four of the Eternals to have this big action sequence.”
Although seeing the Eternals turn up in Moon Knight would have been fun, Slater acknowledged that cutting the scene was ultimately for the best, as it enabled Moon Knight’s ending to go full out and finish off the freshman season with a bang.
“It was one of those things where it was a very fun scene, and it would have been a great cold open to one of the episodes, but it also would have had to come out of our budget somewhere else, and probably would have hurt our finale along the way,” he explained. “So, that was the cameo I had to cut. It hurt, but it was also the right thing to do for the show, and I think everyone sort of collectively agreed.”
Moon Knight and Eternals are both available to watch now on the streaming service Disney Plus.