Marvel's Moon Knight Scrapped a Major Eternals Cameo

The first (and potentially only) season of Moon Knight is now in the books, with the Disney+ exclusive series shining a unique light on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the most surprising elements of the series has been its relative lack of connections to the larger MCU, with Marc Spector / Steven Grant / Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac) seemingly not having any previous interactions with other superheroes or supervillains, and the series itself not having any surprise cameos from additional Marvel characters. As a new interview with Moon Knight head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater reveals, there were almost plans to include some other actors who are recent additions to the MCU — the Eternals.

"I tried very hard to get the Eternals into the show, just because I'm buddies with Kumail Nanjiani... I want[ed] some Kingo," Slater recently told The Direct. "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. It was a really fun scene, but again, it was so massively expensive to recreate Ancient Egypt, to sort of bring in 3 or 4 of the Eternals to have this big action sequence."

"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," Slater addedd. "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. There's plenty of time in the future to team this guy up with other characters in the MCU and start building these connections; let's not force something just because the other shows have all had it."

This echoes comments that director Mohamed Diab made to Variety, revealing that the creative team eventually realized that they "didn't need" crossovers with other MCU characters.

"We had the freedom to place it whenever. I want to tell you the very first scene, there was a crossover, and the very end scene, there was a crossover," Diab explained. "But as the story developed and we kept changing the scripts, we felt like, 'We don't need that.' All of us. It was a collective decision. And then I kept thinking: It's a rule. There has to be a scene at the end that connects us to the MCU."

All six episodes of Moon Knight are now available to stream exclusively on Disney+. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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