The group of characters that makes up the title characters in Marvel’s “Eternals” is filled with 10 great actors. Then at #11 on the call sheet, you have “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington as Dane Whitman, who doesn’t really have much of a role in the upcoming film. This means that Marvel Studios is clearly setting up Harington as a big deal in future films right? Well, not so fast, as Harington isn’t even sure what the future holds.
**Mild spoilers for “Eternals,” where we’ll discuss the comic book history of one of the characters**
For those unaware of the comic book history of Harington’s Dane Whitman, the character is probably best known as Black Knight. Cursed with the Ebony Blade, Whitman takes on the name Black Knight, which is a mantle passed down from generation to generation. First poised to be a villain, Whitman eventually becomes a member of the Avengers and a C-list character in the Marvel Universe. All that to say, there’s plenty of history to mine for content and you don’t hire Harington to play a glorified cameo role, right?
Well, in an interview with Variety, Harington isn’t ready to bet the farm on the idea of Dane Whitman having a big future in the MCU. Maybe he’s playing coy? Maybe he’s just superstitious? Regardless, Harington is hopeful and excited by his future in the MCU, but he’s not 100% certain it’s going to happen.
“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,” revealed Harington. “But the basics of him having something that seems to be cursed, I thought, had a lot of meat to get into.”
But, I mean, come on, right? He has to return in the future. Marvel Studios isn’t known as a studio that teases characters and doesn’t pay them off down the line. Hell, we even got Darcy returning in “WandaVision” and Abomination in ‘Shang-Chi.’ That said, Harington isn’t going to try to predict the future.
“Nothing is certain. That’s the first thing you learn in this industry. There is no certainty,” he said. “To go in with any kind of feeling that something’s certain is setting yourself up for failure. I genuinely do go by the rule that this is the project, this is what I’m doing. I take it with the information that there’s a path and a future that could happen. But I don’t assume that that future is going to happen, because I think that’s foolish.”
Without getting into spoilers, it’s not a surprise to say that “Eternals” does set up plenty of ideas for a sequel or even a full-blow spinoff with Harington’s Dane Whitman. So, it’s not like Marvel Studios isn’t teasing a future for the actor in the MCU. Obviously, a lot of that is likely going to come down to box office performance and fan reaction. Though the reviews haven’t been good so far, if fans embrace the characters in “Eternals,” there’s absolute certainty we’ll see Kit Harington in full Black Knight garb soon enough.
“Eternals” hits theaters on November 5.