Eternals: Kit Harington discusses the future of his new Marvel character

Marvel’s Eternals has yet to come out in theaters; that’ll happen on November 5. But Marvel usually has longterm plans for its characters, so it’s not too early to wonder what’s next for them.

For instance, Game of Thrones veteran Kit Harington a guy named Dane Whitman in the movie. Comics savvy fans noted that name immediately, since on the page Dane Whitman is also the superhero the Black Knight. But in the trailers, Harington doesn’t appear very… Black Knight-y. Harington confirmed in an interview with Variety that his character is just one of the regular humans in the film; Dane is the human boyfriend to the Eternal Sersi, played by Gemma Chan.

But might there be some superheroics in Dane Whitman’s future? The answer is a flat “maybe.” Said Harington:

"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. 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 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."

Marvel has been announcing spinoff Disney+ series pretty liberally lately — Agatha Harkness form WandaVision is getting a show! Echo from Hawkeye is getting a show — but we haven’t heard of a Black Knight spinoff just yet. But given Dane Whitman’s comic book past, there does seem to be potential for Harington to get his own spinoff or at least appear in more MCU movies down the line.

Kit Harington reunites with Game of Thrones costar Richard Madden

On Eternals, Harington got the chance to work with an old friend: Richard Madden, his on-screen brother Robb Stark from Game of Thrones. Madden plays the Eternal Ikaris, the ex of Dane Whitman’s girlfriend Sersi.

“We had a big hug,” Harington said of his reunion with Madden. Naturally, the love-triangle drama on screen didn’t affect his relationship with his former Thrones co-star. “We’ve been close friends for a long time… And, you know, we were both 23. We’d kind of came up together and that creates quite a special bond. So actually, we have a very close friendship, but screen time doesn’t reflect that.”

By that Harington means that he and Madden didn’t share much screen time on Game of Thrones, about four scenes in total. Plus Madden was only on for three seasons compared to Harington’s eight.

Kit Harington reunites with Game of Thrones showrunner

Going back to Harington’s career after Eternals, he mentioned that he’d talked about it with none other than hisGame of Thrones boss Dan Weiss. “I saw Dan Weiss the other day. We had coffee, and I was saying to him, and he said to me — well, I won’t say what he said to me, but he felt similarly.”

"But what Thrones enables you to feel is a sort of freedom. I did the thing, you know? It’s cool, I’ve got that. I have freedom now that I’m going to enjoy whatever it is I do. It’s not that I don’t have ambition, but I have a kind of happiness that if things go well, great. If they don’t, I did that thing. So that’s where I’m at. And I feel that what something like being part of the Marvel Universe enables you to do, like Thrones did for me, is that you have this thing that you hopefully return to and can develop. And on the side, you can do all sorts of things that are the polar opposite. A little movie with no budget. Or the next thing I’m doing: I’m going off and playing Henry V in London in one of my favorite theaters. And this allows me to do that."

Interesting. Might we assume Weiss is interested in bringing Harington back on for another project? Weiss and his producing David Benioff literally just hired a couple of Game of Thrones alums for their new Netflix show. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear another announcement about that in the near future.

Of course, like Harington says, nothing is guaranteed. But it’s a definite possibility!

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