When you first meet Kit Harington’s Eternals character Dane Whitman, you might wonder why they cast the man who became a household name as one of television’s greatest heroes, Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, to play the sweet human boyfriend of Gemma Chan’s Cersei. Wait until the end however–slight spoiler–and things become clear. There’s as lot more to Dane Whitman than meets the eye.
In the comics, Dane Whitman is known as the Black Knight, a hero who first appeared way back in Avengers #47 back in 1967, and has a long history popping up across the Marvel universe, even getting his own stand-alone series in 2015.
Kit, however, didn’t join the Marvel Cinematic Universe just for the chance at a future as a superhero. In the Chloe Zhao-directed Eternals, in cinemas today in the UAE, he wanted the character to have be a reflection of the best of humanity, something he feels he achieved.
But will the character continue on? Here’s what Kit Harrington told us when we sat down with him.
Why did you feel this was the best way to enter the Marvel Universe?
I wasn’t sent the script at first. It was just a conversation with Nate the producer and Chloe about who he was, what he was in this film, and what he might be, without any sort of promises made.
If this was going to be an introduction into the Marvel Universe, I’d like it to go further if it can. But who is in this movie? That on its own was important. One thing that I spoke to Chloe about is that he should have a light touch, that if he was going to represent humanity, and he was going to be a boyfriend to Cersei at the start of the movie, then he should feel like someone you liked, someone who was warm.
What really came out in the movie, which I enjoyed, and I felt proud of in this movie, which does break a lot of boundaries, was that he finds out a piece of information about his girlfriend, which could be threatening to a lot of men would feel threatened that their girlfriend is more powerful than them. And he’s not. And I think that’s something as a character I’m proud of him for.
You can tell there’s a very conscious image of what masculinity should be set up through this character, and it comes across effectively.
Thank you. Well, we didn’t have a lot of time to get it across. And that’s the thing I was happy with is that sometimes you’ve got a limited number of scenes and you’ve got to get something across, and if you can do that, then you’ve done your job in the movie and I think we did.
You and Richard Madden also had the chance to stare daggers at each other, but as a Game of Thrones fan it was wonderful to see your excellent hug chemistry return on the red carpet recently.
I’ve been sent a few memes. [Laughs] We’re all friends , and it’s great just to be able to hug someone right now. It’s quite nice to be honest. We’re being tested up to the eyeballs so we feel safe hugging each other. But even in the movie, there’s a little not to it. I think what Marvel does well with is a little wink to camera that maybe these two have met somewhere else. And I think it’s done very subtly. And it’s well handled by Chloe.
Obviously, we can’t say where things are going. But as you did say, this is built to continue in the future. Have those meetings happened yet, or do you have an idea of when they may?
At this point, I just have to hold on hope. I really hope that they do, but those meetings as far as if there’s a future for Dane haven’t happened. The only thing that happened early on was ‘if we could find the right part for you in our world, would you want to do it’? And the answer was yes. They found a part which I felt could have a really interesting future and I hope that they take it there because I do think that he’s a fascinating character, if we take him further.