With Moon Knight coming to an end this week, there’s no denying that this has been one of the most independent, standalone projects to come out of the MCU yet.
Only a couple of passing mentions have been made to the wider Marvel universe throughout the first five episodes – however, this wasn’t always going to be the case.
Speaking on the House of R podcast this week, the show’s head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater revealed that Oscar Isaac’s Marc and Steven were originally meant to have a different love interest than May Calamawy’s Layla – and it was none other than Hawkeye‘s Echo.
Slater said: “At the time, Echo was go to be our love interest, solely based on the fact that they knew Marvel liked the character of Echo and was trying to find a show to put her in.”
Echo, otherwise known as Maya Lopez, has been a love interest of Marc Spector in the comics, but Slater revealed that “she didn’t work at all for the story we were telling. [Marvel] were like, ‘You know what, we’ve got this Hawkeye show and we feel like she would fit in a lot better there…,’ and we were like, ‘Oh, thank God.’”
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Echo’s debut in 2021’s Hawkeye saw her out for revenge against Ronin for killing her father, while it was later revealed that her boss the Kingpin, known as “uncle”, had arranged for his death. She is set to return in her own spin-off show on Disney Plus, and will once again be played by Alaqua Cox.
While speaking on the podcast, Slater also revealed that Bushman, a long-time comics adversary of Moon Knight and the mercenary who betrayed Marc and killed Layla’s father in the show, was initially going to be the main villain. It was only later that the decision was made to instead bring in Ethan Hawke’s Arthur Harrow.
Moon Knight episodes 1-5 are available to stream now on Disney Plus, with the final episode airing on Wednesday – sign up for Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year.
Check out more of our Sci-Fi and Fantasy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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