Jon Snow is coming to the MCU.
Kit Harington, who played the iconic character for eight seasons on Game of Thrones, will appear in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. As revealed at Disney’s D23 Expo, Harington will join fellow Game of Thrones alumnus Richard Madden, who played Robb Stark, in The Eternals. However, Harington will not be one of the Eternals himself.
According to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Harington will play Dane Whitman, who is also known as the superhero The Black Knight.
In the comics, Whitman is actually the third person to hold the Black Knight’s title, and is charged with restoring honor to his family after the second Black Knight, Whitman’s uncle, used the codename while serving as a supervillain. Dane doesn’t have any powers of his own, but his sword, the Ebony Blade, can cut through any material, deflect magic attacks, teleport its wielder to distant locations, and prevent its owner from dying.
Disney has been snatching up talent from Game of Thrones now that the show has ended. The company confirmed in May that it brought on showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to create their own Star Wars trilogy. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO series, played Han Solo’s love interest Qi’ra in last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.
That said, Harington hasn’t had much luck breaking into the world of Hollywood movies so far. For one thing, he’s been busy shooting Game of Thrones for most of the past decade. His few forays into being a leading man, including 2014’s Pompeii, have flopped.
Up until now, it’s been a rocky week for the MCU. On Wednesday, news broke that Sony could end its partnership with Disney, which could yank Tom Holland’s Spider-Man out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and away from the Avengers. Sony later put out a statement saying the dispute between the company was over Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige’s role in the Spider-Man films moving forward but offered little else in the way of clarity.
Updated on August 24, 2019: Added confirmation that Harington will appear in The Eternals as The Black Knight
