Those who have seen all six episodes of Moon Knight will know that the references to the Marvel Cinematic Universe were minimal. Aside from a brief mention of Madripoor, the criminal setting shown in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight primarily stood on its own and established Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac) and his alters, as well as Khonshu (F. Murray Abraham) and Layla (May Calamawy). However, head writer Jeremy Slater has recently revealed that this was not always the intention, as none other than the Eternal Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) nearly appeared in an episode's cold open.

Slater had the following to say in an interview with The Direct:

"I tried very hard to get the Eternals into the show, just because I'm buddies with Kumail Nanjiani. I wanted some Kingo. At one point, there was a flashback on the page that sort of showed one of Khonshu’s Avatars back in Ancient Egypt, sort of dealing with Ammit being locked away, and Alexander the Great, and all of that stuff. You sort of saw this avatar team-up with the Eternals. It was a really fun scene, but again, it was so massively expensive to recreate Ancient Egypt, to sort of bring in 3 or 4 of the Eternals to have this big action sequence."

Moon Knight ultimately did have a large action sequence in the finale which recreated Ancient Egypt. However, having one somewhere else in the run with major actors like Nanjiani and potentially Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, or Gemma Chan, would have inflated that budget and potentially taken away from another aspect of the series. While the Marvel Disney+ shows have made it a point to include major appearances from Evan Peters in WandaVision to Jonathan Majors in Loki, it was a nice change of pace to see Moon Knight stand so squarely on its own.

Khonshu in Moon Knight

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Slater also hinted at the budget impact of the scene, in addition to describing where he envisioned the sequence falling within an episode:

"It was one of those things where it was a very fun scene, and it would have been a great cold open to one of the episodes, but it also would have had to come out of our budget somewhere else, and probably would have hurt our finale along the way. So, that was the cameo I had to cut. It hurt, but it was also the right thing to do for the show, and I think everyone sort of collectively agreed. There’s plenty of time in the future to team this guy up with other characters in the MCU and start building these connections; let’s not force something just because the other shows have all had it.

All six episodes of Moon Knight are now available on Disney+.