Thor: Love and Thunder is about to add a new thrilling story to the MCU lore, with the franchise's gods all facing considerable danger thanks to Christian Bale's Gorr the God Butcher. This comes as the second MCU project this year alone to tackle the franchise's deities after Disney+'s Moon Knight dealt with more than one god throughout its six-episode run.
Even though the Thor and Moon Knight franchises are seemingly separate from each other for the most part, their connections to the gods are certainly interesting to look at in the grand scheme of the MCU. Chris Hemsworth's fourth solo film will introduce new beings like Zeus and the Mighty Thor, while Moon Knight brought the Moon God Khonshu to life as he gave Marc Spector the powers of Moon Knight.
While both of these projects tackle the idea of gods, one might not imagine that there would be many obvious ties to one another outside of that concept. As it turns out, Moon Knight's head writer, Jeremy Slater, recently revealed that this is far from the case, sharing how his team and the professionals from Thor worked side-by-side on one specific aspect of both entries.
Moon Knight Writer on Thor 4 Collaboration
Moon Knight head writer Jeremy Slater spoke with The Playlist, sharing how the team behind Moon Knight spoke with the team making Thor: Love and Thunder about their use of the Marvel gods.
While Moon Knight got to focus on the Egyptian side of the story, Slater confirmed that he and the crew "did speak extensively" with Thor: Love and Thunder's producers. This was to make sure that both shows remained consistent with the idea and didn't contradict anything that the other was doing with its plot and story details:
"Marvel was great about giving us our own little corner and our own little space and saying, 'O.K., the Egyptian gods can be their own thing,'especially since we’re only seeing, I think, three of them on screen over the course of this story. But we did speak extensively with the producers of Thor: Love and Thunder just to find out what they were doing with gods in their story, to make sure that we weren’t going to be contradicting anything. At the time, all of the release dates were still up in the air, and we didn’t know if we would be coming out before Thor: Love And Thunder or following up Love And Thunder."
Ultimately, Slater and crew decided that any Love and Thunder connections wouldn't be worth the potential logistics struggles. However, the head writer acknowledged that he "could definitely see some of these gods crossing over" in future MCU properties:
So we had to make the decision early on, just to be safe, let’s give ourselves some space and let’s not reference the events of [the new movie] because we had different versions that could have served as either a lead into “Thor” or sort of dealing with the aftermath of what happens in that movie. And everyone just sort of decided, “You know what? These release dates are going to be determined by much larger factors than whatever’s happening in our show. So the safest thing to protect both of these properties is just to give them some distance.” Marvel is constantly expanding the boundaries of the MCU, and it’s getting bigger, and it’s weirder, and it’s giving us a lot more runway to tell cool stories in the future. So. I could definitely see some of these gods crossing over into other properties or showing up in other forms in future shows.
Previously, Slater had shared in an interview with The Direct that there was originally going to be a reference to Gorr the God Butcher in Moon Knight but that it wound up being a stretch trying to include it.
How Will Moon Knight & Thor 4 Connect?
Due to the Marvel Cinematic Universe keeping up its interconnectivity for so long, the franchise has to make sure that the finer details of storytelling remain consistent from project to project over the years. This continues to be the case with the use of gods in both Moon Knight and Thor: Love and Thunder, and it's clear that Jeremy Slater understood the task at hand by ensuring that the two projects worked cohesively with one another.
This almost certainly doesn't mean that Marc Spector and the God of Thunder are destined to interact with one another in the foreseeable future, especially with the Moon God Khonshu having released Marc from his deal. However, with beings as powerful and impactful as Marvel's gods, it's important that they all work fluidly alongside one another.
These gods are about to make their presence felt in Love and Thunder as Russell Crowe's Zeus and other major gods come into play outside of Earth. Should Marvel decide to have Thor and Moon Knight work more closely together, this idea will help them share a connective thread if and when that day comes.
Moon Knight is is available to stream on Disney+. Thor: Love and Thunder is set to debut in theaters on July 8.
