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After being introduced in 2022, Oscar Isaac‘s Moon Knight has yet to reemerge in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. Though it wasn’t quite the critical darling as some of its streaming predecessors, Moon Knight landed with fans and was one of Marvel’s most watched series, beginning with a strong premiere on Disney+. Samba TV, which measures viewership in millions of households, indicated that the first episode’s viewership was comparable to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and exceeded that of WandaVision and Hawkeye in the first five days of release. This suggests that Moon Knight garnered significant interest and viewership upon its debut which continued as it became the most in-demand series on the streaming service.

So I think Marvel Television has happened in waves, and I think Moon Knight happened in a wave of shows that were going to establish characters that would tie-in to the future.

-Brad Winderbaum

Despite the interest in the series and the further adventures of the character, Marvel Television boss Brad Winderbaum made it clear that while the studio has plans for the character, a second season of Moon Knight is not happening. But as fans wait to find out what those plans are, series writer Jeremy Slater has revealed that the original idea for the D+ show would have taken it in a significantly different direction.

In a recent interview, Slater told ComicBook.com that the original pitch for the series would have seen Raoul Bushman, who he’d previously revealed was intended to be the show’s big bad, serving as an avatar of an unnamed Egyptian god.

The archenemy of Moon Knight, Bushman first appeared in Moon Knight #1and was created by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz. His history is deeply intertwined with Moon Knight’s alter ego, Marc Spector as the two were once fellow mercenaries and it was Bushman who shit and killed Spector, opening the door to him becoming the Fist of Khonshu. In one of the most graphic displays of vengeance in Marvel Comics history, Spector carved off Bushman’s face in Moon Knight, Volume 5, #2.

“The goal was if Marc Spector was the Avatar of Khonshu, we were going to take Bushman and make him the avatar of a different Egyptian god and let them duke it out,” Slater told Comic Book. However, the team ran into an unexpected roadblock. “The problem we kept running into was Black Panther had just come out and Michael B. Jordan was so damn good as Killmonger in that movie, that he casts such a big shadow…that everything we wrote wound up feeling a little derivative.”

As it turned out, the idea of having the Show’s villain also be an avatar was something that survived into the final draft, with Ethan Hawke‘s Arthur Harrow serve as the Earthly vessel of Ammit which lead to a crazy battle among the pyramids in Egypt. However, it sounds as though that choice wasn’t one made by Slater.

“Ultimately, [Marvel] went in a different direction and the director put together his own team of writers,” Slater explained. “You know when you are coming in to play in such a big sandbox that you are…borrowing someone else’s toys to play with for a short amount of time and, at the end of the day, they don’t belong to you. You know that going in, so it wasn’t a surprise at all.”

Hawke‘s Harrow certainly didn’t land on anyone’s “Best Marvel Baddie” list and Bushman would have absolutely been a fantastic antagonist had Slater and crew been able to crack the story. Unfortunately, without another season of Moon Knight in the cards, it’s hard to imagine the character will ever do battle against Marc Spector in the MCU.

Released in 1990, Predator 2 laid the groundwork for further exploration of the Yautja’s culture and history. The trophy room inside the ship of the Lost Tribe opened the doors to a fascinating yet entirely unknown history of the Hunters, as did the flintlock pistol handed to Danny Glover‘s Mike Harrigan. The seeds of a wide-ranging Yautja mythology were sown in the successful sequel…and it’s pretty likely those seeds took root in the mind of a young Dan Trachtenberg and grew into a lush and savage garden of possibilities that he continues to explore in the animated Predator: Killer of Killers.

2022’s Prey marked Trachtenberg‘s first foray into expanding the Predator franchise and, at the time, it would have been hard to imagine that anyone could have been more successful. Inspired, at least in part, by the idea that the flintlock pistol in Predator 2 had its own story, Trachtenberg took the franchise back in time to 1719 and delivered what’s arguably the best Predator film to date. Inspired, at least in part, by the success of Prey, Trachtenberg created what amounted to a surprise entry in the franchise in Predator: Killer of Killers, using the animated anthology to aggressively expand the Yautja’s role in the history of the universe while simultaneously reframing the existing canon in a moment of true genius. Taking advantage of the freedoms of animation and cleverly leveraging the possibilities of anthological storytelling, Trachtenberg has engineered another instant classic, cementing himself as a singular voice within the franchise and, hopefully, its continued curator.

Though the film’s structure calls to mind a classic joke set-up (a Viking shield maiden, a ninja, a samurai and a WW II pilot walk into a bar), Predator: Killer of Killers‘ punchline delivers a seismic gamechanger to the franchise. Ahead of the release of the next film in the franchise, Predator: Badlands, Trachtenberg fundamentally redefined what the audience experiences while watching a Predator film. No matter your level of Xenopedia expertise, you will leave your viewing of Predator: Killer of Killers differently than you entered it.

Steeped in savage and familiar action, Predator: Killer of Killers manages to take its audience to an unconventional resolution that promises further excavation of the IPs existing properties and, hopefully, inspires future filmmakers with this particular genre.