Obviously, from the title of this post, the below information will contain spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder.
During the events of Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Korg (Taika Waititi) seek the help of Zeus (Russell Crowe, who is absolutely going for it) in an effort to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale who, too, is going for it). Things do not go as planed as Thor realizes Zeus is nothing but a selfish blowhard, which leads to a fight against Zeus that leaves Zeus temporarily defeated.
During the mid-credit scene, Zeus still seems pretty ticked off about the whole encounter and taps his son, Hercules, to avenge him. The big surprise here is Hercules is played by everyone’s favorite midfielder, now coach, from Ted Lasso, Roy Kent himself … Brett Goldstein.
Who’s idea was it to cast Brett Goldstein as Hercules? We asked director Taika Waititi and he said that decision came from Kevin Feige, “Kevin really wanted him to do it, and yeah, Brett’s amazing. He’s great.”
Though, Waititi doesn’t know exactly how Hercules fits in with the MCU quite yet, if he’s meant for future Thor movies or something else entirely. “And I don’t know if that’s to do with Thor, or if it’s to do with how that will develop,” says Waititi. He continues, “Because, obviously, Hercules, there’s a character from the books as well. And so, yeah, this will be interesting to see because Kevin, he’s obviously the mastermind of all of these threads and how they’ll tie up and how they meet, mix and match. So I’m curious to find out myself.”
Also, it’s lost on Waititi was how popular Brett Goldstein is as Roy Kent on Ted Lasso and how excited people are when they see his reveal as Hercules, which Waititi very much notices at the Thor: Love and Thunder premiere, “And it was such a cool moment in the cinema where it played, that people went nuts. They were so excited.”
Let’s hope we get more Brett Goldstein as Hercules sooner rather than later. As opposed to, say, Adam Warlock, who was teased way back in 2017, who we will finally see, played by Will Poulter, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2023.
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