A new teaser for Moon Knight hit us with a hippo-notic visual. Taweret, the “very sassy bipedal hippopotamus from the afterlife,” appears in a recap trailer for episode five of the Disney Plus series, with Oscar Isaac providing the introduction and aforementioned description. He seems as amused by the character as we are.
The hippopotagoddess debuted in episode four and made a big splash in episode five, displaying all the qualities that Isaac cited. Both her name and appearance come from real Egyptian mythology. Head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater became obsessed with the original Taweret and made it his mission to incorporate her into Moon Knight.
“Right from the very first week, Marvel provided us with a ton of reference material on Egyptology, and on ancient Egyptian gods and deities. One of those pieces of material was a laminated poster that had like a little kid, cartoon drawings of all the different gods — one of those gods was Taweret. I spent that entire first week of our writers’ room, just staring at that. Then finally, at some point, I couldn’t take any more. I interrupted whatever we were talking about and I was like, ‘Guys, we have something much more important, which is, how do I get this hippo into the show?’”
After Taweret was okayed, Antonia Salib gave her a voice and movement. However, she initially didn’t know the character’s true identity:
“[Taweret] was a complete surprise. I knew I was auditioning for Marvel Studios and I knew it was for a lead — an Egyptian woman. They kind of gave me a fake name, and they had a dummy script. it was only once I was about to meet the director, and the casting team, they just mentioned, ‘By the way, you’re going to be a CGI hippo.’ I was like ‘OK, sounds great, let’s do it!’”
Hopefully we’ll see more of Taweret during the Moon Knight season finale, which airs on May 4 on Disney Plus.
Published: May 2, 2022 05:20 pm