Thor: Love and Thunder's Taika Waititi discusses surprise cameo

Thor: Love and Thunder spoilers follow.

Thor: Love and Thunder trailed a number of intriguing cameos ahead of its release, with Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey all expected to feature.

In the end, they didn't – and for good reason, apparently – but there was one famous face who did make the final cut.

We're of course talking about Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein's appearance as Hercules in the mid-credits scene, a small role that director Taika Waititi has now finally opened up about.

As much as he can, anyway.

Marvel Studios

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Chatting with Entertainment Tonight, Taika recently revealed that while he is a Ted Lasso fan, Brett Goldstein's involvement in Love and Thunder wasn't actually his idea.

Confirming that Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige was the one who first suggested Brett for the role, Taika explained: "I can't share much, because that was all Kevin. Kevin was like, 'Hercules? How about we ask Brett?'"

Hinting that we might be seeing more of Brett's Hercules in the future, he added: "Kevin keeps his cards close to his chest, so I don't want to like, 'Where are you pushing this? Where are you gonna go with this Hercules character?'

"We'll see, but it's pretty exciting to start opening the world of Zeus and Hercules and the Greek gods."

brett goldstein, playing roy kent, walks along the touchline of the football pitch in a season 2 episode of ted lasso

Apple

As for the cameos that weren't to be, Taika has said that he didn't decide on scrapping Jeff, Peter, and Lena's appearances until he got "into the edit".

"A scene on its own could be the most funniest thing or intriguing thing, but sometimes those things if you keep them in will just make the movie screech to a halt," he said following Love and Thunder's release. "So you have to do what's best for the film."

Taika added: "I don't want people to see the deleted scenes because they're deleted for a reason: they aren't good enough. The scenes were not in the movie, and that's it."

Thor: Love and Thunder has a release date of July 7 in the UK and July 8 in the US. The other three Thor movies are available to stream now on Disney+.