A Complete Guide to Marvels ‘Eternals’: Who They Are, Where they’re From, and Why They Matter
With the film just a few weeks away, the immortal race entering the MCU comes with a lot of comic history, and we’re here to provide the context with our Complete Guide to Marvel Eternals!
The super-powered and century-old race of heroes are entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe as one of the oldest known entities and will bring an entirely new realm of Marvel comics to the forefront of the MCU.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
The ten new characters come from a robust but widely unknown comic history that shows them as some of Marvel’s earliest known characters and connects them to the origins of the entire Marvel universe.
Our complete guide to Marvel Eternals starts with were these ten new heroes come from, or more importantly, who is responsible for their creation; that honor lies with none other than the omniscient Marvel super race known as the Celestials.
Celestials
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
The Celestials are more than just characters in the Marvel universe, they are characters capable of creating life.
These giants, and incredibly powerful, beings instill within them the ability to create an entire universe from the very palm of their hand; something a Celestial can be seen doing in the Eternals trailer.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
The Celestials were created by the brilliant Jack Kirby and were originally intended to represent the very first form of life knowable in the Marvel comics universe.
Many will remember many of the Celestials MCU debuts coming in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Source: Marvel Studios
Marvel fans witnessed Eson the Searcher wield the Power Stone, in a scene that shows the Collector explores the power of the stones; connecting the origin of that great power fo the Celestials themselves.
Two other Guardians moments reference the Celestials; with the planet, Knowhere being a decapitated Celestial head, and Ego the living planet, the father of Peter Quill, referring to himself as a former Celestial in some regard.
Source: Marvel Studios
The celestials are known for interfering in the evolutionary processes of the Marvel Universe, and this role will manifest itself in the Eternals.
Eternals
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
The Celestials, by all canonical accounts, created the Eternals; through their visit to prehistoric earth, the Celestial penchant for evolutionary interference led to some very interesting results.
In the comics, The Eternals were born from Celestial experimentation on prehistoric humans; with different mutations within the human races leading to vastly different results.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
One such result was the creation of an immortal, and superpowered, race of human beings who were capable of feats unprecedented by the natural evolutionary human being that would unfold in the universe.
This, seemingly, is the origin of the MCU’s Eternals.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
These ten beings are family in that their creation is intertwined; born through the Celestial interference, they are very much humans, but also something very different.
The Eternals were cast with the charge of defending the human race, but by very specific instructions from the Celestials as to who they could protect.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
The beings for which humanity needed protection, were the consequence of the same evolutionary interference that created the Eternals.
The Deviants
Where the Eternals were created from Celestial experimentation, so were the Deviants.
A race of beings very similar to the Eternals, the Deviants were super-powered and immortal but differ from the God-like eternal race in many ways.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Where the Eternals were created to be physically beautiful and possess incredible power that would make they unmatched by other cosmic beings; Deviants were physically hideous and animalistic creatures, who contained power on a smaller scale than their counterparts.
These physical and often monstrous differences didn’t stop in their physical appearance, as many Deviants were less human; maintaining much more of an animalistic quality than the Eternals.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
This animalistic quality often gave way to more violent behavior, which is why the Eternals race was charged with the duty to protect humanity from the unpredictable madness that would often come of a Deviant creation.
Thanos himself was born with the Deviant mutation; yet, is assumed his Eternal lineage allowed him to be spared from the Eternals wrath during the events of the Avengers Infinity Saga.
These characters are so important because of their inherent connection to the very origins of the Marvel Universe.
The vital origin story of these characters has been referred to by Kevin Feige himself as “redefining” the MCU as we know it.
Source: Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Our complete guide to Marvel’s Eternals should give a nice overview to the characters as seen in the comic universe, but it will be intriguing to see how Chloe Zhao brings those characters, and this world to the big screen.
