With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now on hold and that unlikely to change anytime soon, The Eternals is looking to be a key part of our journey further into the cosmic side of the MCU. And though we don’t know a whole lot about the film just yet, what we have heard is certainly enough to get us excited and cautiously optimistic that this will be one of the House of Idea’s more intriguing upcoming projects.
As you surely know, writers Matthew and Ryan Firpo are looking to Jack Kirby’s 1976 work on the series for inspiration rather than Neil Gaiman’s version, and now, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has explained a little bit more about the angle they’re taking with the film.
While speaking with Collider at the Captain Marvel junket, the producer teased that The Eternals has the potential to be a true epic spanning tens of thousands of years.
“Everything after Endgame, and after Spider-Man: Far From Home, will be different and be unique, as we try to make every film. But seeing returning characters is certainly something we’re gonna do and want to do. But also introducing characters that the majority of the world has never heard of, much like Guardians, much like Avengers before we made Avengers. And there are lots of them.
Eternals are one group, but we like the idea of introducing an ensemble, doing an ensemble movie from the start, as opposed to building up as we did with the first Avengers. More like Guardians, not tonally, but in terms of introducing a new group of people. You were asking about ’60s, and ’70s before. Jack Kirby did an immense, amazing epic with Eternals that spans tens of thousands of years, and that’s also something we haven’t really done, which is why that among many other things post-Endgame, we find appealing.”
For those unfamiliar with the property, the Eternals are a different species of human – in much the same way as homo neanderthalis differs from homo sapiens. Unlike Neanderthals though, Eternals have a cosmic energy within them that makes them essentially immortal and also provides them with a very powerful set of abilities, including super strength, flight and a variety of psychic powers.
What’s perhaps most exciting though is that there’ve been rumors which say Marvel may use the Eternals to introduce the X-Men and mutants into the MCU, as the comics have teased that the Celestial race were responsible for inserting the X-gene into the human race. Chalk that up as speculation for now, but as soon as more on The Eternals surfaces, we’ll be sure to let you know.