The latest movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Eternals, is less than a month away. It follows a group of immortal superheroes who have been living on Earth for thousands of years and have to reunite to do battle with an evil group called the Deviants.
How does the movie fit into the larger MCU? Originally, Eternals was supposed to be the first Marvel Phase 4 movie after Avengers: Endgame. The order was supposed to go as such: Black Widow, then The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney Plus, then Eternals.
The release dates have since been shifted around and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings made it to theaters first. The overall timeline, however, remains unaffected.
Eternals is set around the same time as Spider Man: Far From Home, Eternals producer Nate Moore said. “Again, they sort of operate on a different system. Although, Far From Home does take place in London, ironically. So it’s sort of an undefined time. I don’t think it’s, years have not passed, I will say that.”
Because the Eternals are immortal, the movie jumps back and forth from the past to present day. Moore said that more than half of the movie is set in the present and the rest jumps around to different points in time.
“So it’s a big cosmic crazy movie set on earth over 7,000 years,” Moore said. “[Avengers: Endgame events] don’t directly affect [Eternals], although the Eternals are quite aware of what happened in the Endgame and what happened with Thanos, and you sort of get to hear their opinion about what happened and why maybe they didn’t get involved. So it is both in a post-Endgame world, but isn’t a direct line, as far as storytelling.”
Moore added that because there are 10 main characters in Eternals, there won’t be any major cameos like Spider-Man or Captain Marvel.
“These characters have been around for all of the movies that we loved and know the characters that we know to some degree,” Moore said. “So, there is a notion that it re-contextualizes a couple of characters and how you view them. But again, it also is very self-contained to some degree.”
Eternals opens in theaters on November 5th and stars Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, and Kumail Nanjiani.