Ok so the Eternals ending and the post-credits scene has a lot to unpack from it. The movie is packed with Easter eggs, brand new characters and it also fills in a lot of the history of the MCU and its creation.
Throughout this video, we’re gonna be breaking the entire movie down and also giving our thoughts on it as a whole.
The Eternals is the first MCU movie ever to end up getting labelled as Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes and I think whether it deserves this or not is gonna be highly debated for a long…long…long time.
Now from this point onwards, it’s full spoilers ahead so if you haven’t had a chance to check it out then I highly recommend you check out now. If you love the video 3000 then please smash the thumbs up button and subscribe to stick around longer than Sersi.
With that out the way, welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, now let’s get into the Eternals.
Ok so I wanna talk about the main plot points in the movie first before diving into the post-credits scene but if you wanna skip ahead then timecodes are gonna be linked below. The movie is packed with a lot of exposition and it very much explores the circle of life within a universe.
Now like a lot of Sci-Fi movies that have to fill you in on big chunks of lore, the movie opens with a block of text that lets the story of the Celestials and how they created the universe. It details how Arishem created the first sun which brought life into the universe.
It was perfectly balanced as all things should be but then a predator emerged which was known as the Deviants. They were thought to emerge from deep space but we learn throughout the movie that they were actually created by the Celestials. Much like the comics, they were made to protect planets from predators but they turned against their masters in an attempt to feed on all life.
Thus Arishem apparently sent the Eternals from the planet Olympia to take them down. This turns out to be false but we’ll talk about that later on in the video.
Early on we see golden spheres bringing them to life and these become very important later on for the film’s plot and one of the post-credit scenes.
The Eternals arrived on Earth in 5000 BC and we’re introduced to their members which are Sersi, Ikaris, Kingo, Sprite, Phastos, Makkari, Druig, Gilgamesh, Ajak and Thena.
They defeat the deviants pretty easily but some remained on Earth and thus they decided to stay and integrate with human society, Over the millennia the Eternals helped to take us from land-dwelling simpletons into simpletons that have iPhones.
The movie spans millennia and we learn that they pretty much had a hand in every major breakthrough in human history.
This included things like the plough, steam engine, atomic bomb, crazy frog, the birth of the United States and the creation of 90s pop sensation the backstreet boys.
We learn that they stayed together until 1521s which is when Thena’s memories got too much for her and this fractured her mind which sent her into attack mode.
She turned on the group and thus Ajak wanted to erase memories but she didn’t go through with this and instead the group disbanded after protesting this move. Ajak instructed them to find their own purposes and when they’re reunited tell her what they found.
They all have their own stories but I think Kingo has the funniest one. He ended up becoming a Bollywood actor and even pretended to be his own grandson and son in order to explain why he hadn’t aged. He’d pretty much created an entire fake family based around himself so that he could keep acting and it’s a pretty creative backstory that I’m sure Keanu Reeves will end up adopting too.
Druig ended up leaving with a group of humans in order to see if there was a way to stop us warring.
He possesses the ability to control minds and he pretty much wants to stop the self-destructive path that humanity was on.
Phastos went off to have a family, Makkari remained on the ship and Gilgamesh took Thena to care for her.
After a relationship that lasted several lifetimes, Sersi and Ikrais split up and she left which led to her moving to England. Sersi started dating Dane Whitman who you might know as being the Black Knight from the comics. Sprite was sent to her by Ajak to check-in to see if she was ok and that’s pretty much where we pick up with them.
A little help please?
Now one big question that was floating around about the movie is ‘why didn’t they help stop Thanos.’ They ended up hanging back like Batman during the Doomsday fight and the movie actually gives a pretty good answer. The Eternals were supposed to be there for us to protect us from the deviants but they also understood that if they stepped in the way of every single threat that it would harm our own development. Nothing breeds change like a challenge and thus they’ve waited on Earth until they’re told they can return home, only intervening when absolutely necessary.
Now the present-day stuff is where the true thrust of the movie comes from and after an Earthquake rocks the planet, a Deviant emerges that has the ability to regenerate itself.
Ikaris arrives and helps out and together they travel to Ajaks house to find her dead by deviant.
From this point onwards they reunite with the rest of the group and unearth exactly what’s going on.
Now Ajak had an orb that allowed her to communicate with Arishem and this goes into Sersi which leads to the discovery that there is a seed within the planet. This is actually an unborn celestial and as the intelligent population grows, the seed does along with it.
Once a planet get to a certain point the seed will be able to finally come to fruition and the Celestial will fully form which will completely destroy the entire planet. This is known as the Emergence and it’s something that the celestials have carried out since the dawn of time in order to birth Celestials.
Celestials then create new suns and galaxies and thus the Celestials must be birthed from this destruction in order to allow the rest of the universe to survive. We learn the one on Earth is called Tiamut and in the comics, he’s known as the dreaming Celestial.
The Earthquake was a part of this process and slowly the pieces all start to fall into place…that show as I’ve been saying #ThanosWasRight.
Interestingly the Avengers bringing everyone back with the blip actually sped up the process as the planet suddenly thrived once more which made everything move faster than Kevin Spoilers.
Now we discover that the Celestials made the deviants to protect the population of a planet but they ended evolving and turning against their masters.
Upon a planet being destroyed, the deviants were killed along with it and thus they are trying to stop the emergence for their own survival.
This led to the Celestials having to create the Eternals to take them out and everything is very much shrouded in shades of grey. The Eternals are synthetic and therefore incapable of evolution and thus they haven’t carried the same faults that the deviants had.
We discover that the Eternals have been complicit in the destruction of several planets and that they’ve had their minds erased after each emergence so that they can go to other planets and continue to carry out the process again.
Athena went crazy because her mind wasn’t correctly erased and she still carried forth some of the memories from these past processes.
There is no Olympia and the Eternals are all machines that are created in the world forge which is where their memories are stored.
I really enjoyed this exploration into the lore and though it’s very heavy on the exposition I enjoyed how the movie kinda gave each set of characters its own drives and motivations that you could completely understand. I’ve seen some reviews say that each of the characters is underdeveloped and even one review about this movie basically being what would happen if the first time that we were introduced to the Avengers was in their team-up movie. I have to completely disagree and I think that each of them works well, has their own complexities and also their own flaws which makes them easy to see eye to eye with.
After meeting with Druig they’re attacked by the Deviants leader who you may know from the comics. He absorbs Gilgamesh’s and evolves which causes the Eternal to die. Because of this Druig agrees to help put the celestial in the planet to sleep.
They go to Phastos who because of his husband and son has realised that humanity has good in them. He initially was destroyed because of the creation of the atomic bond and he agrees to join them in order to create a uni-mind…which is a terrible name.
They venture to the ship and find Makkari and shortly after we learn that Ikaris has been well aware of the Emergence process for a long time and he went to Ajak to find that she’d changed her mind about carrying it out. When they split up she went amongst the humans to find that they live, laugh, love and that the cost of all these lives is too much.
However, Ikaris betrayed her and fed her to the deviants. He brought everyone together to protect them from the deviants and once his plan is revealed he turns on the group. Sprite leaves with him and Kingo drops out of the group because he agrees with his point of view, however, he’d rather not fight his friends and he’s basically just fence-sitting.
All’s Fair In Love and War
Together the remaining Eternals vow to stop Ikaris and the emergence which leads to them all going head to head. Kro arrives during this and Athena kills him which brings her memories back. Druig is blocked from controlling the celestial but Sersi then starts to connect to it which is when Sprite stabs her in the back. She says that because she can’t grow up that living amongst the humans was torture as she realised she’d never been able to experience a full life.
Druig knocks her out and Sersi begins to turn the celestial to stone.
Ikaris goes to stop her but he realises that because he loves her that he can’t bring himself to kill her and together they all unite to stop the emergence.
After stopping the destruction Ikaris makes like his namesake and flies towards the sun but he goes all the way into the star.
Sersi uses her abilities to transform Sprite into a real girl and after a last supper, Druig, Thena and Makkari travel into space to more Eternals. Sersi and Kingo watch as Sprite goes off to school and Dane says that though he’s still trying to get his head around everything that he loves Sersi no matter what. Dane teases that he has a complicated family history and Arishem pulls the Eternals into space. He states that he knows that they chose the planet over the birth of a celestial and says he will look through their memories and return with a judgement which will decide whether humanity deserves to live or not.
For the final scene, we journey back to Earth and see Dane panicking because he’s just watched his girlfriend being pulled into space.
That kinda takes us into the second post-credits scene in which we watch him debating whether he should take an ancestral sword that belonged to his family.
This is contained in a box with medieval markings on it and upon moving his hand towards it the Swords starts to react.
This is clearly setting him up to become the Black Knight, a Marvel hero that’s been part of groups such as The Avengers and Heroes for hire.
Throughout the history of Marvel, there have been several versions of the character which are all part of the same family tree. They’ve passed on this mantle down through their children and originally Whitman’s uncle was a villain. This adds a lot to the complicated history that he talks about and in the comics, Dane’s uncle passed the sword to him and said that he should restore the honour that his criminality had destroyed.
At one point in the comics, both she and Sersi travelled back in time together and it could be possible that the pair will indeed be going through the ages in a future film in order to discover the sword’s origins. This would also allow him to interact with his ancestors and learn about all the things his family had done.
The Knights Watch
Now the sword he finds is likely the Ebony Blade which, like his family, has somewhat of a complicated nature to it. Though it can bestow great power on those that can wield it, it also has a downside. The sword is cursed and if one spends too much time wielding it they can become violent, aggressive and corrupted. I think this would make a really good storyline for the future and it definitely may be a direction that they take things in sequels.
Now why something reality breaking could be happening, is because he hears a disembodied voice asking if he’s ready. I’ve spoken to a lot of people and no one seems to know exactly who it is but I actually think it sounds a lot like Jeffrey Wright aka The Watcher. The Watcher only tends to appear in a universe upon something major happening and in the comics when he arrived during Civil War, the heroes caked their pants because they knew it was a signal that things could go very badly.
That’s also the kind of vibe that I get from this moment and due to the curse potentially being placed on the blade it is possible that this moment could lead to either a new defender being created for Earth or an evil antagonist.
I think we will likely get the former over the latter but The Eternals has shown us with Ikaris that things can go beyond being black and white.
Now the second post-credits scene picks up with the Eternals in Space and we meet two brand new characters. The first is Pip The Troll who hails from the planet Laxidazia. Pip didn’t originally look like a troll but the character ended up drinking a liquor that transformed him into one and thus he was exiled from the planet.
After that he travelled through the universe before he eventually ended up joining forces with Adam Warlock who we now know is going to be played by Will Poulter in the MCU. Warlock was teased at the end of Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2 and it is possible that Pip may appear in the third film or that he could end up meeting Adam in the next Eternals movie.
Now Pip is very much there to introduce Eros aka Starfox who’s played by Harry Styles. Upon entering Pip lists off everything you need to know about him and as he mentions he is indeed the brother of Thanos. Now in the comics, Thanos was a citizen of Titan but the character had a deviant gene which is what gave him his appearance. Thanos wanted to bring genocide to the planet in order to save the planet from destabilising and this led to his banishment. We haven’t really seen the relationship between Eros and his brother and I would love to have it shown in things like flashbacks or potentially the multiverse.
Pip also states that he defeated black roger and he follows this up by saying he’s from Mystery Planet. Now Black Roger is likely a nod to Dark Roger who was the monarch of Mystery Planet but after Pip called him Black Robert, I’m not sure he knows the correct name anyway.
Eros confirms that he too is an Eternal in their greeting and this could mean that much like the comics, Thanos is also one who simply carried a deviant gene. I’m not sure how it works with them being machines but potentially Thanos was aware of Celestial plan and this is why he wanted to keep the population down to a certain amount.
Now Eros is actually the younger brother of Thanos and though initially, he had no aspirations of being a hero, this changed when one of Thanos’ attacks led to the death of their mother.
Over the years the pair have gone head to head and he wields several cosmic powers similar to the Eternals. After relocating to Earth he joined the Avengers and got the name Starfox. The Eternals all have their own abilities and he can induce pleasure amongst people which makes them obsessed with him.
Eros presents a sphere and says that though their friends are in big trouble, he knows where to find them. Now, this clearly teases that the Eternals will continue the search for more of their kind and I actually think that this will lead to them showing the rest of the Eternals in the galaxy the truth about their mission.
This could lead to an all-out war against the Celestials and I think it would be really tense if Arisham returned to Earth to say that he’d decided to destroy the planet and thus the heroes had to unite in order to take him down. I’d love it if Galactus was introduced through and when the trailer first dropped a lot of people thought that he was Arisham. Though it’s not really in line with the comics, he could end up becoming a servant of them and they could push Galactus into destroying the planet.
That’s pretty much a big deviation from what’s in the source material but I’m just thinking of how they could tie everything together.
Either way I can see them heading towards an Eternals vs Celestial showdown as this movie clearly hinted towards them being on opposite sides to the Eternals.
I think that in the next entry they’ll travel to the forge and regain all their memories. They were told by Arishem that this is where they were kept so that makes sense to be a MacGuffin in the next movie.
I think that would be a great direction to take the series but let us know your thoughts.
Now as for my thoughts I’m getting to the point now where I seem to disagree with every single rotten tomatoes score as I really enjoyed this. Though it’s the first Rotten MCU movie I think that it’s way better than Captain Marvel, The Incredible Hulk, Black Widow, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Thor and Thor The Darkworld.
Though it has a lot of weighty exposition I found most of the conversations to be worthwhile philosophical ones that discussed heavy topics like life and death on a universal scale. Each of the characters also had their own aspects to them and I found each of the points of view relatable in some ways.
An Eternal Runtime
Now the movie is a long one but I really didn’t mind the run time. I find with a lot of Marvel movies that you can often tell they’ve had to cut stuff out to keep things moving but it was actually nice to just spend time with the characters and hear what they had to say.
Saying that though I completely understand that this movie won’t be for everyone and that there will be a lot of people that just don’t like it. Weirdly it feels at points more like a DC movie than a Marvel one and that’s even without the references to Batman and Superman. I think that it’s still a pretty strong entry though and even if it’s not in my top ten, it’s probably one of my preferred origin stories because it’s not just going through the motions like a lot of them are.
Now with the praise of course comes some negativity and I think that the action is lacking at points in the film. It doesn’t really have many spectacles and a lot of the time the battles are pretty small scale with people just flying around and punching the deviants. There’s also a lot of characters to comprehend with and I think that some of them could’ve been cut from the film without us missing them at all.
Still though, The Eternals was way better than I was expecting and I dunno if it’s because I heard it was terrible that I went in thinking it wouldn’t be that good. As we discussed on my last Dune video, expectations before a movie can often decide your eventual enjoyment so I do kinda wanna sit on this for a couple of days before I come all out and say exactly how I feel about it. This is very much the first reaction to it and I am going to see it again tomorrow which should kinda clear up how I feel.
Saying that though, coming straight out of the cinema and starting to work on this video I’m way more focused on the positives of the movie over the negative.
I think it’s gonna be a divisive film but I’m definitely in the camp of people that enjoyed it. Chloe Zhao has brought something new to the MCU and this is a philosophical movie about what it means to be human which I really appreciate.
Though it’s not gonna be many people’s favourites I’d love to see the Eternals back and because of that, I’m scoring it a…
7.5/10
Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the film as I can tell from the early reactions on Twitter that people are very divided on it.
Leave them below and just to let you know, we’re running a competition right now and giving away 3 copies of the Zack Snyder’s DC Trilogy on the 30th Of November. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is like the video, make sure you subscribe with notifications on and drop a comment below with your thoughts on the episode. We pick the comments at random at the end of the month and the winners of the last one are on screen right now so message me @heavySpoilers if that’s you.
If you want something else to watch then make sure you check out our breakdown of the perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace
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