Eternals 2021

I’m not entirely sure if this is going to stick, but my New Year’s resolution for 2026 is to try and watch some more superhero movies and write reviews on this site. I’m currently trying to catch up through the various MCU movies that I have missed over the past few years, as the most recent MCU content that I’ve watched are right here on this site, Quantumania and Deadpool and Wolverine. On the TV side of things I watched just a couple episodes of Secret Invasion and Agatha All Along, nothing specifically against either of those shows, just never got around to watching any more. But anyway, I decided to go back to the earliest MCU movie that I’ve missed which was Eternals. Similar to the Marvels, I hadn’t heard a lot of good things about this movie with many people at the time saying that it was MCU’s first big misstep. Personally, I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and thought it was a different perspective on superheroes. I also didn’t care that it generally stayed out of the way from the rest of the connected universe and just told its own story.

The Eternals themselves are a group of ten immortal beings sent to planets by the Celestials in order to help cultivate intelligent life in order to support the birth of a new Celestial, they’re also sent to control and destroy the Deviants which were also sent by the Celestials to hunt the most dangerous predators in order to allow intelligent life to flourish. The group sent to Earth consists of ten Eternals with different abilities and names very similar to various names from myths and legends and the movie implies that those myths were spawned from the Eternals. Ikarus in place of Icarus who has the ability to fly and shoot energy beams out of his eyes, he was always referred to as the most powerful, but that didn’t seem to fall in line with what we were shown through the movie and his abilities were on par with the other fighters Thena, Gilgamesh, and Makkari. The parallels to his namesake were interesting as he was the traitor and really the villain of the movie, he didn’t listen to the leader of the group Ajak and ultimately died by flying literally into the sun. Thena has the ability to create weapons and shields from energy and fights in melee combat similar to her namesake Athena the warrior goddess of wisdom. On top of that, she suffered from a condition that was initially described as her thousands of years of memories being too much for her and caused her to have a psychotic break. And later on it was revealed that it was actually caused by memories of past planets leaking into her current memory which could be described as her having too much wisdom.

Trying to go through these a little more quickly because even though they don’t relate directly to the story, it is quite interesting to examine the relation between the ancient and mythological characters and how they were adapted into these Eternals characters who within the context of this story actually predate those stories and are likely the initial inspiration for the stories, likely initiated by the Eternals own storyteller Sprite. Interestingly Makkari closely resembles the Roman name of Mercury although Ikarus, Sersi, and several others follow the Greek names. Mercury is most commonly known as the messenger god with the gift of speed, which Makkari also has, but he is also the god of communication and thieves which makes sense as Makkari has a tendency towards thievery and while she is portrayed as a deaf character, she is still able to communicate through sign language and she can sense the vibrations in the air when others are speaking though it is annoying when that explanation presented within the movie basically means that she isn’t actually deaf at all, she just doesn’t hear through her eardrums, just through whatever means she has to sense those vibrations aka how an eardrum works. Sersi is more or less the main character of the movie and the one who gets the most screentime. Her namesake is the Greek goddess Circe who notably uses her magic wand to transform those who wrong her into animals, while Sersi can transform any nonliving material into something else, though she does more than once turn something into a flock of birds without any comment. Ajak is the least like their namesake as Ajax was a strong, Greek warrior while Ajak’s ability is to heal though she is the leader of the Eternals. Phastos is the engineer of the Eternals following his namesake Hephaestus who is the armorer of the gods. Kingu is connected to the Mesopotamian god Quingu who interestingly is married to Tiamat which is the name of the Celestial set to be born of the Earth. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of connection between his character and Quingu though Tiamat was the personification of the sea which is where the Celestial was beginning to emerge.

The names and abilities of the Eternals were interesting, but what the movie really feels to be about was the interpersonal relationships of the characters as well as their questioning of their own existence and religion as it were. They were initially sent to Earth by the Celestial Arishem and in the latter half of the movie it’s revealed that they were created by Arishem as a type of automaton that couldn’t evolve and therefore remained stagnant and ultimately controllable by Arishem who would erase their memories after each successful mission. He also created the Deviants which Arishem explains had the ability to evolve which made them too good at their job and was the reason why he created the Eternals to deal with them. There was a lot of interpersonal drama, but the key element throughout was the love that they had for each other. Ikarus and Sersi loved each other, which comes into play during the final climax of the movie. Sprite loved Ikarus, Ajak loved all of the Eternals, and Gilgamesh loved Thena enough to protect her despite her mental condition. Besides those relationships, there’s also the philosophy where the Eternals question their entire existence as they were created to watch over the humans, but not interfere with their warfare and destroy the Deviants. But that was all in order to facilitate the birth of a Celestial that would destroy the entire population of Earth, but would in turn lead to the creation of several other life sustaining planets that would create billions of other intelligent life forms. In the climax, Sprite and Ikarus believe that sacrificing the Earth for billions of future lives was the correct thing to do, while everyone else thinks that they should sacrifice the Celestial in order to protect those that are currently alive on Earth.

There is a lot to unpack in this movie and that barely even touches on the overall plot which is filled with flashbacks across varying points in Earth history involving different eras and civilizations. There’s also the subplot with the evolving Deviant who kills and absorbs the powers of two of the Eternals, evolving it into a more intelligent being yet it still sides with the traitor Ikarus with no explanation and just dies an unfulfilling death after the movie questions whether or not the Deviants are actually evil or if they could be something more than that. The battles were visually interesting and especially the fight at the end between Ikarus and the rest of the team was very kinetic. It’s understandable that some of the decisions that this film makes might not have been the best, but there’s a lot to enjoy in the world that this movie creates and I hope that this isn’t the end of these characters within the MCU. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.