Headscratchers / Eternals

Arishem taking/not taking certain Eternals.

• Why didn’t Arishem take Phastos along with Kingo, Sprite and Sersi at the end? He was just as responsible for killing Tiamut.
  • Will re-check, but this troper remembers that it was Phastos and not Sprite, who was taken.
  • Phastos was in fact taken while Sprite, no longer an Eternal was left behind.
• Why was Kingo taken? He outright refused to take part in putting Tiamut asleep.
  • Possible that he is considered an Accomplice by Inaction for not trying to stop the others.
  • Arishem is not omniscient. He most likely didn't know Kingo sat out the big fight, the same way he has no idea where Thena, Makkari, and Druig are.
  • Arishem isn't taking the Eternals for having killed Tiamut; he's taking them to study their memories and thus judge whether humanity was worth the sacrifice.
• Additionally, why weren't Thena, Makkari, and Druig taken? They had just as much of a role in defeating Tiamut as Sersi and Phastos.
  • They flew off into space on their ship and have been off-world for weeks by the time Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo were taken.
  • It's possible Arishem left them alone because he suspected he wouldn't find many memories of Humanity in them. Thena lived in isolation, Makkari was never seen leaving the ship, and Druig probably didn't bother walking among and getting to know his "subjects".
  • Another possibility is that Arishem only actually went to Sersi. He is never seeing paying much mind to the Eternals beyond the appointed leader (which is probably the only he can locate, thanks to the same device they use to communicate). Kingo and Phastos likely just had poor timing and bad luck, so they ended scooped up with Sersi.
  • The machines that took Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo were probably just automated devices programmed to find and capture Eternals. Arishem most likely did not know about their internal division on whether or not to kill Tiamat, and he probably thought they were all responsible for the death, so he set the devices to bring all Eternals on Earth to him. But since the others had left the planet, and since Sprite didn't register as an Eternal anymore, the devices captured the only three Eternals they could still find.

The Battle of Tønsberg

• During the dinner the Eternals share at Gilgamesh's house, Kingo mentions that the Eternals helped the Asgardians fight and defeat the Frost Giants in the Battle of Tønsberg, seen in the prologue of Thor. How were they able to intervene in that battle without violating their Alien Non-Interference Clause, as they are only supposed to act if Deviants are involved?
  • Simple, Deviants were involved somehow.
    • That, or Arishem command them to intervene.
    • Which is in all likelihood quite probable. The Frost Giants were probably going to send Midgard (Earth) into a new Ice Age, which would have thrown off their plans something fierce.
    • Alternatively, they were only instructed not to intervene in EARTH conflicts, and assisting in off-planet battles doesn't count.
    • Unlikely. They never intervene against Thanos, even when he wanted to snap half the Universe's population.
    • They wouldn't have had time or knowledge to deal with Thanos; check out the Fridge page.
  • Neither the Asgardians nor the Frost Giants would be considered human so there shouldn't be any conflict of interest for the Eternals.

Deviants

• So, if the Eternals were created as a direct result of Deviants' over-enthusiasm for murder, and they've been to thousands of planets before Earth,why are there still Deviants? Do they follow the Eternals from planet to planet or are they recreated each time despite Arishem knowing they were flawed?
  • Arishem mentioned the Deviants evolving was a mistake but kept setting them on planets For Science!.
  • Following up on the above, the reason Arishem takes away the Eternals' memories is so he can study the Deviants themselves (he specifically says as much to Sersi). It's likely he's studying the various, ah, deviations in order to finally come up with a version that isn't so keen on eating the locals indiscriminately.

The location of the other Eternals

• How did Sersi, Ikaris and Sprite know where to find the other Eternals?
  • Kingo being a Bollywood star makes him a very public figure. The others, Ikaris didn't settle down in one place like Sersi and Sprite, and can fly, so he could discover the others' whereabouts even if not keeping in touch with them (aside from Ajak).
  • We know that Sprite briefly lived with Kingo and Ajak, Ajak comforted Phastos in Hiroshima as well. Meanwhile, Ikaris didn't seem to have any trouble going straight to Ajak's cabin as if he'd been there before. so it's likely that they kept in touch at least enough that they could find each other again.

Celestial Interference

• Why didn't Arishem intervene when Sersi, Kingo, Phastos, Druig, Thena, and Makkari were preventing Tiamut from emerging.
  • He's a hands-off, Orcus on His Throne sort and didn't realize they were interfering. When he picks up the remaining Eternals from Earth, he doesn't even seem that mad that Tiamut was lost.
    • Arishem is very angry about Tiamut's death, however he seem more interested in discover why the Eternals decided to save this planet in particular.

Tiamut

• It was said that the reason that Sersi managed to turn Tiamut to stone was because the Celestial had joined the Unimind. Was this possibly a case of Tiamut willingly dying to protect the earth? Or was it just that as a “newborn” Celestial, Tiamut connected unknowingly and accidentally provided the power to end their own life?
  • Sersi transformed a Deviant into a tree conecting herself with Arishem's power though the Orb and nothing indicated that Arishem even noted it. So, basically the second option is the more likely.
  • Since Sersi sounds grateful that Tiamut joined the Uni-Mind, it's possible that Tiamut did do it on purpose to allow Earth to survive.
  • The newborn Celestials connect to the Eternals upon awakening to retrieve the Eternals and their memories; it's really just a coincidence and lucky break that Celestials do so allowing Sersi to turn Tiamut to stone.

Stinger Question

• How can Eros be both an Eternal and a Titan?
  • Ethnicity and nationality are two different things. Just like you could be a person of Japanese descent who's lived their entire life in Canada, Eros can be an Eternal who lived the majority of his (current) life on Titan.
  • To put it more simply, Eros is most likely a volunteer Eternal. Which, considering the purpose of the MCU Eternals, makes for Adaptational Villainy compared to his 616 counterpart.
  • To my mind, the most likely explanation is that Eros isn't both an Eternal & a Titan, but rather that he was adopted by A'Lars in this continuity. Granted he would been adopted as an "adult" but weirder things have happened in real world history.
    • Chloe Zhao confirmed that Eros is an Eternal who became the adoptive brother of Thanos.
    • I assumed that the Royal Family of Titan are likely the 10 Eternals sent to Titan which would include Eros, A'Lars and Sui-San. Thanos was most likely adopted (probablty abandoned for his appearance). If MCU Thanos is revealed to be an Eternal later down the line he either has Deviant syndrome much like the comics or Arishem made him that way the same way he made Sprite a forever Child. Though Thanos never shown having the golden cosmic power or glowing eyes/energy lines the other have when using powers.
    • The other possibility is Thanos is the biologically disfigured child of A'Lars and Sui-San but was given up. Eros' family adopted him out of pity but they were probably all Eternals and not truly relatives or Eros' created his own royal dynasty and pulled a My Grandfather Myself (much like Kingo) over the centuries with each Prince Eros being thought to be the son of the previous King Eros.

Non interference

• So they aren't allowed to interfere except when deviants get involved or are otherwise ordered to by Arishem, but they are allowed to give humanity technology and essentially rule over them as gods just fine?
  • The five military-minded Eternals were only allowed to use their powers to combat the Deviants and keep humanity safe. Meanwhile, the five spiritual-minded Eternals were tasked with guiding humanity's development so that human intelligence can feed the development of Tiamut in Earth's core, with Phastos gifting technology at different points in history while Sprite seeded cultures with stories to inspire exploration and innovation.
  • Actually, they were not supposed to give technology or rule them either. If Phastos and Druig did it anyway is because they are still individuals with their own free will.
• So Sprite can put on illusion movies and everyone's cool but the steam engine is beyond what man was meant to know? The unexplainable cosmic powers would be more of a mind screw. Just seems like they have some pretty arbitrary notions of what mankind is ready for.
  • As discussed above, the Eternals are tasked with specific jobs. Sprite was tasked with inspiring humans to greater heights with her stories. Using fancy lights to better articulate her stories is not the same as moving civilization forward by thousands of years. To put it in perspective, the steam engine was invented in 1698 AC. Babylon was founded in 2300 BC. Babylon was so ancient and unadvanced they are credited with inventing the freakin' wheel. The wheel. Say what you will about the Eternals, but Ajak had a point about not giving pre-bronze age primitives advanced technology when they weren't ready.
  • Eternals showing up in films has little consequences. They are meant to be works of fiction, and people who watch them will take them as such. None of us is really troubled about Thanos, for example, because regardless what happens within the plot we know that it's just an actor and a lot of makeup/CGI/whatever. The idea that Marvel has an actual purple alien working in their films... is not an idea anyone would take seriously. Same within the story with those films where Sprite appears.

Apathy towards Ego

• In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Ego the Living Planet started his Expansion because he couldn't find any of his fellow Celestials, and decided to remake the universe in his own image. Given that the Celestials sent the Eternals to Earth for the sole purpose of building up the human population for the birth of Tiamut, how come Arishem never took issue with another Celestial planting his own seed on Earth to terraform its surface into his own image? And better yet, how did Ego never become aware of Arishem, Tiamut or the Eternals when he was on Earth?
  • The real question is probably whether or not Ego actually is a Celestial in the first place, and not, perhaps, Something Else (R).
  • He is something of a total liar.
  • Ego's seed escaped notice even by local townsfolk despite being just a few dozen yards behind a Dairy Queen. It simply never caught Arishem's attention at all, and the time the seeds were bursting into goo all over the galaxy, it was too late—and they also stopped bursting into goo within a few minutes, to be followed shortly by Ego's death, so...
  • Maybe any instance of Ego actually winning would have resulted in the Celestials showing up on his doorstep and giving him 'bro... not cool', looks.

Is Thanos a robot?

• In the mid-credit scene, it's established that Eros, brother of Thanos, originates from the planet Titan, but also is an Eternal as well. Since the Eternals are basically artificial creations created by the Celestials...does that mean Thanos is a robotic being?
  • More likely, it means that Eros is in voluntary service to the Celestials (for whatever reason that might be) and, unless he's been altered by them, is still biologically a Titan.
  • Another explanation is that the Eternals are bio-androids. Given that in the comics Thanos' appearance is the result of a deviant gene it is quite possible that movie adaptation of the Celestials use some cosmic bioengineering to create the Eternals — not simply cosmic robot things. The wire-frames are basically the circuits that allow the Eternals to draw their energy from their infinite energy supply and fuel their powers (as well as reinforce their bodies and making them tougher). The fact the Eternals bleed and are capable of being gravely injured by stabs to vital areas, but can take vicious blunt-force trauma fine, suggests this as well. This means that the Eternals' organic bodies are grown around this framework, using different genetic material to create their powers. They created the Deviants through pure bioengineering which would leave plenty of left over genetic material. Fact is that the Celestials are powerful but not perfect. They've made mistakes and misjudged before. Why wouldn't they reuse genetic material that already worked assuming they knew better this time around? Hence Thanos got the ugly gene by mistake.
  • Honestly Thanos being affected by the Mahd Wy'ry would explain a great deal about his personality.
  • Eros could have been "adopted" in this continuity & be Thanos' brother in the same sense that Loki & Thor are brothers. Granted he would have been adopted as a fully grown adult, but weirder things have happened in real world history so it's not entirely implausible.
    • Chloe Zhao confirmed in an interview that Thanos's family adopted Eros as one of their own.
    • I assumed that the Royal Family of Titan are likely the 10 Eternals sent to Titan which would include Eros, A'Lars and Sui-San. Thanos was most likely adopted (probablty abandoned for his appearance). If MCU Thanos is revealed to be an Eternal later down the line he either has Deviant syndrome much like the comics or Arishem made him that way the same way he made Sprite a forever Child. Though Thanos never shown having the golden cosmic power or glowing eyes/energy lines the other have when using powers.
    • The other possibility is Thanos is the biologically disfigured child of A'Lars and Sui-San but was given up. Eros' family adopted him out of pity but they were probably all Eternals and not truly relatives or Eros' created his own royal dynasty and pulled a My Grandfather Myself (much like Kingo) over the centuries with each Prince Eros being thought to be the son of the previous King Eros.

"Why did Arishem make me this way"?

• That's a legitimately good question Sprite. Why when designing the Eternals did Arishem, in his infinite wisdom decide: "You know what, as I create my new race of ageless immortals. I'm going to give this one, the body of a child. Because why not"?
  • Maybe something went wrong with her creation and she ended up somewhat defective.
    • The "assembly line" scene shows countless copies similar to her, so this was a deliberate choice.
  • On that note, why make one of them deaf? Seems like that could be a bit of a disadvantage in some scenarios.
    • The MCU wiki says Makkari is deaf so that she's immune to the sonic booms she emmits.
    • And yet Daredevil is immune to loud noises when super-hearing is his power. Eh, the wiki isn't official. Also, she feels vibrations, which means she isn't deaf.
    • Actually, that's one of his biggest weaknesses, even if the movie and tv show are inconsistent in portraying it.
  • It's possible that she was given a child form to be trusted more. Play on the usual imperative to protect children. It also allows her to engage children as one of them. He didn't care about how she'd feel about it since he doesn't consider it important. They aren't supposed to have romance; their entire purpose and being is to facilitate the birth of a new Celestial. That should be all the fulfillment she needs.
  • Given what we've seen of Arishem, it's most likely that he makes some of his Eternals look like children so they can blend in with all stages of sentient life, without knowing or caring that the Eternal in question will be socially treated like a child their entire existence, nor would he care how that might frustrate them since he regularly wipes their memories. He's not exactly known for his empathy.
  • Another possibility is that Arishem designed Sprite's "template" on a fundamentally flawed understanding of humanity. That he saw "smaller ones" trying stories, and took that as that the small are the storytellers of the race, not realizing that these are "children" and that they grow older.
  • Makes one wonder if Thanos is revealed to be one of the 10 Eternals sent to Titan. Why did Arishem make him large and purple? Comic-wise Thanos has deviant syndrome from A'Laes and Sui-San trying for a naturally born baby (the comics retconned this as being typically impossible for the Eternals to reproduce with each other). Though Eros clearly came out fine.

Was Earth really the first time?

• The Eternals have been helping out with emergences for millions of years, most likely uplifting and destroying thousands of planets for the Celestials. The guided evolution probably always required them to interact with people, so was Earth really the first time an Eternal grew to love life? The first time someone tried to stop an emergence?
  • More likely, it was the first time someone succeeded in stopping an Emergence. Any other times an Eternal (or group of Eternals) "went native", as it were, they were likely just reset to "factory defaults" after their mission was accomplished.
  • And who says it was the first case, and not just the case we saw? The universe is huge. And note that the Eternals left the planet to seek Eternals in other worlds and turn them, but that's another, unrelated event: others may stop their own emergences but then be unable to leave the planet, not be interested in that, or the idea did not cross their minds.
  • I think the Kree and Skrull worlds have had Deviants and Eternals comics wise. It possible that maybe their original planet got destroyed but many had colonised or expanded to other planets.
  • Another note, if Ego the Living Planet is a Celestial. Why was he just a brain with no body, why did he create a living planet as his body? Did the Eternals of his planet find a way to remove him from the core before his birth? Leaving him bodyless? Did he create a planet body for himself instictively due to being removed from his planet as Foetus before he could Emerge?
  • Also Knowwhere is not a planet but a colonised celestial skull. Comics Knull is responsible using the Necrosword (I think). Maybe Knowwhere skulls is what left of the celestial of another planet after their Eternals tried to prevent that emergence.

Eternals and the Snap

• Did all ten Eternals really survive the Snap back in 2018? And if they somehow did, it seems pretty odd that none of them acknowledge how the Snap and Blip could've affected their lives individually. Sure, nomads like Gilgamesh, Thena and Makkari might not have reacted that much, but Kingo, Sersi, Phastos and Druig must've had people in their lives disappear and come back. So why does it seem like none of the Eternals suffered any setbacks? Kingo in particular probably shouldn't be doing Bollywood performances in the five-year Snap interim or so soon after the Blip, especially since Endgame showed how hard the economy and entertainment industry crashed after half of humanity disappeared.
  • For the first question, the Celestials predate the Infinity Stones, so they and their tech are probably immune.
  • Given they lived through the black death, half of humanity vanishing was nothing new. Honestly Kingo likely got more popular, given how many entertainers got snapped.
  • It isn't entirely unlikely for a given group of ten people to survive out of half the universe; if the snap truly was random then it isn't going to go down the line of every arbitrary grouping of living beings that we'd recognize (friend groups, families, professions, nationalities, etc) and cut them fifty fifty; it's going to consider one group, that group being life, and cut it in half. Having said that, acknowledging that the Eternals are ultimately just highly advanced robots, it's entirely possible they didn't meet the stone's definition of life & were exempt from the snap on those grounds, whatever opinions they themselves, or any of us, might have regarding the validity of that definition.
    • The chance of this specific (because we are asking about this specific one, and not e.g. at least one group out of some general set of groups) group of ten to all survive is fairly low; as each one had a 0.5 chance of surviving, the chance of all ten surviving is 0.5^10, or about 0.1%. So the theory that robots are exempt seems more likely.
    • Which is a fair point, but we must remember the law of truly large numbers; on a large enough scale, we should expect unlikely events to happen. 0.1% of 7.5~ billion(using the sample size of just the sapient life on earth at the time of the snap) is still 7.5 million, so that percentile still has a lot of company. Still, gives us three plausible explanations - they're exempt because of their nature, they're unlikely but possible statistical outliers, or a few of them did in fact get dusted & they either didn't notice or didn't feel the need to bring it up, at least on camera.
  • Remember as well when Monica Rambeau got back: she wasn't even aware that something had happened to her until the people in the hospital told her. Same would happen if Makkari was dusted: at most she would notice that something odd happened, then dismiss it and keep reading, and forgot about it when the others came, ignoring that she had been dusted for a year. And same thing if Thena and Gilgamesh were both dusted, who would have noticed it? Upon his return, Gilgamesh would think the whole thing was because he was drunk.
  • Going back to the question of of whether or not the Eternals knew anyone who got snapped, I'd imagine that yes, Kingo, Sersi, Phastos, & Druig all probably did have people in their lives that got dusted. But it's notable that aside from Druig, they all keep themselves separated from most people they know to hide the whole, "I'm an immortal alien" thing. We can assume that Dane, Ben, & Jack probably didn't get snapped because that does feel like it would have come up in conversation in the film. Karun could have snapped & both he & Kingo seem like the kind of people who would offhandedly mention it as a thing of little consequence during the several hours of offscreen plane ride we didn't see in the movie. Those four are the only ones really in Sersi, Phastos, & Kingo's lives who's dusting would really impact them on a really emotional level. Druig could well have lost half his little cult & seems like he honestly wouldn't have cared very much after being informed what had happened.
  • If they're not immune due to being the direct creation of beings that precede the Stones, they might be due to being artificial. May come down to what Thanos (and/or the Stones themselves) consider to be life.
• Honestly, that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is if *Tiamut* counted as living for the snap.
  • At the risk of violating the rule of cautious editing judgment, I'm going to say "no" on the basis that Tiamut hadn't technically been "born" yet. That answer certainly isn't going to stir up any controversy at all.
  • Celestials may be immune because of being a form of life that preceded the Stones. They also might create more resources than they use (not many details are given about how they create galaxies or whatever), so if Thanos knew about them he may have exempted them from it - there's a decent chance he'd want there to be as many of them around as possible given his MCU motivation.

Dane knowing Doctor Strange

• How does Dane Whitman know who Doctor Strange is? He primarily operates in New York, and he's only really known by the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, both of which he only worked with briefly. How would a guy like him find out about his existence?
  • At a guess, Strange's involvement in the final battle with Thanos may have significantly raised public awareness of him. And the Masters of the Mystic Arts certainly don't seeming to be trying to hide anymore in any case; in Shang-Chi Wong certainly had no problem competing in an underground fighting ring or opening a portal in the middle of a crowded restaurant.
  • After the Blip, seems that people are more aware of others superheroes beyond the Avengers. Strange opening a magical portal in the middle of Central Park in full daylight back in Infinity War wasn't quite discreet. Also, considering that Kamala Khan is going to had a show, and she's known to be a huge fangirl of Captain Marvel, even Carol Danvers is now well-known.
  • Mysterio had a few people compare him to Doctor Strange as well. He's a well known superhero at this point.

Where was Kingo gonna go?

• Kingo leaves the climactic showdown because he agreed with Ikaris but didn't want to fight his friends. Fair enough. But without leaving Earth, what was he going to do if the Eternals failed in stopping Tiamut from hatching? Just wait for his death when the world blew up?
  • He would have been taken away with Tiamut and the other Eternals and back to Arishem's care for inspection. It's stated after the climax that the Eternals' connection to the newborn Celestial at the Emergence is what allows them to survive.

Does Arishem's non-intervention edict contradict his own goals?

• The Eternals are only allowed to intervene whenever Deviants—an exogenous predator—are involved, but are supposed to stay out of it when conflicts are caused by humans. We understand that this is because they're really shepherding sentient life to such large numbers it can sustain the birth of a new Celestial. However, there have been plenty of other alien threats that could have annihilated said sentient life or at least huge swaths of it (ahem, Thanos, ahem, Malekith). Even without the Infinity Stones to play with, Thanos had gained a reputation across the galaxy for conquering and culling entire planetary populations, which, unlike Ego's seeds, couldn't have escaped the Celestials' (or the Eternals local to those planets) notice. Thanos may not be a Deviant in the MCU, but the threat he posed all on his own was very specifically the kind of thing that stops new Celestials from being born.
  • He's a Celestial, you could not possibly comprehend his motives. And more to the point, the Eternals are not him. The Eternals were sent for a specific purpose, and if it's not their job to interpret that purpose. Truthfully, the window of time for them to do anything was too small anyway, and in most cases they almost certainly only became aware after it was all over.
  • Remember that the emergence needs a number of sentient life in the planet. Nobody said it had to be human. If the Chitauri succeed in taking over Earth, enslave or kill all humans, it changes nothing for Arishem: once there are enough of them, human or chitauri, free or enslaved, the sleeping Celestial will awake and destroy them all in the process. And devastating events that kill lots of humans? Irrelevant as well. Other humans will be born and their numbers will be replenished. Remember that humanity was born more or less 300,000 years ago, give or take, so clearly the Celestials can play things the long term.

Robert Oppenheimer's existence

• If Phastos was the one who created the technology mankind used to construct the atomic bomb, what did Robert Oppenheimer end up doing in the MCU?
  • Unfortunately all we can do is speculate. Most likely Phastos was one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project or otherwise influenced the idea of nuclear energy ala Forrest Gump. Alternatively, the nuclear bomb was just the end result of him spurring on technological advancement in general. His lamentation was from his guilt at (as being the Father of Technology) being responsible for such a huge atrocity, even if it wasn't on purpose. Either way it's probable that Oppenheimer's' existence is relatively the same.
  • One possibility is that he's less directly "giving" technology, and is instead playing a role similar to Ares in Wonder Woman. Not directly involved, but instead that little whisper to relevant parties that pushes them a certain way.
  • He's not saying he was directly involved. Just that his technology and pushing humanity to evolve is what led to that moment. He feels responsible for even urging humanity to become more technologically advanced, not for directly creating the bomb.

Bragging about being Thanos's brother

• Why would Eros openly brag to being Thanos's brother? Thanos would be one of the most despised beings in the galaxy at this point. One would think he'd be incredibly embarrassed and trying to hide his relationship. Indeed, bragging like this would open him up to misplaced retribution by victims of Thanos. It's honestly as bad as someone bragging about being Hitler's brother in 1946.
  • He's only bragging because A) it's to people who have been involved in way worse, and B) it means he's STRONG
  • Perhaps because he's a fool, but his power allows him that luxury. He may genuely think that his brother is cool, and if someone wants to kill him he can turn him into a happy smiling guy and go his way with just a casual look... and not even bother to figure out why that guy was so mad to kill him in the first place.
  • He doesn't. Pip does, without any prompting from Eros (who even tells him he doesn't need to do the introduction thing). As to why Pip insists on including it, he does because it's impressive, not because it's good.

Why oppose plan A?

• Okay so being in favor of allowing the Emergence to happen makes sense, but why does Ikaris decide to oppose the initial plan of letting Druig put Tiamut to sleep to give the Eternals time to evacuate the planet? What's the harm there? If it works things get delayed by a matter of decades which is what would have happened if the Blip hadn't happened and these people are (to their memory) thousands of years old so that's not exactly a long wait. If it doesn't work then you can interrupt plan b during the middle of it and not give the others time to prep for your betrayal.
  • Well for one, they're low on time. They all explicitly note that they have one chance to either have Druig put Tiamut to sleep and for Sersi to transmute Tiamut if that fails. To add on to this, Ikaris wants it to go ahead without any setbacks so he hands the team the ultimatum to back down or he kills them. And even if Ikaris was willing to go along with it, Tiamut was already going through the birthing process.
  • Also, Ikaris is sick of living at this point. He wants the Emergence to happen as soon as possible so he can be reset and sent to another planet, and possibly have another shot with Sersi.

Why not go with Druig's plan?

• Druig's mind control seemed to be putting Tiamut to sleep before Ikaris interrupted. So, why did Sersi decide to kill Tiamut when Druig could have non-lethally stopped the Celestial?
  • Because it seemed that Ikaris had killed Druigg. So they had to jump to plan B.
  • Even beforehand, they discuss how they'll start with Druig putting Tiamut to sleep but say that if he fails/is incapacitated, Sersi needs to go to plan B.
  • This troper guessed Tiamut was a foetus that's not solid, but rather intangible. Tiamut will only become solid/tangible during the Emergence. Tiamut emerged to the point Sersi was standing on their hand. Maybe putting Tiamut to sleep was the best option as most of their physical body is tangible and solid. Therefore, not able to safely fit in the Earth's core.
  • That or Ikaris lasering Druig injured him to the point that he couldn't focus his psychic powers. Hence why he knocked out Sprite with a rock rather than with his powers (it was mentioned by Gilgamesh that he had Druig use his powers to look after Thena whilst Gilgamesh went on holiday).

Phastos living in the USA

• Come on, are we really to believe that, with all the world at his disposal and no ties of loyalty to any nation, a black Eternal would have chosen to live in the country that enslaved black people? And try to give more advanced technology to them? Come on, we are talking of the USA in the forties, Phastos couldn't even sit on the front side of a bus back then, and we are to believe he would be both willing and capable to suggest them how to wield nuclear energy?
  • And where else would he go? Most advanced nations have similar backstories in their treatment of black people. The uS was an option as good as any. And besides, the oppressed Afro-Americans are very much not his "brothers". He is an Eternal. They, oppressed and oppressors, are all humans. They can go from "humans are weak and need our protection and guidance" to "Humans Are Special and deserve the right to do as they please", but never to "there's no difference between humans and us".
  • The movie doesn't actually say that Phastos was involved in helping the US create nuclear weapons, just that he helped humans evolve technologically and that this eventually led to the creation of nuclear weapons.
  • It's possible that Phastos didn't live in the US all this time. If he had, it's possible he moved around a lot over the centuries. I'd take a guess he met his husband Ben in Lebanon, but due to West Asian countries having discrimination against homosexuals, Ben likely chose to immigrate to the US where he believed it'd be easier for a homosexual black-passing alien and a West Asian man to get married and have a life together. Hell, they may have immigrated to the US after gay marriage became legal.

The Powersets

• Why the vast inconsistency and disparity of powersets, if the purpose of all Eternals is to keep Deviants at bay? Asgardians are at least all physically superhuman as a baseline, but among the Eternals only Gilgamesh, Ikaris and Makkari seem to have some physical enhancement. It seems a weird choice not to give them that advantage, which will increase their chances. Druig, Sersi and Ajak even have powers that don't work on Deviants, and while Sersi and Ajak can have some utility, Druig's powers only affect humans, which are supposed not to be involved in the fights in the first place. Is ambiguous if Thena and Phastos even have powers at all, particularly the latter (Thena can go toe to toe with a superhuman opponent, Phastos' power seems to merely have access to Celestial technology, and he doesn't make any improvement in millennia, while humans like Tony Stark and Shuri arguably surpassed him). As if wasn't bad enough, while the others seem to have one power each, Ikaris gets a full set. Why?
  • Because the Celestials work In Mysterious Ways. The doylist reason, however, is simple: in comics all Eternals have the same powers. That can make the characters less unique, and the fights less interesting (if an Invincible Hero is boring, imagine a whole team of them). So, unique powers for each one.
  • Or it could have help giving them more much-needed characterization given the limited screen time they had, showcasing how each of them honed a different aspect of their abilities (the same way Batman, the Green Arrow and Iron Man are vastly different despite having the same power). But even if you want to make them different powers to make them different, make it so all of them have some utility. Druig's power exist solely for the climax (when it doesn't get used anyway) and they didn't find anything he could do, and as such he actually just sits out all the fight scenes. The same applies to Ajak, whose regeneration only exists to make the villain threatening but never seems to help her. And then we have Sersi, Sprite and Phastos, whose powers (again, if Phastos being the tech guy could be called a power) could be useful, if the movie had any imagination in using them, which it painfully doesn't have, and so they also end up shelved unless they are forcefully attacked. What's the point in diversifying, if then the fight still end up being still the same three/four characters doing the same thing over and over again? There was also the perplexing choice to give Gilgamesh super-strength,but a very limited version and limited to his arms/one arm, to the point that the Deviant that absorbs him doesn't even end up using it. The choices don't make sense from a watsonian stand point, and failed to achieve anything they could have possibly have tried to do.
  • (which is a rather walloftexty way to say what the previous entry said in just 3 lines, but well...)
  • The Eternals aren't on Earth just to kill the Deviants. They are also there to help the population grow. Phastos powers help with that by inventing things like the plow, which helps the humans with producing food. His powers also have some use in combat, as seen by him restraining Ikaris during the climax. Druig can make sure that the humans don't attack the Eternals or get in the way while they are fighting Deviants. Ajak's healing powers are to make sure none of the other Eternals die.
  • While many of the powersets and the Eternals having a major case of Adaptation Wimp doesn't make sense. It would be a crazy revelation if Arishem has the the dead Eternals return with more of their comics power set. Indicating that he purposefully made them weak. Ajak comics wise is at least a Flying Brick and nicknamed the lord of flight. Whilst Gilgamesh is typically The Big Guy of the team. He but can also fly, use enhanced senses/telepathy to see (when he was temporarily blind) among other powers. Now imagine the remaining Eternals being forced to fightba resurrected Ikaris, Ajak and Gilgemesh when attemoting to rescue Kingo, Phastos and Sersi.

About Ego...

• Assuming Ego wasn't lying about being a Celestial, how'd he end up as just a brain floating in space? The other Celestials all look like they're in armor (Arishem even looking battle damaged on closer inspection) but Ego doesn't. Even Tiamut looked much the same when they were emerging. So what would cause Ego to be armorless?
  • Discarding the doylist explanation (they hadn't planned anything about the Celestials by that point, so they were pretty loose with the term), there is lying and there is being incorrect. Ego never met any other Celestial, after all, it's possible that he learned that Celestials were a race of ancient godly beings and thought that it must have been what he was, with simply no one knowing enough to correct him. Another chance is that something had been wrong (he didn't form completely, the planet was destroyed before he could form, or maybe he was supposed to have been dead but the brain survived without any memory of his past) and so he was discarded and abandoned.
  • Maybe the Eternals of Ego's planet faced a similar moral dilemma as the Eternals on Earth, but instead of killing the baby Celestial inside the planet they found a way for him to become one with planet, thus allowing both him and the planet's inhabitants to live? Only they failed to predict Ego could go crazy and kill everyone on the planet anyway.
  • Another note, if Ego the Living Planet is a Celestial. Why was he just a brain with no body, why did he create a living planet as his body? Did the Eternals of his planet find a way to remove him from the core before his birth? Leaving him a bodyless foetus? Did he create a planet body for himself instictively due to being removed from his planet as Foetus before he could Emerge?

Other Eternals in the solar system?

• In The Stinger, Eros says he, and presumably Thanos too, are Eternals. This was seemingly done to make the same connection between the Eternals and Eros and Thanos as there is in the comics, where their father Mentor was retconned to be an Eternal from Earth who went to Titan and started a family with a local woman. However, while this retcon worked in the comics, where there are hundreds of Eternals, and they have no special mission to tie them to Earth, the MCU is a different thing. The Eternal protagonists of the movie are specifically tasked to stay on Earth, and it's never even implied that any other Eternals would have arrived with them, nor that one or more of their group would have left for Titan. So where did Eros and Thanos come from? Since the Eternals' one and only mission is to guide planets with and Celestial egg inside them, are we to assume there's another egg inside Titan? And when Thanos went rogue and killed his entire planet, and after that, half of the universe, why didn't the Celestials or other Eternals interfere? Wouldn't killing half of the population of planets with Celestial eggs inside them be an issue for the space gods? And if Thanos is an android built by the Celestials, surely they would have means of stopping and capturing him, just like they did with Sersi, Phastos and Kingo at the end of this movie?
  • Having the same family tree and coming from the same planet are two very different things. Nowadays we know the solar system, including Titan, in way more detail than in the 1970s, to the point that aliens coming from elsewhere in the solar system pushes the Willing Suspension of Disbelief a bit too much. Other dimensions and solar systems too far away from ours are still fair game, but Mars, Jupiter Saturn, their moons, etc; we know fully well that there's nobody in there, that we would be incredibly lucky if there's just bacteria (note that the MCU Watcher lives in a place between dimensions and not in the Moon). As for Thanos, I understood that Titan died of overpopulation, and that's why Thanos was determined to reduce it. Seems perfectly clear now that Titan was victim of an Emergence, not from standard overpopulation crises, and that he simply explained himself in a way other who don't know about the Celestials would understand. As for Celestials not stopping him, what can I say? Arishem seems to be a terrible carefree boss. I mean, he told Sersi all the truths that she ignored, giving her the perfect motivation to renounce her mission, share it with the others and make them renounce as well and sabotage the Emergence, they did precisely that, they actually kill the borning Celestial... and Arishem only finds it out too late, when everything was already done. You had ONE JOB, bro!
  • Putting aside that Saturn's moon Titan and the planet Titan are two utterly different things, it was very clear that Thanos's homeworld hadn't been utterly shattered in the way that would have resulted from an Emergence. As stated in earlier comments, it seemed pretty clear that Eros was adopted by Thanos's family for... some unknown reason. Then again, this movie handwaved a lot of questionable details regardless, so YMMV.
  • Eros is probably just another Eternal that went rogue, either on a mission to Titan or winding up there later, and was considered a brother of Thanos for some reason (whether adoption, brothers in arms, whatever).
  • As to why the Celestials didn't stop Thanos, it could just be that they didn't care. Given what we've seen of alien life, it's possible that the vast majority of creatures Thanos snapped weren't on their original planets (and thus weren't fueling an Emergence). As to those who were, like humans, cutting the human population of Earth in half brings it back to what it was in the '70s. Even if other massive events had knocked the population down by a billion, that would still only set it back another decade or so. For beings that measure their lives in millions of years, waiting about a half a century longer probably isn't enough of a delay to matter very much to them.

Why keep the Eternals in the dark?

• Seriously, what's the logic behind only allowing one of the Eternals sent to a world to know the truth of what they really are and why they're there? Wouldn't it be more productive for all of them to be fully on board so as for there to be no risk of anything going wrong should they develop an attachment to the populace?
  • Presumably, Arishem thinks they'd be more likely to turn against their mission if they knew the truth, not less. And, frankly, he's been doing this for billions of years; he may well have experimented with both versions and deciding the Eternals not knowing the truth was safer.
  • Their mission involves getting sentient life to a fairly prosperous state. Giving them information that gets them emotionally invested in the locals might help with that - since they don't need to actually do anything for the Emergence to happen once the populace gets large enough, there's not really a need for them to know the truth. Plus, so far as we've seen, everyone Arishem directly told about the plan decided to rebel against it, which is a pretty good reason to tell as few Eternals as possible.

Ikaris' Grand Plan.

• Ikaris wants to make the Emergence happen. He knows that Ajak is the only other person who knows what is going on. When he kills her, he has already won. There's less than a week for the others to do anything, and the others haven't met in centuries and have no idea at all that the situation involves them. What he does then is bonkers: he brings back Ajak's corpse to her home and actively leads them there. If he didn't do anything, at most Sersi and Sprite would have visited the house, seen that Ajak was not home, and be left wondering what happened. Perhaps they'd start doing something to look for her, but more days would go by meanwhile. At no point it is shown that they could have found her body. He says "When the others realize something is happening to Earth, they'll come to you. When they find your body, they'll know the Deviants are back. It'll keep them busy until the Emergence". They were all busy leading their own lives and they are known for not interfering in anything not involving Deviants. Some of them didn't even act when having proof that the Deviants were back.
  • His plan got derailed by Ajak transferring the orb to Sersi and the other Eternals caring about the planet and people more than the Emergence. You'll note that after Sprite and Sersi get attacked in London, their first immediate thought is to consult Ajak, regroup and get everyone back together. What he didn't expect was for Sersi to learn the truth and pass along the information to the others. He was counting on the confusion of the Deviants return and Ajak's death to keep them focused on that particular problem, but that got hijacked by knowledge of the Emergence AND the fact that the team was willing to protect Earth from it. He was stuck playing until he's forced to reveal it when the others start putting together a viable plan of their own.
  • His plan was derailed, but it didn't have any reason to exist to begin with: he just assumed that everyone would turn to Ajak because of the visible side-effects of the Emergence (which in the movie are never truly shown as worrying the population or being frequent, just that one earthquake), but the group never got together during centuries for any of the major crisis of the past - including the blip- , and they have no idea what an Emergence is and that exists to begin with, so his elaborate construction of a murder mystery appears terribly uncalled for. He makes it sound like it's perfectly logical and necessary to 'distract' people who are entirely unsuspecting and have been passive for centuries.
  • It's also possible that Ikaris secretly wanted to be caught so he could finally air his grievances and resentments he's been bottling up for literal centuries. He wants the Emergence to happen, not out of any true loyalty to Arishem, but because he wants to be free of the life he's been forced to endure as Ajak's Number Two.

Eternals selective horror

• The Eternals are understandably horrified at the destruction of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards, to the point they call it "genocide". However, at this point in history, there had been numerous wars that could be considered "genocidal". The Mongol invasions, for instance, are estimated to have killed up to 30 million people across East and Central Asia. Why was this the point where the Eternals finally express such horror and disgust at humanity? Additionally, Phastos draws the line at the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but by that point, millions of civilians had already been killed around the world with conventional weaponry. Why is this the time where he concludes "Humanity is bad"? It seems the Eternals are somewhat selective about when to, and to not be horrified at humanity.
  • The point is correct, but in Hiroshima's case, Phastos is specifically upset about the atom bomb because it' s a terrifying weaponization of technology and science on an unprecedented scale, which is something he feels responsible for. As for the genocide in Tenochtitlan, it does not have to be the first one Druig witnessed, just that particular straw that breaks the camel's back, which makes also sense when you consider that their main mission is basically done at that point.
  • The atomic bomb also represents humanity crossing a line where it could destroy itself. Genocidal wars previously always meant one side would win and humanity would continue, but presumably Phastos is smart enough to forsee how nuclear war could lead to humanity's extinction. It's a new level of destruction, only possible with technology Phastos put in motion.
• Follow up: did the Eternals tolerate the Aztec routine practice of human sacrifice? They were outraged at the acts of the Spaniards, but did they find the Aztecs' own practices acceptable?

Makkari's deafness

• First, how does being deaf render one immune to a sonic boom? Sonic booms aren't just a loud noise, they're also a powerful shockwave. At the speeds she reaches, such shockwaves could destroy buildings. Second, Makkari can "sense even the tiniest of vibrations, which lets her even understand what people are saying when she's not looking at them". Then how is she deaf? Sensing and interpreting vibrations is how hearing works!
  • Rules of human physiology do not apply to Eternals. Given how they come from proverbial "assembly line" shown to Sersi, deafness might be engineered as well. Makkari does this stuff without issues thanks to her "programming" ala supernatural powers.
  • But it's not "human" physiology, it's how hearing works for everything. Not only animals but machines as well. And it still doesn't explain that being "deaf" rendering her immune to the shockwaves of a sonic boom. If it's not deafness that does it (since again, she's not really deaf), then all the Eternals should be immune as well.

Deviant bones

• The movie shows that Deviant corpses remain after death, and they are stated to be organic, which means they must have some sort of skeletal structure. So how have humans never found and uncovered any Deviant bones/fossils?
  • Presumably they did and thought them dinosaurs or other extinct animals. There's plenty of extinct animals of which only partial remains have ever been found.
  • Most notably the deviants are mostly Sinuous, thus made of fleshy muscle fibres and barely have anybhard tissue except for teeth, claws, horns, hooves or beak. Even then they spontaneously develop some of these from some of the animal they eat. Thus if any remains did last they were similar or identical to whatevee animal they ate and evolved to resemble.
  • A deleted scene has Sprite form an illusion of a deviant over a Smilodon skeleton. Implying some prehistorical animals may have been deviants or because the deviants resembled animals after eating them, she was just comparing or seeing what a Sabretooth Cat shaped Deviant would look like. Kinda like fan artist using the colour scheme one pokemon and putting over the shape of another pokemon.

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