The final, mind-blowing trailer for Marvel's "Eternals" is here, and by the looks of it,
the stakes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are about to rise to a completely new level.
Apart from giving us a good look at some of the characters' powers and general temperaments,
the trailer does some heavy lifting to explain why these super-strong characters have been
twiddling their thumbs throughout the various crises the MCU has endured so far.
Marvel fans have been wondering about this since the movie's teaser trailer revealed
that the Eternals have been around for quite a while, and have apparently been ignoring
some pretty big conflicts, including the rest of the MCU's battle against Thanos.
"Throughout the years, we have never interfered."
The trailer focuses very much on that exact plot point, to the point that Kit Harington's
human character Dane Whitman flat out asks Gemma Chan's Sersi a pretty salient question:
"Why didn't you guys help fight Thanos? Or any war? Or all the other terrible things
throughout history?"
What's more, it also clears up what it takes to motivate these millennia-old figures to
finally roll up their sleeves and put the band back together ... and you might be able
to guess the reason why.
"I am… inevitable."
The "Eternals" trailer confirms that Thanos and his deadly snap acted as a catalyst to
the Eternals getting involved. However, it wasn't his snap that caused the Eternals to
take up the call to action.
In the trailer, Salma Hayek's Ajak tells Richard Madden's Ikaris, who apparently doesn't have
internet, what's been going down off of his sprawling property deep in the middle of nowhere.
You remember what happened. Take it away, Mark Ruffalo.
"Ha- everybody dies." "D-dude! Dude…" "They don't… not everybody."
Ajak explains that Thanos wiped out half of the population of the entire universe. But
then, five years later, humanity ran the ball back and spiked it in the endzone.
"The people of this planet brought everyone back with the snap of a finger."
The consequences of this mass revival, Ajak says, produced the necessary energy for something
called "the Emergence" to begin.
The Emergence, it would appear, is a cataclysmic event that involves the return of the Eternals'
longtime enemies, the Deviants ... and if Ajak's account of the events is correct, the
snap that actually caused this is the one by Bruce Banner, who wielded the Infinity
Stones to return the people Thanos removed from existence.
As fans have pointed out on Reddit, the Infinity Stones' effect on drawing such unwanted attention
on Earth has actually been a plot point in the MCU for some time.
Redditor Trashbagman pointed out that Thanos, Hulk, and Tony have all used the power of
all six Infinity Stones. The poster recalled,
"They all snapped on Earth. Rocket said each snap produces an insane ass energy spike.
Three of those were on Earth."
Redditor Thekruton noted that Thor warned about the Infinity Stones attracting unwanted
attention way back in 2012.
"Thor warned back in 'Avengers' that messing with the Tesseract would alert others that
Earth was ready for a higher form of war."
Could it be that he wasn't referring to "Infinity War," but something even worse — say, the
arrival of something like the Deviants?
"If this is what the end of the world looks like, at least we have front row seats."
The trailers for Eternals make the long-living group seem like they're some of the most powerful
superheroes around, and many fans have found it extremely weird that they chose to keep
their eye beams, energy blasts, mystic weapons, and various other powers away from the various
big MCU battles we've seen. As such, many people have been vocal about the general weirdness
of this supposedly almighty group just sitting out every single MCU event we've seen so far.
It's a pretty reasonable question, and the final trailer makes an excellent call by addressing
it up front, months before the movie comes out.
While there are still many questions about who exactly the MCU Eternals are, and what
they've been up to, it's now clear that they've had a pretty good reason to keep out of active
duty for so long.
"It's beautiful. Isn't it?"
The "Eternals" trailer doesn't stop there. It also reveals just why the group steered
clear of interfering in humanity's various other tragedies and atrocities over the centuries.
Apparently, they're only meant to step in during conflicts that involve Deviants.
This isn't just some strange code of honor on the Eternals' part, either. The trailer
heavily implies that their orders come directly from the Celestials — a group of massively
powerful beings that have been alluded to multiple times in the past.
For a rough idea of these gigantic creatures' power level, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
2" villain Ego, a literal living planet, revealed himself as one of them.
In other words, no matter how powerful the Eternals are, their bosses are even more powerful
— and now, they're all coming to the MCU.
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