The Eternals: Everything you need to know about who – or what – they are
By Mike McNulty
A who’s who guide to the latest edition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe – the enigmatic, lesser-known super beings known as the Eternals.
Marvel Studios’ announcement that, for Phase 4, that they would produce a cinematic adaptation of the Eternals left many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans collectively scratching their heads. The bewilderment and confusion is understandable. These race of superhumans, created by legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby, are so obscure that even long time Marvel Comic book readers don’t know much about them. Nor did it help that every time Marvel published a series staring them, it wound end up getting canceled due to low sales (their longest run to-date was the first series with only nineteen issues).
Sure enough, when the first teaser trailer for Eternals dropped, the most common questions viewers asked were, “Who are these guys?” “Are they aliens?” “Why does this look like 2001: A Space Odyssey?” and “If these Eternals have been on Earth this whole time, why are they only getting involved now?!”
That’s what is article is for. In order to better understand Marvel’s most niche characters, we’ll be taking a rather exhaustive look at just who the Eternals are, what they can do, some of their individual (and long) history, and how, believe or not, they’re integral to the origins of the Marvel Universe itself.