Everything and anything can change in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is after all the world in which a giant purple alien can snap his fingers and make half the universe disappear! And that's what makes the Marvel Studios franchise so edge-of-seat; you simply never know what's going to happen next.
That's been on true on the business side of things too in recent years. As the studio continues to navigate this new, ever-changing era of various forms of content, it must produce multiple movies and Disney Plus shows a year. And this increased exposure has resulted in some highs and lows for the franchise, which have forced it to pivot some of its earlier plans for the Multiverse Saga.
This reportedly resulted in the cancellation of a number of sequels and spinoffs for multiple MCU characters. The good news is that this doesn't necessarily mean we've seen the last of these characters. That seems to be particularly true for one group of heroes that didn't get the exposure Marvel was initially hoping that they would.
The Eternals will reportedly return in the MCU's next chapter
According to insider Alex Perez, Marvel Studios is not done with the Eternals just yet. Having done a Q&A with fans (via The Cosmic Circus), Perez responded to a question about whether we had truly seen the last of the characters, to which he responded:
"The Eternals are not done for. There’ll be more about it in the next saga."
Perez had previously teased of the forgotten heroes' return, revealing that their lore would have some kind of invlvement in the third and final season of What If...?. That ultimately turned out to be true, so it's clear that audiences should consider this information reliable.
It's also extremely exciting as the fate of the Eternals has been up in the air since they starred in their self-titled solo film in 2021. Eternals was the first movie in the MCU to receive a "Rotten" score on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and it ultimately went on to underperform at the box office. Given its hefty budget and star-studded cast, this was not a good sign for their future in the franchise.
It was always going to be some time before the MCU followed up on the hanging plot threads from Eternals due to the sheer scope and size of the Multiverse Saga, but it remains one of the only titles in it to feel like a truly standalone tale. Until Captain America: Brave New World earlier this year, the events of the movie hadn't been referenced in any meaningful way.
Moreover, after a number of projects began to underperform at the box office (including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels), the studio reportedly cancelled sequels to those projects (along with Eternals 2). This was corroborated by Kevin Feige himself, who eventually revealed that there no plans for an Eternals sequel at this point in time - a far cry from the excitement that Marvel exuded for the characters' futures ahead of the film's release in 2021.
Feige has referred to the next chapter of the MCU as the "Mutants Era" due to its focus on the X-Men. It's unclear if it will officially be called the Mutants Saga, but the focus on those characters will be clear as a new X-Men movie is in development. The question is: How will the Eternals feature in that saga, and can the franchise give them a conclusion to their story without having them headline another movie or TV show of their own?
Regardless of how you felt about Eternals, it's hard to deny the potential that was there in both the characters and the project. Although the film itself didn't fully live up to that potential, it goes without saying that their story deserves to continue.