The Final Eternals Trailer Confirms What We Suspected All Along
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 being every kind of awesome and giving you a good look at some of the characters' powers and general temperaments, the trailer does some much-needed 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 willingly sitting out some pretty big conflicts, including the rest of the MCU's battle against Thanos (Josh Brolin).
The trailer focuses very much on that exact plot point, to the point that human character Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) flat out asks Sersi (Gemma Chan): "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, as luck would have it, you might even have guessed the reason.
The Infinity Stone snaps activated the Eternals
The "Eternals" trailer confirms that Thanos and his deadly snap acted as a catalyst to the Eternals getting involved. However, it wasn't the snap that caused the Eternals to pick up their duties.
"Five years ago, Thanos erased half of the population of the universe", Ajak (Salma Hayek) tells Ikaris (Richard Madden) in the trailer. "But the people of this planet brought everyone back with the snap of a finger. The sudden return of the population provided the necessary energy for 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 (Mark Ruffalo), 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 for quite some time.
"Technically you can say Thanos, Hulk and Tony [stark, played by Robert Downey Jr.]," redditor Trashbagman_- listed the people who have contributed on this front. "They all snapped on Earth. Rocket [Bradley Cooper] said each snap produces an insane ass energy spike. Three of those were on Earth." Redditor Thekruton noted that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) warned about the Infinity Stones attracting unwanted attention way back in 2012. "Thor warned back in '[The] 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?
What fans have been saying about the Eternals' decision to keep a low profile
The trailers make the long-living Eternals 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 mighty group just sitting out every single MCU event we've seen so far.
"Ok but to be clear the Eternals didn't feel like helping with Thanos," @ShalyahEvans tweeted about the subject. "If these Eternals were so powerful ... Why didn't they help in the fight against Thanos?" @JuJu_Da_Gamer wondered.
It's a pretty reasonable question, and the final trailer makes an excellent call by addressing it. 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.
The team had a good reason to stay on the background
The "Eternals" trailer doesn't just stop with explaining what caused the titular team to step up. It also reveals just why they steered clear of putting a stop to humanity's various tragedies and atrocities for such a long time — they can only participate in events that involve the threatening beings known as 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 (Kurt Russell), a literal living planet, revealed himself as one of them. In other words, no matter how powerful the Eternals are, their bosses are to them like flames are to moths. That's a fairly decent incentive to follow your mission statement.