Eternals' Ending Made One Unanswered MCU Mystery More Terrifying

The MCU's Eternals expanded a bit on franchise’s version of the Celestials, but the final battle only made one mystery from this universe scarier, and it’s all about the Celestial Knowhere. The MCU has already been exploring its cosmic side with characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange, and introduced the Celestials as part of the origin story of the Infinity Stones – however, these entities (aside from Ego) hadn’t had a big role in the MCU until Eternals arrived.

Directed by Chloé Zhao, Eternals introduced the title team, who are an alien race created by one of the Celestials, Arishem, and were sent to Earth centuries ago to protect it from the Deviants. The Eternals also helped humanity progress but weren’t allowed to interfere in their conflicts, including Thanos’ snap. Although the story is centered on Sersi (Gemma Chan) and the team getting back together to stop the Deviants and an event called “The Emergence”, Eternals took some time to explore a bit more about the Celestials, but the ending made a mystery about these entities even bigger.

Aside from Arishem, who appears from time to time throughout Eternals, most notably at the end, there’s another important Celestial in the movie: Tiamut. As it turns out, Arishem lied to the Eternals and their real purpose was guiding humanity until they reached the prerequisites for Tiamut’s birth, as the seed for his emergence was planted on Earth. As most of the Eternals (but especially Sersi) had grown attached to humanity, they decided to stop Tiamut’s emergence as it would have meant the destruction of Earth, and after an elaborate plan by Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry) that required combining the Eternals’ powers, Sersi was able to stop Tiamut – and that only raises more questions about the defeat and death of the Celestial Knowhere.

Guardians of the Galaxy was the first MCU movie to address the existence of the Celestials, as well as the one that featured Knowhere, the home to the mining colony of Exitar. Knowhere isn’t a planet but the decapitated head of a Celestial, where years later, the Tivan Group set up mining operations in order to harvest the valuable bone, brain tissue, and spinal fluid from it. The absence of rules and regulations turned Knowhere into a safe haven for outlaws from across the galaxy, and that’s where the Guardians of the Galaxy met The Collector (Benicio del Toro). However, the MCU hasn’t explained what happened to Knowhere, as it takes a lot to kill a Celestial, and the Eternals’ struggle to stop Tiamut only makes Knowhere’s death scarier.

It took the combined powers of the Eternals for Sersi to channel enough energy to use her transmutation powers to transform Tiamut – an emerging and defenseless Celestial – into marble, leaving part of his head and one hand popping out of the ocean. In order to bring together all their powers, Phastos created bracelets using the orb Ajak (Salma Hayek) and later Sersi used to communicate with Arishem, and there was still a big margin of error in their plan. All this, then, raises the question of who was powerful enough to decapitate Knowhere and what did they do to be able to kill such a powerful entity like a Celestial. This is one of many questions the MCU has to answer after the events of Eternals, and they will have to be very clever with the answer after what Sersi and the rest did to stop Tiamut.

Next: Why Arishem The Celestial Doesn't Take All The Eternals At The End