Eternals Breaks Marvel's Standalone Movie Rule

Whereas most films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are standalone features, Chloé Zhao's Eternals concludes by setting up a sequel rather than wrapping up the story. While Eternals 2 has yet to be announced, it is all but guaranteed to happen sometime in the next few years. This is especially true given the plot trajectory of Eternals, which already does a lot of the groundwork of laying out the premise for a sequel.

The 2021 Marvel movie features an ensemble cast of super-powered Eternals who the Prime Celestial Arishem charged with protecting Earth from Deviants. Unbeknownst to most of the Eternals, they were stationed on Earth in order to help the human population grow and develop until it was large enough to facilitate the birth of a new Celestial, Tiamut, in a world-ending event called The Emergence. Though the Eternals successfully band together to stop The Emergence, a reckoning comes when Arishem takes the Eternals who chose to stay on Earth with the purpose of examining their memories in order to pass judgment on Earth himself. Their abduction leaves the film with a cliffhanger ending, which is something fairly unusual for the MCU.

The conclusion of Eternals thus ensures that its sequel already has an obvious starting point: rescuing the missing Eternals and preventing Arishem from ruling against humanity. This path is made even clearer by one of the end-credits scenes, which introduces Harry Styles' new character Starfox, aka Eros, as he informs the remaining Eternals that their friends are in danger and offers to help. Presumably, this means that the scope of this story is going to get a lot bigger as the Eternals take to their spaceship and potentially meet more of their kind. Casting a hugely famous star like Harry Styles as Eros alone implies that the role is important and big things are to come from his involvement.

While most MCU films have end-credits scenes that tease future projects, they are usually still standalone movies. Their stories, or their chapters of a certain character's stories, have clear endings that aim to tie together the themes and major plot points of each film. Eternals breaks this pattern by leaving its narrative unresolved, staging an ending that feels more like a beginning. As a franchise, Eternals has a lot of story potential given the number of characters, the relatively unexplored narrative territory of the Celestials, and location possibilities as limitless as space itself.

The Eternals end-credits scene also set up a cross between Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) and the upcoming Marvel solo her0 Blade (Mahershala Ali), promising more exciting things to come for the as-yet underutilized Whitman. Following the abduction of the Earth-bound Eternals, Whitman contemplates picking up a mysterious and foreboding ancestral sword, the Ebony Blade, to help him save his Eternal girlfriend, Sersi (Gemma Chan). Whether his story will continue in the Eternals sequel or elsewhere, however, is decidedly less certain than it seems for the other remaining characters.

Especially for a first entry into the MCU, Eternals is unusual in that it leaves its story unfinished and confidently assumes its own sequel. Given the film's tepid audience and critical reception, perhaps it should not have, but it did well enough that a sequel will undoubtedly happen, and we have a rough idea of what shape it will take. The cliffhanger ending of Eternals ensures that Marvel has all but explicitly committed to making an Eternals 2; the question now is: when?

Next: Everything We Know About Eternals 2