Is This How ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Sets Up an Eternals Movie?

In the weeks leading up to Avengers: Infinity War, reports began to surface online that Marvel Studios had been interested in a movie featuring The Eternals, a group of god-like characters from Marvel’s comic mythos.

With Infinity War being a Thanos-centric movie and since the Mad Titan is technically part of the group in the comics, it only makes sense that an Eternals mention found its way into Infinity War.

Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War up ahead. You’ve been warned.

For the past several years, the location for the Marvel Cinmeatic Universe’s Soul Stone has remained a mystery. Theories ranging from Heimdall being the stone-bearer to Phil Coulson wielding the stone ran amok but not really any of the popular theories came close to being true.

Fortunately enough for us, we finally found where the Soul Stone had been stored thanks to Gamora (Zoe Saldana) tracking down its location off-screen. After it’s shown that Thanos (Josh Brolin) had been torturing Nebula (Karen Gillan) in an attempt to have Nebula spill the beans on the stone’s location, Gamora decided to reveal the stone’s location so her father would stop torturing her sister.

Before long, Thanos and Gamora both head to a desolate planet named Vormir where they’re soon greeted by the Soul Stone’s Stonekeeper — none other than Red Skull(Ross Marquand).

Upon greeting Thanos and Gamora, Red Skull calls out Thanos as “Thanos, son of A’lars,” and that’s where The Eternals reference comes in.

You see, A’lars is the real name for the comic character more commonly called Mentor — a member of the Eternals. A gifted intellect, A’lars first appeared alongside his son — and coincidentally enough, Drax the Destroyer — in the pages of Invincible Iron Man #55 (1973). He was created by writer/artist Jim Starlin.

In the comics, A’lars — the founder of the Eternals colony on Titan — kept sweeping Thanos’ villainy on the rug, only realizing how evil his son had become after Thanos murdered his own mother Sui-San.

At this point, it’s unclear how an Eternals movie would fit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, considering the race had been extinct long before the events of Infinity War. In fact, Infinity War makes note of how Thanos had tried saving his home planet from an ecological crisis but due to the Eternals council rejecting his idea of a lottery-based genocide, the entire race was nearly raced from existence.

It should be noted that not all of the Eternals look like Thanos. When Thanos uses the reality stone on Titan to show some of the Avengers what his home world used to look like, we can clearly see human-like figures in the distant background.

In the comics, Thanos was a recipient of the “Deviant gene,” a gene that gives the genetic holder a strange and unusal appearance.

In the promotion leading up to the Infinity War premiere, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige was asked about a potential Eternals flick.

“Eternals is one of many many many things that we are actively beginning to have creative discussions about to see if we believe in them enough to put them on a slate,” Feige said

He went on to add that the studio has “started working on what are the films post-Phase 3.” Of course, this is referencing any movies released after the fourth Avengers film next summer.

Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters now.