How Eternals Sets Up Hercules and Greek Gods’ MCU Debut

Since the earliest days of development on Eternals, Marvel Studios has teased it as a project that’d end up spanning thousands of years. The studio has since publicly confirmed the film — one of the longest in the entire franchise — will take place in two separate timelines. Because its far-reaching storytelling, the movie sets up the introduction of some of Marvel’s most powerful characters.

On a visit to the film’s set last January, Eternals producer Nate Moore revealed a significant amount about the eponymous group — including they hail from a place those in the Greek Pantheon might find familiar.

“In the past, we see the Eternals, who in our version of the mythology, are immortal aliens from a planet called Olympia,” Moore explained. The group has been tasked by the Celestials to come to Earth and eliminate creatures known as Deviants. “The Deviants are these parasitic aliens who go from planet to planet, and as they kill the apex predators on a given planet, they sort of take the characteristics of those predators and wipe out intelligent life. Well, the Eternals are heroes, so they’ve come to earth to eradicate the Deviants and allow humanity to thrive.”

In the Marvel source material, Olympia was a hidden city constructed near Mount Olympus and the two groups often inspired each other in various ways. While turning Olympia into a planet would take away some of that storytelling, Marvel boss Kevin Feige previously did suggest the group would influence the MCU’s versions of mythology.

“Well, one of the cool things about that property and what Jack Kirby did with it and what’s been done with it in recent years is it does tie into they’re called Eternals, they’ve been around for a long time. You know?” Feige said. “There’s this notion of all of these myths and legends that we know from ancient times, were they inspired by the Eternals? Kevin Feige: Were they Eternals? It’s a very … you know, it’s an ancient aliens kind of sci-fi trope that we think would be fun to explore someday.”

Since Moore confirmed the Olympia thread — which is heavily inspired by Olympus, mind you — combined with Feige’s comments, the stage is set to introduce some of the most famous characters from Greek mythology. Hercules show on Disney+, anyone?

Eternals is currently set for release on November 5th.

What’d you think of the final trailer of Chloe Zhao’s Eternals? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU