Eternals: Secret Big Bad of Marvel’s New Movie Revealed

The marketing for Marvel’s Eternals positioned the new superhero team of the MCU as primarily fighting against another alien race, The Deviants. Footage of them fighting and defeating the beasts was shown throughout with only a brief glimpse of the leader Kro popping up from time to time, and though they do present a challenge they’re far from the only enemies. With the film now released though we know that Marvel was cleverly hiding a handful of other antagonists in the movie, not necessarily “bad guys” but additional foils for the titular group. We’ll break them down below along with how these surprises compare to the pages of Marvel Comics, so naturally, full spoilers for Marvel’s Eternals follow. 

Central to the plot of Eternals is how the team learns about what “The Emergence” really is, finding out that Earth will be destroyed in the process so that a new celestial, Tiamut, can be born. Gemma Chan’s Sersi is appalled after learning the truth though and leads an effort among the other Eternals to try and stop The Emergence. To do so would thwart the Celestials plans however, resulting in one of their own not being born and seemingly giving the Eternals no purpose, as it’s revealed they’ve gone through this cycle multiple times before on countless other planets during their lives. As time draws near though one Eternal, Richard Madden’s Ikaris, puts his foot down and decides to stop the other Eternals and allow the Emergence to carry on as planned.

Ikaris being the most powerful Eternal and the one that buts heads with his counterparts is no coincidence. The film further reveals that he not only knew about what would happen with The Emergence but was in fact the one who killed Ajak after she also posited the idea of stopping it from occurring. Sticking to his guns that the Eternals entire purpose is to make sure The Emergence occurs, and recruiting fellow Eternals Sprite to his cause, they battle their fellow Eternals at the point of Tiamut’s birth on Earth. Ikaris eventually does aid in the creation of the Uni-Mind, allowing Sersi the ability to supercharge her matter manipulation abilities, freezing Tiamut and killing him in the process.

In the end Ikaris flies away from his comrades and into the sun, seemingly dying but considering the origin of the Eternals as creations of the celestials it’s certainly possible he could be back. In large part making Ikaris a semi-secret antagonist is a pretty huge surprise considering the character has previously been the main character in almost every other Eternals story; he also died in the comics a few years ago after learning the true purpose of the Eternals.

Eternals has one last trick up its sleeve though. Just as the story seems to be done and the Eternals are prepared to continue living and loving on Earth, none other than Arishem, the celestial that they answer to, appears in the sky on Earth. Confounded by their decision to stop The Emergence he pulls several of the Eternals off Earth and to parts unknown, setting up their next conflict and another chapter in the MCU (perhaps where the Celestials are the main antagonists).