Marvel’s Eternals’ Place In The MCU Timeline Confirmed

Marvel's Eternals has revealed its place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline, thereby revealing yet another pivotal piece of the Phase 4 puzzle. The final trailer for Eternals dropped today, and it seems pretty much tailored to fit all the fan questions and criticisms from the first Eternals teaser trailer so many months ago. Of the many expository details we get, the latest Eternals footage makes one thing abundantly clear: this story is not only set after the events of both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the cataclysmic events the Eternals will face were caused as a result of the Avengers' battle with Thanos!

In the opening of the Eternals final trailer, Ajak (Salma Hayek) and Ikaris (Richard Madden) have a reunion to discuss the two key events of the five-year Infinity War with Thanos (The Snap, and The Blip), released an amount of cosmic energy that has catalyzed an event called "The Emergence", which (as the name suggests) will bring a world-ending threat that only the Eternals can stop. While the film will certainly look backward across ancient human history and how the Eternals influenced it, the main action of the film will be firmly set in the present-day MCU.

Based on Marvel Comics lore, it's not hard to imagine that The Emergence has something to do with The Deviants finally being freed from whatever place the Eternals trapped them in (which is tied to Marvel's history of Atlantis, home of Namor). Or, even worse, the Eternals' creators The Celestials are returning to wipe out life on Earth after Earthlings interfered in cosmic affairs on such a grand scale.

However it plays out, it's clear now that Eternals will be much like Shang-Chi in the sense of exploring how new factions of powerful and/or mystical figures who have been in the shadows during the Avengers' run now get called to step up. It's definitely a much faster progression of the MCU Phase 4 storyline than most fans expected, but definitely adds much more intrigue to these films, as Marvel fans now know that they are indeed getting something new from these movies, and not just the backfill that is leading up to the present-day MCU.

What's now more interesting than ever is how Shang-Chi and Eternals will be balanced against the Multiverse story arc that is now in full swing after Loki. It seems the effects of the Multiverse explosion will be clear in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and perhaps even Thor: Love & Thunder, but it how Shang-Chi and Eternals will address it is far less clear.

Marvel's Eternals will be in theaters on November 5th.