Marvel’s Eternals might be loaded with nearly a dozen new super heroes and visually astonishing locations across a millennia of history but, at its core, the story is aiming to put the romance between two characters at its forefront. While visiting the set of Eternals back in January of 2020, ComicBook.com and other members of the press sat down with producer Nate Moore to hear about the upcoming film. Among the many exciting promises Moore had to offer was a tease of Sersi and Ikaris, characters portrayed by Gemma Chan and Richard Madden, respectively, having a relationship which will largely drive the story.
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“Ikaris and Sersi are very much the central characters of the movie,” Moore said. “We’ve made 25 plus movies now at Marvel, but this is the first movie that’s really built around a romance as the central relationship. I mean, obviously, you have Tony and Pepper, you have Steven and Peggy, those tend to be kind of the side stories. This, if we can do it right, is an epic romance. So it’s never going to be The Notebook, but that’s the goal, is for it to be something that is the spine of the movie. What we didn’t know when we cast Richard and Gemma is they’re actually really good friends and they’ve known each other for a long time, so that chemistry was sort of instantaneous, which is very helpful when you’re trying to cast a romance like this.”
As you can imagine, immortals are going to have their ups and downs in an eternal relationship. That’s a lot of time to get to know someone, for better or worse! “7,000 years, I’ve been married to my wife for six, you definitely have your ups and downs,” Moore said. “7,000 years, they definitely have their ups and downs, so you get to see them in all of the happy, joyous parts and the hard parts and the tricky parts. And again, I think that is really interesting to explore in the midst of all the other things that are going on, how do these two people stay together if they do stay together, or if they don’t stay together, what tore them apart? But it, again, it’s not The Notebook. But in The Notebook, you get to see like all the challenges they have to try and be with each other, I think this is similar.”
Still, in The Notebook, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams didn’t have to fight off an ancient and evolving alien race known as Deviants! Ikaris and Sersi are certainly going to have their work cut out for them, not only to make their love work but also to save the world. Fortunately for them, they have eight more Eternals backing them up, many of which are going to be paired off throughout the movie in one way or another.
“We often talk about our Eternals in pairs because pairs tend to spend a lot of time together in the movie,” Moore explained. “So an interesting pair, we think, is Gilgamesh and Thena. Gilgamesh is the strongest Eternal, he can use his cosmic energy to create an exoskeleton that actually amplifies his strength. Thena can use her cosmic energy to create weapons, sort of any weapon she can think of on demand, made of cosmic energy. So it makes her an incredible fighter, however, she has a tragic story in our film in that, she comes down with something called Mahd Wy’ry. If you guys are fans of comics, Mahd Wy’ry is it something that can beset an Eternal. It’s a version of dementia. Because of the amount of memories they have, they become unstuck in their own minds. So she starts to forget exactly when she is. So through the course of the movie, Gilgamesh sort of becomes her protector.”
Other pairs Moore is excited for audiences to see? Sprite and Kingo, Druig and Makkari, and Ajak and Phastos!
Are you excited to see Marvel’s Eternals? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram! Eternals hits theaters on November 5! Tickets are on sale now. Tune into ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast in Episode 40 to hear more about our time on the set!
