Marvel Rivals Season 1: Eternal Night Falls Is Based on These Comics

It’s almost clobberin’ time. As the sun sets on Season 0, the just-released Marvel Rivals Season 1 trailer revealed that the three-month season featuring the Fantastic Four — Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman will be playable heroes in the first half, followed by the Human Torch and the Thing in the second half — is titled Eternal Night Falls.

In addition to the all-new seasonal event Midnight Features, the Eternal Night Fall Battle Pass, and three new Empire of Eternal Night maps (Sanctum Sanctorum, Midtown, and Central Park), the team-based PVP shooter is set to feature the new Doom Match game mode when Season 1 launches on January 10.

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Marvel Rivals Season 1 Story

In Marvel Rivals Season 1, “Darkness engulfs New York as the Timestream Entanglement leaves Doctor Strange trapped in the Entangled Astral Plane — scattering the Darkhold pages,” a synopsis states. “Dracula and Doctor Doom disrupt the moon’s orbit, plunging the city into eternal night and unleashing an army of vampiric creatures. With the world on the brink, the Fantastic Four join forces with iconic Marvel heroes, standing together in the epic battle to break the mystical darkness with science.”

“The New York of the Present Timeline has fallen under the unholy control of Dracula, who has taken the power of Chronovium for himself,” Creative Director Guangguang explained in Dev Vision Vol. 03. “The chilling curse of Eternal Night looms large while the powers of the Darkhold weave a web of chaos. Science and magic will need to come together to conquer this new threat.”

The story is inspired by 2024’s Blood Hunt, Marvel’s bloodiest event ever that set up the 2025 mega-event One World Under Doom. The comic, by writer Jed MacKay (Avengers, X-Men) and artist Pepe Larraz (Black Cat), saw the half-human, half-vampire Daywalker Blade use the powers of the Darkforce Dimension to blackout the sun and plunge the Marvel Universe into eternal darkness.

Blood Hunt

Blade bit Doctor Strange and Spider-Man, turning them into vampires, as his Bloodcoven defeated the Avengers and transformed Black Panther into a vampire. Meanwhile, Blade’s daughter, Bloodline, joined forces with the Avengers and Vlad Dracula: the immortal Lord of the Vampires and leader of the Chernobyl-based vampire nation Vampyrsk.

At Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum in New York City, Dracula revealed to Bloodline that her father, the vampire hunter, darkened the skies and unleashed a legion of blood-sucking vampires on the world. Blade then sicced his Bloodcoven on the blood hunt to find his daughter as only she could strike him down.

It was eventually revealed that Blade was possessed by the spirit of the first vampire, Varnae, who translocated the ancient Atlantean Temple of the First Blasphemy into the middle of Central Park. As Doctor Strange used his astral form to seek the aid of Doctor Doom in Latveria, he learned that only Doom could cast a spell to banish the Darkforce — if Strange transferred to him the mantle and powers of Sorcerer Supreme.

Over in Ryan North and Ivan Fiorelli’s Fantastic Four #21-22, Reed Richards discovered that his flexible skin couldn’t be pierced by vampire bites. The super-scientist attempted to find a cure for vampirism, but as he admitted: “I can fix what I can understand, but a magical blood curse… it doesn’t make sense. I can’t understand it, because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of my knowledge.” Elsewhere, in Arizona, the rest of the Fantastic Four held off a vampire attack as they waited for the sun to return. When it did, Reed was shocked when he learned who solved the problem: his archnemesis Victor von Doom.

Blade, still possessed by the ancient vampire, planned to use the living Darkhold in a ritual at the Temple of the First Blasphemy to transform himself into the Unliving Darkforce and bring about the end of everything. But as revealed by Blood Hunt #5, Doom performed his own ritual to turn back the darkness and repel the energies of the Darkforce Dimension — using his newfound power as Sorcerer Supreme.

Doom gave the heroes an opening, and Bloodline and the vampire-bitten Miles Morales struck the final blow that freed Blade from Varnae’s possession. The darkness receded, and the sunlight returned… only for Doom to declare himself Earth’s superior Sorcerer Supreme.