Thanks to the folks at That Hashtag Show, we may finally know what’s coming from Marvel Studios in 2020. As we reported earlier today, it looks like we’ll only have two movies releasing that year due to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 being put on indefinite hold. Black Widow is likely to arrive on May 1st and it’ll followed up on November 6th by The Eternals.Â
The latter will introduce a whole new mythology to the ever-growing franchise, drawing from comic book legend Jack Kirby’s imaginative cosmic stories featuring the god-like Eternals and their mutated counterparts the Deviants. As well as revealing the release date schedule, THS also provided us with this juicy synopsis for the movie that teases what we can expect:
“The story of ‘THE ETERNALS’ is set millions of years ago when the cosmic beings known as the Celestials genetically experimented on humans, creating the super-powered individuals as well as more villainous off-shoots known as Deviants. The two groups went on to battle each other throughout history to see which would eventually become the ultimate race. The story involves the love story between Ikaris, a man fueled by cosmic energy, and Sersi, who relishes moving amongst humans.”
Marvel movies have jumped around the timeline a fair bit over the past ten years, but it’s exciting that The Eternals will travel back millions of years into the past, making it a prequel of everything of note in the franchise, except perhaps the creation of the Infinity Stones.
As we’ve seen before when lesser-known properties are adapted for the MCU, it looks like The Eternals will also be playing with the comics’ continuity. Ikaris and Sersi are cousins in the source material, for example. They’re also third and fourth generation Eternals, respectively, born a mere 20,000 years ago.
It’s worth mentioning that Thanos’ people on Titan are Eternals in the comics, with the villain’s monstrous appearance being due to his status as a Deviant. While it’s unknown if the Avengers: Infinity War antagonist will reappear in The Eternals, we imagine there’ll still be some sort of reference to the Mad Titan, at the very least.
