For the better part of a decade, Thanos served as the biggest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s bads throughout the Infinity Saga, finally stepping out of the cosmic shadows to reveal himself as the puppeteer pulling the strings of villains like Loki of Jotunheim and Ronan the Accuser before ultimately meeting his end at the hands of the Avengers, and holding the distinction of being the only adversary killed by them twice.
Now we’re being told by our sources – the same ones who revealed that a She-Hulk show was coming to Disney Plus back in April and that Marvel is eyeing Daniel Radcliffe for Moon Knight, both of which have since been confirmed – that the studio is definitely bringing the Mad Titan back to their record-breaking franchise at some point. Though we haven’t heard exactly where and when Thanos will turn up next, the likeliest wager would be Chloé Zhao’s cosmic ensemble film The Eternals, which will debut an heretofore unknown group of immortal extraterrestrials who have secretly occupied the Earth for over seven millennia.
The aliens, written and drawn by “The King” Jack Kirby in their first appearance in The Eternals #1 in July of 1976, were created by the Celestials – who were referenced in James Gunn’s 2014 cosmic ensemble film Guardians of the Galaxy – along with the genetically unstable Deviants, and this is precisely where Thanos would fit neatly into the picture.
In print, Thanos is the son of A’lars and Sui-San, a pair of Eternals, but carries a Deviant gene that results in his deformed physical appearance. As The Eternals is said to span millennia, it’s the most probable project to feature the cinematic return of the philosopher warlord, perhaps even depicting his discovery of the Infinity Gauntlet and Stones as a means to his temporarily successful (and eventually overturned) plan of wiping out half of all life in the universe.
If this turns out to be the case, it would mark the third successively younger incarnation of the character to appear on the big screen, as Avengers: Infinity War featured the victory of his 2018 self while Avengers: Endgame culminated with the destruction of his time-traveling 2014 self.
Of course, we’ll have to wait until November 6th to know for certain if Thanos will return in The Eternals, but given that this comes to us from the same sources who also told us Han would return in Fast & Furious 9 and Transformers is being rebooted, we’ve no reason to doubt it.
