Eternals’ Gemma Chan Is Ready To Rejoin The MCU
“I feel like there’s unfinished business there.”
Marvel has abandoned a lot of loose threads over the years, and Eternals may contain the most of them. The 2021 film was ambitious with its style and subject matter, making it one of the riskier additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed by Chloe Zhao, Eternals introduced the eponymous immortal beings, tracing their adventures from their first day on Earth to the day they stop a massive Celestial from destroying the planet.
Visually, it’s a breath of fresh air; narratively, it left a lot to be desired. Whatever disappointments it left in its wake, though, its story does need to continue, if only so we can find out what happened with Arishem the Judge, Kit Harrington’s Black Knight, or Thanos’ long-lost brother, played by none other than Harry Styles.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently revealed there were “no immediate plans” for an Eternals sequel, but that doesn’t mean its loose threads can’t be resolved elsewhere. After four years of uncertainty, Marvel finally offered an update on the Celestial jutting out of the Indian Ocean, with “Tiamut Island” playing a role in Captain America: Brave New World. There’s no word on when (or if) the Eternals cast will get the chance to reprise their roles in future Marvel projects, but Gemma Chan — who briefly led the Eternals as Sersi — is waiting for the call.
Will we ever find out where Arishem took the Eternals?
“You never know. We’re often the last people to find out,” Chan recently told ComicBook. “I’m keeping the faith. I feel like there’s unfinished business there and there’s more story to tell, but we’ll see.”
Chan isn’t wrong: Eternals may be one of Marvel’s least-popular movies, but it set up so many unanswered questions that it feels ridiculous for the franchise to ignore it. Tiamut will likely inform the origin story of a beloved X-Men character. But where did Arishem, the creator of the Eternals, take Sersi, Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), and Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry)? Will he come back to finish Tiamut’s work and destroy Earth once and for all? What about the other surviving Eternals, like Thena (Angelina Jolie), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), and Druig (Barry Keoghan)? What about that off-screen cameo from Mahershala Ali’s Blade?
Eternals was once positioned as a major jumping-off point for the franchise’s next phase, but Marvel then pivoted its focus to the multiverse. Everything now revolves around Avengers: Doomsday and its sequel, Secret Wars, which doesn’t leave much room for the Eternals and their misadventures. Ideally, the MCU will still find a way to reconcile all these lingering stories in a future story — the Eternals could easily appear in Secret Wars without the need for a complicated explanation. Until that happens, however, their current status will remain one of Marvel’s biggest and most frustrating plot holes.
