Marvel Theory: The Hulk’s Endgame Snap Created The Modern Eternals

Could the Hulk’s snap in Avengers: Endgame have essentially launched the Eternals movie? This year’s Eternals is generally seen as one of Marvel’s riskier movies. Created by Jack Kirby back in 1976, the Eternals have never been one of Marvel’s biggest brands; in fact, in what was surely just bad timing and a lack of synergy, the comics killed off the Eternals just three months after Marvel Studios had announced they were coming to the MCU.

Still, hype is building for the film, helped by some superb casting decisions and the addition of Kit Harington as the Black Knight. Marvel Studios recently released the first Eternals synopsis, and it surprised fans by confirming that the bulk of the movie will be set after the events of Avengers: Endgame. “Marvel Studios’ ‘The Eternals’ features an exciting new team of Super Heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” the synopsis reads, “ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. Following the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame’, an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, The Deviants.“

Until now, it had generally been believed that Eternals was drawing inspiration from the original Jack Kirby Eternals run. This synopsis, however, is a lot closer to the events of Neil Gaiman’s more recent relaunch — and as such, it raises an intriguing potential explanation for just why the Eternals have made their MCU debut in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame.

Neil Gaiman’s Run Served As An Eternals Relaunch

The Eternals characters were one of Jack Kirby’s last creations for Marvel Comics, and Marvel Studios has consistently pointed to Kirby’s books as the inspiration for the movie. This synopsis, however, doesn’t sound at all like Kirby’s Eternals run from the ’70s, which envisioned this ancient race as living apart from humanity in an isolated community, roughly akin to the Inhumans. Instead, it sounds rather more like Neil Gaiman’s 2006 relaunch. Gaiman was invited to “fix” the Eternals, to find a way of completing Kirby’s story and incorporating the ancient aliens into the Marvel Universe. Gaiman accepted the challenge, and he achieved his goals by essentially reinventing the Eternals, revealing that they had been absorbed into the human race and had forgotten who they really were.

In Gaiman’s Eternals run, one of the Eternals — a forever-young being named Sprite — had grown disaffected by the fact he would never grow any further. Furious after a million years of being treated like a child, Sprite had lashed out against his Eternal kin, using his powers to warp reality and modify their memories. One of the Eternals, Ikaris, managed to regain his true identity and began helping the others to learn the truth; it was just in time, given the Eternals’ old enemies the Deviants were preparing to make a power play of their own.

It’s possible Marvel has been misdirecting viewers a little by pointing to the Kirby run, and that instead the bulk of the movie’s narrative is lifted from Gaiman. If that is the case, then it would neatly explain why the Eternals haven’t been seen in the MCU up until now: simply because they had no idea who they were, or even that they possessed the kind of raw power that would enable them to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the mightiest Avengers against threats like Loki, Ultron, and even Thanos.

Could The Hulk’s Snap Have Been Responsible For Restoring The Eternals?

It’s possible that the events of Avengers: Endgame have led to the return of the Eternals. It’s important to remember that Thanos’ snap in Avengers: Infinity War erased half of every living creature in the universe — half the humans, half the Kree, and of course, half the Eternals. The precise nature of the process is uncertain; whatever Thanos did, it doesn’t appear to be quite the same as killing someone, which explains why Doctor Strange could foresee outcomes where the snap victims weren’t brought back. Rather, a good analogy is that the snap functioned like the transporters in Star Trek, converting matter from one state to another, leaving a record in some kind of “buffer” plane of existence. But whatever actually happened, it would still be the closest an Eternal has ever come to real death.

The interesting question is whether an Eternal — even an unconscious Eternal, who had forgotten their true identity — would have sensed this coming. Certainly there’s precedent in the MCU; Avengers: Infinity War revealed that Spider-Man sensed his impending death courtesy of his Spider-Sense. Even a memory-wiped Eternal is attuned to the cosmos, possessing an innate ability that Marvel Comics describe as “cosmic awareness.” It’s reasonable to assume that the Eternals would have realized something was badly wrong — right before they crumbled to dust.

And then, in Avengers: Endgame, the Hulk brought everyone back. To use the Star Trek analogy again, he restored the patterns that had been stored in the “buffer” plane, and in theory everyone would have returned in exactly the same state. For a memory-wiped Eternal, however, the very experience of the snap would have begun a process of transformation. Their innate powers, their cosmic awareness, would have been triggered courtesy of Thanos; they’d have then returned amid another flare of cosmic energy, which they would also have been able to sense. Their mental conditioning could well have begun to break as a result.

This Could Explain Why Eternals Has To Happen After Avengers: Endgame

If this theory is correct, then it neatly explains why the Eternals haven’t been seen in the MCU before now – and also why they’d begin to emerge from the shadows after Avengers: Endgame. The Eternals who had been snapped back into existence would have begun to sense who they truly were, perhaps experiencing impossible flashbacks of events millennia ago — fitting with set photos showing everything from ancient Babylon to Medieval settings. They’d also potentially have drawn the attention of their old enemies, the Deviants, shapeshifters who had been manipulating humanity in the Eternals’ absence and who would naturally recognize signs that their immortal foes were returning.

All this would set the stage for the Eternals to emerge in the MCU. It would be a smart approach to the story of the Eternals, allowing viewers to learn of these ancient aliens as they rediscovered their own history. In effect, the narrative would be an inversion of Captain Marvel, where a Kree super-soldier gradually discovered she was really a human; this time round, the stars would be human beings who learned they were, to all intents and purposes, secretly gods. And it’s a story that could only be told after Avengers: Endgame.