After Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Cinematic Universe entered uncharted territory. Lacking a clear throughline, the franchise experimented with TV shows and movies that veered away from the typical MCU formula. One of these movies was Eternals, a millennia-spanning epic from Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao.
But Eternals struggled at the box office and garnered mixed critical and fan reactions, leading to speculation about the fate of the sequel it teased. Inverse has spoken to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige about the Eternals, and how their lingering storylines affect an upcoming movie.
“There are no immediate plans for Eternals 2,” Kevin Feige tells Inverse. “There are, and I think you’ve seen maybe in a trailer we’ve released recently, an acknowledgment of some of those events. Certain giant things came out of the ocean.”
Feige is referencing the recent trailer for Captain America: Brave New World, which shows brief shots of a battle over Tiamut Island, the landmass that formed when the Eternals defeated a giant Celestial emerging from the center of the Earth. There’s been speculation that a battle over what remains of Tiamut — and the resources it contains — will be a major plot point of the upcoming sequel.
But while the most influential event of Eternals will be addressed, plenty of other loose ends could and should be addressed in future movies, even if it won’t happen in an Eternals sequel. A mid-credits scene introduced Harry Styles as Eros and his sidekick, Pip the Troll. Two-and-a-half years later, there’s still no sign of these characters in the MCU’s future.
Eternals’ post-credits scene went ever further, hinting at Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman becoming the Black Knight. He’s seen holding his family heirloom, the Ebony Blade, while the voice of Mahershala Ali’s Blade asks if he can handle it.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has its work cut out keeping every story thread connected. Captain America: Brave New World and the (hopefully) upcoming Blade will address some of these issues, but plenty of plots still need to be attended to. You can’t just drop Harry Styles into the MCU and then never mention him again.
