Final ‘Eternals’ Trailer Reveals How the Film Fits in the MCU

With the release of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings right around the corner, it’s only strategic for Marvel Studios to release another trailer for Eternals. Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao marks her MCU debut with a fantastical band of heroes and villains. This final trailer provides some much-needed context as to when and where Eternals takes place.

Salma Hayek‘s Ajak explains that this movie takes place five years after Thanos wiped out half of the population. Gemma Chan‘s Sersi adds later that it’s been 7,000 years since the Eternals first came to Earth. This dual timeline suggests that we will get an origin story and maybe some scenes of what the Eternals did get up to while they weren’t helping the Avengers.

To fit these heroes into the larger narrative, Sersi also explains why they couldn’t intervene in the Infinity Saga. The Eternals aren’t allowed to do so unless there are Deviants involved. The being that tells them what they can and can’t do will look familiar to Guardians of the Galaxy. The Celestials are back! Or the far creepier alternative could be true; they’ve always been here.

Thanks to the Blip that continues to cause problems (like a Skrull Secret Invasion, for example), the Deviants returned to Earth in something called The Emergence. Oh, it’s also important to know they only have 7 days (!!!) to stop it.

The same can be said about when we’re introduced to all of the Eternals as some of them reunite for the first time in centuries. It’ll be fascinating to see how the film balances everyone’s backstories. The few glimpses we get of the Eternals’ powers make me wish each of them could have their own movie, too.

The teaser trailer showed that Ikaris and Sersi’s love spanned throughout all space and time, but this final trailer shows Sersi closer to Kit Harrington‘s Dane Whitman. Game of Thrones fans should be thrilled with this trailer since Kit is shown only for a second in the first one.

We could get the MCU’s first love triangle with Ikaris, Sersi, and Dane. We’re all here for the MCU leaning into the romance! We are not here for whatever is going on with the leader of the Deviants and Angelina Jolie‘s Thena. It looks very creepy.

My favorite thing about both Eternals trailers is that they end on a humorous note with Richard Madden‘s Ikaris. It already brings me so much joy that Madden gets to keep his accent and gray streak for the film. It’s even better that it doesn’t look like the movie will take Ikaris too seriously all the time.

He may be the most powerful Eternal. We get to see Ikaris’ heat vision powers multiple times in this trailer, and they are epic. But, Ikaris is also someone who’ll Hulk-smash a table because he assumes it’s made of Vibranium. Even the Eternals contain multitudes.

However big the scope of this film may be, the trailers strike an excellent tone that suggests we will become attached to these characters immediately. And for that, I will forgive them for not stepping in to save Vision the first time, the second time, or the third time.