Eternals’ Origin Changes Open The Door For MCU Greek Gods

Screen Rant’s Eternals set visit revealed a brand-new origin for the team—and it’s one that paves the way for Hercules and the Greek gods to finally join the MCU. In Marvel Comics, Hercules is a principal member of the Avengers and a recurring ally of Thor. Plus, he’s arguably the most important Avengers character still missing from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Despite all the big-name characters the Marvel movies have introduced, there wasn’t a clear place for Hercules in the Infinity Saga. That’s primarily because Hercules is from a race of gods that hasn’t been established in the MCU. As things stand, the Asgardians are the only mythological gods that exist in its universe. However, details about Thor: Love and Thunder indicate that the time is coming for at least one of them to enter the fray. Several months ago, Russell Crowe confirmed that he’ll be playing Zeus, the patriarch of the Greek pantheon in Thor 4. There’s no word on what that means for Hercules, Ares, and the rest, but once Zeus shows up the others could follow at any time, whether it be in Thor 4 with their father or in the as-of-yet untitled Avengers 5.

A chance to set up or allude to the existence of this new faction of super-powered immortals could come in Eternals, which is poised to explore the ancient history of the MCU. The two have deep connections in the comics, and given their similarities, they’ll be difficult to avoid if and when both share the same cinematic universe. In January 2020, Screen Rant paid a visit to the set of Marvel’s Eternals movie at Pinewood Studios, and learned a great deal about the MCU’s newest team and where they come from. Marvel’s upcoming film will revamp the Eternals’ comic book origin story, thus creating an interesting pathway for the Greek gods in Phase 4.

How Eternals’ Comic Origin Compares To The Greek Gods

In Jack Kirby’s original Eternals comic, it was explained that cosmic beings known as Celestials conducted experiments on human DNA to create two genetic off-shoots of humanity: the Eternals and the Deviants. While the Deviants unfortunately turned out to be grotesque abominations, the Eternals proved to be a great success. Later on, the immortal race developed a wide variety of super powers and formed their own civilization on Earth. Led by Zuras, they founded the city of Olympia near Mount Olympus and managed to keep it hidden from humans.

Due to a pact with the Celestials, the Eternals wanted to keep their existence a secret from the people they shared the planet with, but their incredible powers made that a big challenge. What they were able to do made them seem like gods to the people of Greece. Fortunately, there was another race of immensely powerful super-humans in the area—the Greek gods—who were similar to them in a number of ways. In order to avoid attention, the Eternals agreed to let Zeus and his children take the credits for their deeds. It was an easy solution for the Eternals, considering that they had so much in common with Zeus’ people. In fact, many were seen as counterparts to each other, with some examples of this being Zuras and Zeus, Athena and Thena, Gilgamesh and Hercules, Ikaris and Icarus, and more. And by sheer coincidence, their home happened to be beyond an interdimensional gateway above Mount Olympus, which put them in the same vicinity as the Eternals.

How The Eternals’ MCU Origin Is Different

According to Eternals producer Nate Moore, the Eternals aren’t native to Earth. They actually hail from the planet Olympia. Long ago, the Celestials dispatched the Eternals from Olympia to Earth to eliminate the Deviants, parasitic monsters who travel the galaxy, killing the apex predators of the different worlds they visit and stealing their physical characteristics. It would seem that the Eternals must have elected to remain on Earth after their original fight with the Deviants thousands of years in the past. As for where they’ve been all this time, it sounds like the Eternals may have been residing in their spaceship, which was referred to on-set as the Domo. Eternals property master Craig Price talked about all the things that the Eternals had on the ship for entertainment purposes, which suggests that they spent most of their time there.

Based on these set visit reveals, it appears that Eternals has swapped the team’s secret city from Marvel Comics for the Domo as their primary place of residence. That’s a big deviation from the comics, which had the Eternals living in a beautiful, highly-advanced city of their own design. Instead, the MCU has made Olympia an entire planet of its own.

Eternals’ Origin Change Fixes A Big Comic Problem (& Sets Up Thor 4)

Putting the Eternals on the Domo and reworking Olympia into an alien world separate from Earth is good for the MCU and the Greek gods’ chances of getting a proper introduction in Thor: Love and Thunder. As noted above, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the Eternals and the Olympian gods, and the issue with that is that there’s actually a bit too many in Marvel Comics. That was why Marvel had to delve into Zeus and Zuras’ deal in the first place. Two totally different races of superhuman gods existing in the same place and both having strong connections to Greek mythology generated much confusion with fans, so it became necessary for Marvel to address it.

Using both teams in the MCU risked repeating the same problem in live-action, but Marvel seems to be side-stepping it in Eternals. In this version of the story, the Eternals don’t have their own Earth-based civilization, and aren’t as deeply connected to the ancient gods of Greece as their comic counterparts. Instead, the MCU is spreading them out and linking them to a wide range of ancient cultures from across the entire globe. This can work well for the MCU, especially since the Greek gods may be on the horizon in Thor: Love and Thunder. It would be both strange and unnecessarily repetitive for Marvel to introduce two secret cities based on Greek mythology in Phase 4, and put them both in the same location. And not only that, but a deep dive into Olympia would reduce the potential that Marvel might have with Olympus. But thanks to these changes in Eternals, Marvel has an opportunity to make Olympus the unique corner of the MCU that it needs to be.

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