A lot of news surrounding Phase 4 of the MCU came out of D23 2019, including new Disney+ MCU shows, movie release dates, and a fuller, more diverse cast reveal for Marvel’s Eternals. Now Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, has confirmed there will be an openly gay character in the series.
(Spoilers below for Neil Gaiman’s 2006 Eternals mini-series.)
In an interview that ran on Good Morning America, Feige doesn’t confirm who the character is, but mentions that “he’s married, he’s got a family, and that is just part of who he is.”
.@Disney‘s EPIC surprises! From #LizzieMcGuire to @DisneyFrozen 2 to @starwars #TheRiseOfSkywalker to #BlackPanther 2 — @Ginger_Zee has ALL the highlights!
Find more on all the incredible #D23Expo announcements here: https://t.co/EutVh4kPAM pic.twitter.com/P7jo6cfhDP
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 26, 2019
If you’re unfamiliar with the Eternals, they’re a Marvel/Jack Kirby creation from the ’70s; a group of super-powered immortals, blessed by the Celestials (who we got a peek at in Guardians of the Galaxy), who are considered the progenitors, or inspiration for, many of the gods we’re familiar with. (The same way that the Asgardians are clearly inspiration for Norse myth in the MCU.) They’re originally meant to be the guardians of life on Earth, but war with their counterparts the Deviants and eventually vanish from history.
Interestingly, Feige’s comment is perhaps most notable for hinting, and perhaps fully revealing, the overall premise for Marvel’s mysterious new tentpole franchise.
In 2006, the Eternals characters got a little bit of a refresh in a mini-series written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by John Romita, Jr. In Gaiman’s story, all of the Eternals (but one) have no knowledge of their powers, their history, or who they are–they simply live their lives like the rest of humanity. They fall in love, they get married, they have families…just like Kevin Feige said at least one of The Eternals is doing.
Polygon speculates that if Gaiman’s version of The Eternals were to be used for the MCU, “the premise would explain where these characters have been during the past 10 years of cataclysmic events.”
Gaiman’s mini-series ends with the newly awoken Eternals searching for the rest of their cohort, still scattered across the world and unaware of their true nature. Such a story would allow the MCU to continue to generate weird new super-powered beings without having to explain much about the origins of their powers. (And we can definitely see Wanda and Pietro being retconned into this.) Perhaps this even the overarching plan for introducing mutant-like characters into the MCU before the Fox acquisition!
Eternals debuts in theaters on November 6, 2020.
Let’s see how this plays out. I suspect some marketing exec is, right this very moment, being treated for lethal-level hyperventilation as a result of his terror at having to try to convince the ticket-buyers to watch an all-gay-male family busy doing family stuff. ::shockhorror::
Can we stop defining chacaters by their biogloy and social idienity? Ugh nobody does this in the books from this site unless those details are revelvent. Just give us the personality or plot reveleant information before we know their oreiation like the classical non hetero cis chacaters or in other words “diverse”. I’m annoyed with Marvel and Disney in general for exploiting humanity like this.
Then journalist do the same. Now Marvel Studios is developing Ms America series.
Marvel was sooo proud of the appearance of a gay character in Endgame. And it was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. That said, I’m glad they did it. It meant we exist in the MCU.
Oh, God, please don’t let the movie be a 3 hour origin story for an entire race of powered people. Maybe the single greatest thing about the MCU is they don’t shy away from characters in comic booky garb. If this is a movie about a bunch of people in mufti finding themselves, then I am SO not interested.
I just can’t bring myself to still care about Marvel movies. I want something other than Marvel and Star Wars now. I’m kind of sick of the Disney franchises (and their remakes too).
On top of that, it seems to me they did the initial run and made tons of money, and now they’re trying to appease all the people they pissed off before by making movies only slightly more than token diverse in the new run. I just don’t care at this point. Too little too late.
I agree with the comments here, a character is a character , black, white, man, woman, human alien or monster, marvel seems to want a pat on the back for having a gay character![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
Shouldn’t we be past being ‘thrilled’ by announcements that there will be a recognized gay person in the cast? Shouldn’t the reaction be Well of Course?
@5 The good news is that Hollywood puts out something like 700 movies a year (879 last year, 508 so far this year), so there’s plenty to choose from. But if you’re holding out hope that blockbusters are going to change… they’re not. They haven’t, in over 40 years. The only real difference between the way it is now and the way it was when franchises started taking off in the 80s is length. Used to be, we’d get a trilogy of movies – Star Wars, Indiana Jones, what-have-you – and that was it. Now, it’s ongoing with no end in sight. But then, James Bond was an ongoing franchise much earlier, so it’s not like there isn’t precedent.
People getting burned out on blockbusters should probably turn to other things. I’m almost there myself. But like I said, around 700 movies a year – and that’s just Hollywood. That doesn’t include independents, Netflix and Amazon originals, and other sources. We have more options than ever before.