This is one of the questions left unanswered by the movie “The Eternals”: Did the superhero team endure the snap of Thanos’ fingers and how did they deal with this tragic event? Theories.
Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos snaps his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet with all the Infinity Stones, and turns half the population of the universe to dust. At that time, the Eternals were already on Earth, but it is not known how they experienced it.
The consequences of this snapping of fingers on their team of superheroes are not mentioned at all in Chloe Zhao’s film. If we know why the Eternals did not intervene in the fight against Thanos – the film explains to us that the Celestials specifically asked them not to interfere with human activities and simply counter the Deviants – we do not know how they lived. “erasure” caused by the Infinity Gauntlet.
Two main possibilities stand out:
- They were not impacted at all
It is the simplest solution in terms of design for the franchise: Eternals are so powerful that their celestial-enforced immortality has preserved them from snap of Thanos and the superheroes did not have to suffer the “blip” (the Eclipse in French). The Eclipse refers to the 5-year period during which half of the universe had disappeared.
At the time of this writing, it is unclear how much the other planets were impacted by Thanos’ snap and if all living things without exception were targeted, including powerful aliens like the Celestials, Deviants and the Eternals.
Moreover, like the rest of the 5 Avengers in Endgame, the Eternals may have been spared on a fluke.
- Some have been affected
It is also possible that Eternals were impacted and that no one takes the time to mention it in the film currently in theaters. If so, how did they survive?
In theory, the Eternals have constant mind control over the molecules in their bodies. And even if they were scattered (like during Thanos’ snap), molecules can still be saved.
In the comics, the Eternals have three bases located on Earth (one in Siberia, the other in the Pacific Ocean and one in Greece) and in the latter, a room called “Activation chamber” allows these molecules to join together and resuscitate a decomposed Eternal .
This implantation of Eternals on Earth via bases of operations has obviously not been kept in the MCU version of the characters, but we can imagine that Marvel has included the recomposition of their molecules to their powers, without the need for an Activation Chamber.
To be continued…
For an official response from the MCU, however, we will have to wait. Perhaps they will explain it by meeting other characters in the universe? They could be blamed for their policy of non-interference in human affairs now that they have emancipated themselves from the Celestials: “Why didn’t you emancipate yourself sooner to help us defeat Thanos?”
In any case, it seems that Thor dated at least one of the Eternals. How will their eventual reunion take place? To be continued.
