Film Phase 4 — Multiverse Opens (2024–2025)

Eternals

Name: Eternals
Released: 2021-11-05
Duration: 157 min
Rating: 6.8
Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek Pinault, Kumail Nanjiani

"In the beginning..."

Released November 5, 2021 2h 37m ★ 6.8TMDB ★ Essential to the MCU

The Eternals are a team of ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. When an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows, they are forced to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, the Deviants.

Watch note

The Eternals guided humanity for thousands of years without interfering, until the Emergence forced them to choose. They stop it by killing the Celestial Tiamut, whose body is left half risen from the Indian Ocean. That body is the Celestial Island the adamantium plot of Captain America: Brave New World turns on, so this film is where it comes from. Not part of the Doomsday story.

Why It Matters in the MCU

Chloé Zhao's Eternals is the MCU's most formally ambitious film and its most divisive: a story about immortal beings watching human civilisation develop over seven thousand years that deliberately resists the franchise's default kinetic register. The ensemble is the largest in any single MCU film, and the challenge of giving ten characters meaningful arcs within one two-and-a-half-hour runtime produces uneven results. Its most substantive contribution is raising the moral question the franchise had avoided — if beings capable of preventing atrocities choose not to, what does that make them? — and refusing to provide a comfortable answer.

Where It Fits in the MCU

Eternals sits at position 115 of 158 in the MCU's story-chronological order, placing it within the Phase 4 — Multiverse Opens (2024–2025) era. It is rated Essential — must-watch for following the main MCU narrative. Watching in story-chronological order provides the most coherent character development experience — individual arcs build naturally toward the franchise's major crossover events, with each film's post-credits scenes carrying forward into what follows.