It was recently confirmed that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Eternals will be making sweeping changes to the titular team’s origin story, one that better suits the franchise’s established canon.
In the comic books, the Eternals were created by the Celestials experimenting on human DNA, which also gave birth to their arch-nemeses the Deviants. As revealed by producer Nate Moore, the movie will instead position the immortal aliens as native to the planet Olympia, where they’re dispatched by the Celestials to take care of the Deviants on Earth, where they decided to stay.
So far, the Asgardians are the only godlike beings to have played a major role in the MCU, but a new theory put forward by ScreenRant offers that Eternals could open the door to the Greek gods making their presence felt in Phase Four and beyond.
Russell Crowe has been confirmed as Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder, while Hercules has been heavily rumored to debut for years, but now Eternals has presented an easy storytelling method for introducing countless other residents of Mount Olympus.
Changing up the origin to avoid any direct connections to humanity before they pitch up on the planet explains why we haven’t heard of the Eternals before, and distances them from other godlike comic book characters that Marvel may be holding up their sleeves, so it could be a win-win situation to deviate from the lore.
The Eternals and the Greek gods have plenty of history in the comics, and refitting the former’s homeworld as Olympia surely isn’t a coincidence. Factor in that the film will cover almost all of human history, and it’s not difficult to imagine ancient civilizations viewing them as deities, which could incur the wrath of the real thing one day.