The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been a very chaste enterprise, which is why there’s been so much talk made of Eternals featuring the franchise’s very first sex scene, although don’t go in expecting anything too hot and heavy from a PG-13 superhero blockbuster.
Director Chloe Zhao, Kevin Feige and the top brass at Disney have admirably stuck to their guns and denied requests to remove the depiction of Phastos’ marriage to husband Ben, which has led to the cosmic epic finding itself banned in several countries overseas.
However, Deadline reports that any and all forms of intimacy, meaning both the LGBTQ+ representation and the late-night romp between Richard Madden’s Ikaris and Gemma Chan’s Sersi, have been removed ahead of Eternals‘ debut in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
None of those aforementioned nations tend to allow movies to screen in theaters if they feature any sort of physical intimacy at all, so you can at least understand why Marvel would acquiesce to this request and not the others. In the grand scheme of things the sex scene doesn’t contribute much to Eternals, but it at least marks a significant first for the world’s biggest film and television series.