Despite coming from Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao and clocking in at a nearly three-hour runtime, Eternals hasn’t endured in the public consciousness as much as most Marvel movies. In fact, a more accurate title might’ve been Ephemerals. Even with the film leaving so many questions dangling for future projects to pick up, most of the MCU since has totally sidestepped this significant corner of the Marvel cosmos at all costs.
That’s why it’s such a surprise that a new sneaky Eternals Easter egg just found its way into the studio’s latest Disney Plus release, which is pretty much the last place we expected to get any kind of crossover with that weighty, self-serious superhero epic. Namely, I Am Groot, the animated miniseries that’s essentially just there to entertain young (and young-hearted) fans for all-too-brief five-minute shorts. And yet, Eternals enthusiasts were handed their own sweet treat in the third episode of the show’s second run.
In “Groot’s Sweet Treat,” the mischievous sapling has a hankering for a popsicle from an outer-space ice cream truck. The ship’s neon menu features a cornucopia of confectionery-themed callbacks — who knew Howard the Duck was famous enough to get his own ice cream? The one that takes Groot’s fancy, though, has a slightly more obscure but equally familiar shape. See if you can spot it below:
Yes, there’s an Arishem-shaped ice cream. With its specific shape and two rows of three gumdrops, the popsicle is a clear nod to Arishem the Judge, the all-powerful Celestial who plucked Sersi, Kingo, and Phastos from the surface of the Earth at the end of Eternals and hasn’t been seen again since. Until now… kind of. Are we to assume that the Eternals’ punishment for their transgressions was to force them to run his iced goods business for him?
After She-Hulk: Attorney at Law‘s sneaky nod to Tiamut’s corpse, this makes just the second time Marvel has recalled Eternals‘ existence in the two years since it released. Maybe in another two years, we’ll have some concrete news on a sequel, but let’s not hold our breath.