Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have been buzzing about several unaddressed setups since the release of Eternals in 2021. Where did Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo end up after Arishem made them vanish? When will the remaining Eternals and Harry Styles’ Eros make their next MCU appearance? Will any Marvel superhero ever notice the Tiamut hand sticking out of the ocean?
Audiences expect most of these questions to be answered in Eternals 2. Given the mixed critical reception and underwhelming box office, however, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige offered a less than optimistic update to Inverse regarding the sequel:
“There are no immediate plans for Eternals 2. There are, and I think you’ve seen maybe in a trailer we’ve released recently, an acknowledgment of some of those events. Certain giant things came out of the ocean.”
Feige refers to the latest Captain America: Brave New World trailer where the Tiamut hand gets teased as a major plot point. Though the Eternals are likely to return before the end of the Multiverse Saga, the bad news about the sequel adds to Marvel’s pivoting to a quality-over-quantity direction.
Scooper DanielRPK cited recent box office underperformers including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels playing a role in Disney CEO Bob Iger canceling further installments. Eternals 2 was no exception as Iger and Feige conflicted over moving ahead with development. Though Feige saw potential with the sequel, Iger considered it too risky due to the original’s lackluster reception.
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As for why Eternals was so divisive among audiences, one factor for its reception is the direction of Chloé Zhao. The Oscar-winning director behind Nomadland opted to inject her style of grounded indie filmmaking into the MCU machine. That made for an awkward experience for frequent MCU moviegoers. Zhao addressed the reaction when she spoke to Variety in 2022:
“In this case, we truly stepped out of the box that I think the world put us in, and met in the middle because of our shared interests. And by truly doing that, it made a lot of people uncomfortable on both sides. But there are also people who are more comfortable with the order of their world [being] disturbed. And then they look at our love-child and go, ‘Oh! This touches different sides of me!’ I like that.
“I completely understand the divisiveness coming from critics and the fans. Because when you take this to extremes that are seen as opposition — the world I come from and the world of Marvel, that has been divided in a way that’s so unfair and unfortunate — and to merge the way we did, I actually see the reaction as a testament to how much we had merged with each other; how uncomfortable that might make people feel.”
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