Eternals releases on Disney+ tomorrow afternoon, and Gemma Chan recently sat down with W Magazine to promote the film’s digital release.
Gemma played the immortal being known as Sersi, the lead character of the film. After discussing her character’s arc throughout the movie, Chan was asked if we can expect to see her pop up in the MCU again, and she confirmed the question with a joke:
“Yes. Marvel owns us for life.”
While her response doesn’t give us much, it does confirm that she has had discussions with Marvel about her next appearance, and seems to imply that she has signed a multi-film contract. Most MCU actors sign a multi-film deal, so it’s no surprise that Chan would have done the same, but what’s interesting is that we still don’t know whether or not Eternals will be getting a direct sequel. So where will she show up next?
RETURN OF THE ETERNALS
The film premiered in theaters last year to mixed reviews. While many praised director Chloe Zhao for having a unique visual style that was different from most MCU films, others panned the script for being too convoluted and overly-ambitious. It also earned the lowest score that an MCU movie had ever received on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 47% on the Tomato-meter and an audience score of 78%.
Yet even those who disliked the movie generally agree that the characters themselves were fun and interesting, and expressed their excitement to see them pop up in the future. With the reviews being as mixed as they were, do we expect a sequel to be announced? If not there, where would Gemma Chan appear?
RELATED: IMAN VELLANI MAKES HER WAY TO ATLANTA FOR MS. MARVEL RESHOOTS
Our best indicator may be Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which debuted on Disney+ late last year. Shang Chi was confirmed for a sequel about a month after it released on the streaming platform, and it’s quite possible that this will be the route Marvel Studios will go with Eternals as well. A decision like this would allow them to see the number of households that view it from home, and thus gauge the audience’s responsiveness to a sequel before officially greenlighting it. It’s a smart strategy in a post-COVID world, and gives the studio more numbers to be able to make an informed business decision. After all…it all comes down to money…
However, we at Illuminerdi are willing to bet that this announcement is coming. Even films that debuted to lower-than-expected numbers (such as Ant-Man) received direct sequels, and we expect this to be the case for Eternals as well. Marvel does have a busy slate of upcoming projects, so there’s no telling exactly when that announcement might come, but its more than likely on the horizon for 2024 or beyond.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we won’t see the characters before then. If there’s anything that Marvel Studios excels at, it’s crossing characters into other films in fun and interesting ways. So where else in this massive galaxy of storytelling could we expect to see Gemma Chan’s Sersi and the other Eternals pop up before their sequel?
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
WHERE WILL GEMMA CHAN’S SERSI APPEAR NEXT?
At the end of Eternals, the giant Celestial known as Arishem returns to Earth and scoops Sersi and Kingo away into space. He tells her that since her and her friends deemed that the Earth was worth saving, he will access their memories and return back to Earth to make his own judgement on the world.
Meanwhile, Makkari, Druig, and Thena end the movie flying through space in the Domo on a mission to find other Eternals, when they come across Thano’s brother Eros (played by Harry Styles) and Pip the Troll (played by Patton Oswald). This leaves the audience with some interesting questions that could tie to Thanos and possibly re-contextualize his entire mission, but it also means that outside of Phastos and Sprite (who decided to stay behind and live their lives on Earth), all of the surviving Eternals are now off-world. This leaves some really intriguing loose threads for the cosmic side of the MCU to pick up on in future movies.
The most obvious place for the Eternals to appear next would be Thor: Love and Thunder and Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3. Thor is set to introduce us to Gor the God-Butcher who…you guessed it…likes to butcher gods. Obviously this will put him in conflict with Thor (as well as Zeus, who is confirmed to be played by Russell Crowe in this movie), but it could also put him at odds with some of the Eternals, who are considered gods as well.
Then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3, and while we don’t know much about the plot of the film, it does share an interesting connection to the Eternals. After all, Peter Quill’s father Ego claimed to be a Celestial just like the ones in Eternals, yet he looks nothing like them. Will this be explained in Part 3? Could Ego have once been connected to Knowhere, the severed head of a Celestial floating in space that we have seen a couple times in the MCU? This could be an interesting plot thread to follow up on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Sersi and the Eternals show up in the next Guardians film.
What are your thoughts and theories on where we will see Sersi next? Let us know in the comments below!
KEEP READING: SHE-HULK SPOILERS: BRUCE BANNER’S FATE MAY HAVE JUST BEEN REVEALED
Source:Â W Magazine
