EternalsSave

Pre-history. 5000 BCE. The Sumerian river valley. Ten celestial beings — the Eternals — descend from deep space in a starship called the Domo on a mission ordered by Arishem the Judge, a multi-million-year-old Celestial being who governs entire galaxies as one of the universe's nine creator gods. Their mission: defend Earth from the Deviants, a parallel species of monstrous predator-organisms that Arishem dispatched to Earth in earlier eons to seed evolutionary diversity. The Deviants have evolved beyond their original mandate and are now hunting and devouring sentient humanoid life. The Eternals — Ajak the leader (Salma Hayek), Sersi the matter-manipulator (Gemma Chan), Ikaris the optical-energy-blaster (Richard Madden), Thena the warrior (Angelina Jolie), Gilgamesh the strongman (Don Lee), Kingo the energy-projector (Kumail Nanjiani), Phastos the inventor (Brian Tyree Henry), Sprite the illusionist (Lia McHugh), Makkari the speedster (Lauren Ridloff, a deaf actor whose Eternal uses American Sign Language to communicate), and Druig the mind-controller (Barry Keoghan) — descend onto a Sumerian agricultural plain at sunset and begin slaughtering Deviants. They are themselves robot-like creations of Arishem, not organic beings, manufactured in a forge on the celestial home-realm of Olympia.

Through the ages. The film cuts between 5000 BCE and present day across multiple flashbacks. The Eternals are forbidden by Arishem from interfering with human civilization beyond the Deviant-elimination mandate — meaning they cannot reveal themselves, cannot use their powers in front of humans, cannot influence human history. They watch. In 575 BCE Babylon. In 400 CE Gupta India. In 1521 Tenochtitlan during the Spanish conquest, where Phastos witnesses the genocide of the Aztecs at the hands of conquistadors and loses his faith in humanity. In 1945 Hiroshima, Phastos walks through the rubble of the atomic bomb's aftermath holding a small dead child and decides the Eternals were complicit in human suffering by giving humans the technological intelligence that led to the bomb. He retreats from the team for the next half-century.

1521. The final Deviant on Earth is killed in Tenochtitlan as the Aztec civilization burns around the Eternals. Ajak announces the mission is complete. The team disbands. They go separate ways across the planet. They are forbidden from leaving Earth without Arishem's permission, but they're allowed to live among humans as long as they don't reveal themselves. They scatter across centuries.

Present day. London, England. Sersi works as a curator at the Natural History Museum. She has been dating a young architect named Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) for three years. Dane is human; Sersi is seven thousand years old. She has not aged. Dane is starting to figure out that something is unusual about her. They walk along the Thames at sunset. Then the Earth shakes. A small earthquake. A Deviant — supposedly extinct for five centuries — erupts from underneath the Tower Bridge. Sersi summons Sprite (the eternally-young illusionist disguised as a homeless preteen) and the two of them defend Dane and twenty civilians from the Deviant attack. The Deviant absorbs Sprite's illusions through some new evolutionary capability. Then a column of light descends from the sky and Ikaris — Sersi's former lover from five thousand years ago — appears in midair. Ikaris kills the Deviant with optical-energy blasts from his eyes.

The team reunites. Sersi, Sprite, and Ikaris travel to Mumbai to find Kingo, the Eternal who has been hiding among humans as a movie star — three generations of fake "Kingo Sr.", "Kingo Jr.", and "Kingo Trinandan" all the same actor pretending to be his own son and grandson in successive Bollywood film roles. Kingo has been the most successful undercover Eternal — he's a fifth-generation Bollywood superstar. He has a human valet named Karun who he's confessed his immortality to. Karun documents the entire Eternals reunion for his planned documentary. The team travels to South Dakota to find Ajak. They find her dead — killed by a Deviant the previous night. The Deviants have evolved to hunt Eternals specifically. The team is in danger.

Sersi becomes the new Ajak. Sersi accidentally inherits Ajak's Cosmosphere — a small spherical communicator that links the leader of the Eternals to Arishem the Judge across galactic distances. Sersi communicates with Arishem for the first time. Arishem reveals the actual Eternals mission. They've been lied to for seven thousand years. Their actual purpose was never just to defeat the Deviants. The Earth itself is a Celestial Seed Planet — a planet Arishem deliberately seeded with a developing Celestial embryo at the planet's core. Tiamut, a new Celestial god, is gestating inside Earth's core. Earth's human population has been deliberately allowed to multiply by Arishem because the energy generated by seven billion sentient minds is the cosmic fuel required to hatch Tiamut. The Emergence — Tiamut hatching out of Earth's crust — will destroy the entire planet and kill all seven billion humans. The Deviants were Arishem's first attempt at the same kind of evolutionary-engine experiment, which had failed and gone rogue. The Eternals are not heroes — they have been complicit in seeding the universe with Celestials at the cost of planetary life across billions of years. The Emergence is now six days away.

Sersi and Ikaris. Sersi tells the rest of the team. Most of them are horrified. Phastos's faith in humanity, broken by Hiroshima, is restored — he has spent seventy years raising a Black family in Chicago, has a husband and son, and refuses to be complicit in genocide. Druig, who has been ruling a small Amazon rainforest enclave by mind-controlling its human inhabitants, agrees to help. Makkari, Thena, and Gilgamesh agree. Kingo, after agonizing, refuses — he believes Arishem's plan is beyond Eternal jurisdiction to oppose. Then Ikaris — Sersi's former lover for five thousand years — reveals his true position. He has known the truth about the Emergence since 1521. He has been loyal to Arishem the entire time. He killed Ajak in South Dakota because she refused to allow the Emergence. He has been monitoring the team for centuries to ensure no one disrupted the Tiamut gestation. He attacks the dissenters. The Eternals split — Ikaris and Sprite against the others.

The team confronts Ikaris. The Emergence has begun — Tiamut's massive humanoid hand is breaking through the Earth's crust in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean above the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The remaining six dissenters — Sersi, Druig, Phastos, Thena, Makkari, and Gilgamesh — travel to the emerging-Tiamut site. Ikaris and Sprite arrive to stop them. The final battle takes place on the lifting cosmic body of an emerging god — three stories of vibranium-like skin rising out of the Atlantic Ocean as Tiamut's full form begins to wake up.

Gilgamesh dies first, killed in a duel with a re-evolved Deviant version of one of his old enemies. Thena, Gilgamesh's longtime partner, kills the Deviant with her cosmic energy spears. Then Ikaris and Sersi fight on Tiamut's wrist. Sprite, who has spent seven thousand years secretly in love with Ikaris and who has been jealous of Sersi for centuries, sides with Ikaris. Phastos and Druig combine their powers — Phastos's technological mind interfacing with Druig's mind-control telepathy — to create the Uni-Mind, a collective consciousness mechanism that links all the Eternals' powers into one unified energy weapon. Sersi, channeling the Uni-Mind through her body, fires a singular cosmic-energy beam at Tiamut's body and converts his cellular structure into permanent stone. Tiamut, half-emerged from the Atlantic, freezes solid mid-birth. His massive humanoid figure, now a kilometer-long marble statue, drifts in the Atlantic Ocean. The Emergence has been stopped. Tiamut is dead. Sersi has just killed a god.

Ikaris and Sprite. Ikaris realizes Sersi has stopped the Emergence and that he has spent seven thousand years lying to his team for nothing. He has watched her save the planet he was supposed to sacrifice. He cannot face Arishem's judgment for his loyalty. He flies up out of the Atlantic Ocean into the upper atmosphere and continues flying. He flies into the Sun. He commits suicide by solar incineration rather than face accountability for what he was complicit in. Sprite, mourning, asks Sersi for help. Sersi uses her matter-manipulation powers to convert Sprite from her eternal-child body into an aging human child body — Sprite gets to live one human lifetime as a mortal, with growth and aging she never experienced.

Arishem returns. Three days later, Arishem the Judge — a five-mile-tall robotic Celestial body floating in deep space — descends into Earth's atmosphere to find the surviving Eternals. He picks up Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo. He's going to take them to Olympia for judgment. "You will be the proof for me to judge whether your Earth-loyalty was justified. I will read your minds." Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo are absorbed into Arishem's hand and warped into deep space.

Aftermath. Dane Whitman returns from his archaeology research trip to find Sersi's London flat empty. He has been investigating his family's ancient lineage — the Whitman family is descended from a medieval line of black-blade-wielding knights. Dane discovers a hidden vault in his deceased uncle's house in the Cornwall countryside. Inside is the Ebony Blade — a black-iron sword that has been in his family for fifteen hundred years. He's the new heir to the Black Knight legacy. He reaches for the blade. Mid-credits.

Mid-credits. Thena, Druig, and Makkari, who have remained on Earth, are aboard the Domo starship that has been hidden in the Atlantic Ocean for seven thousand years. They've decided to head to Olympia to rescue Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo. A new arrival materializes on the ship — Eros (Harry Styles), brother of Thanos, an Eternal of Titan who was also dispatched to Earth millennia ago but had gone rogue and joined Thanos's lineage as a different lineage. He's accompanied by Pip the Troll (Patton Oswalt), his loyal squire. Eros offers his help. The team accepts.

Post-credits. Dane Whitman, in his Cornwall library, opens the wooden box containing the Ebony Blade. The blade's surface glows red. He hears a voice behind him: "Sure you're ready for that, Mr. Whitman?" The voice belongs to Mahershala Ali — Marvel's casting of Blade for an upcoming standalone Blade film (which has been in development hell since 2019 and remains delayed). The vampire-hunter's voice is heard but not seen. Dane reaches for the Blade. Cut to black. The Black Knight is being set up. Blade is being teased. Neither character has yet appeared in a follow-up MCU film. The Eternals saga remains unfinished.