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Marvel’s Eternals Is Hiding Its Villain: Here’s Who We Think It Is
Marvel Studios has already announced a huge, star-studded cast for Eternals, but the movie's villain is still missing, with none of the actors confirmed so far a clear-cut choice for the film's antagonist. Confirmed at SDCC 2019 and directed by Chloe Zhao, the upcoming movie is the second film on Marvel's Phase 4 slate and will hit theaters in November of 2020.
The film tells the story of the Eternals, a group of alien immortals created by the Celestials. The Eternals boasts a cast of well-known actors including Angelina Jolie as Thena, Games of Thrones star Richard Madden as Ikaris, Salma Hayek as Ajak, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, and more. Though the movie is set on Earth, the cast so far only includes one human character, Kit Harington's Black Knight.
The lack of human characters isn't the only surprise. Though very little is known of the plot, what has been confirmed is that it will involve the Celestials' creations, the Eternals, battling the Deviants on Earth. However, no Deviants are currently part of the cast, though Madden has said more Eternals casting announcements are coming. So until then, the villain of Eternals will remain a closely-guarded secret, but the rogues' gallery of the comic book versions of the Eternals could shed some light on who exactly the MCU's newest heroes will be fighting. Here are the characters who could be the movie's main villain.
WARLORD KRO
If Marvel goes with the most obvious choice, The Eternals' villain will no doubt be Warlord Kro, who is their biggest enemies in the comics. Kro is a member of the Deviants, who, like the Eternals, are a genetic offshoot of humanity. The difference is that the Deviants are monstrous in appearance. They don't share the Eternals' god-like powers or their immortality, but one Deviant has come close in at least one aspect. Due to a genetic mutation unknown to the rest of his race, Kro has lived for at least 20,000 years. Several millennia ago, he started a romance with Thena, a relationship he readily exploited in the modern era, and even more so when she became their new leader.
Despite his love for Thena, Kro has long been an opponent of the Eternals. His ambitions of ruling the Deviants and defeating the Eternals have often led him into conflict with Ikaris, Thena, and the others. He brought a great deal strife to the group due to his history with Thena. Thena's compassion toward Kro threatened to tear the Eternals apart, as Thena had a tendency to show Kro mercy. This was something that disgusted and angered Ikaris, who clashed with her frequently over her leadership.
THE CELESTIALS
The Celestials, or as the Eternals sometimes called them, "The Space Gods", are powerful cosmic beings who traveled the universe, experimenting with different life-forms. It was they who created both the Eternals and the Deviants. A Celestial was already the main villain of a Marvel movie, with Ego the Living Planet in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but The Eternals could offer a much different approach simply by adapting a version of the first Eternals comic book series.
In the original series, the main threat were the Eternals' creators. The Eternals were warned that after 1,000 years, the Celestials would return to Earth and judge if it still deserved to exist. It was up to the Eternals to keep both the Deviants and the humans in line in order to avoid anyone striking back and threatening an unfavorable decision from the Celestials. The seemingly limitless power of the Celestials has always loomed over the Eternals, and is something that could play out in the movie, especially with the Celestials established in the MCU already.
DRUIG
It's possible that the villain has actually already been cast, and that the Deviants will be just pawns in the film. Druig will be played by Barry Keoghan in The Eternals, and he is potentially the most morally dubious of all the characters so far. Druig grew up in the same family as Ikaris. In his younger days, he grew to resent Ikaris and became jealous of him. As the years passed, Druig developed a dark side. While serving as a KGB officer, Druig came to realize that he enjoyed torture and the feeling of inflicting pain on others.
Similar to the MCU's Loki, Druig has always been sort of a "black sheep" among the Eternals. Druig doesn't agree with the way the Eternals run things, and has always been different from the rest of them. The power-hungry Eternal, who bears the title of "The Lord of Nightmares and Flames", has been known to occasionally turn against his allies to advance one of his schemes. Will the MCU's Druig trick the Eternals into fighting the Deviants? Keoghan is no stranger to playing dark, twisted, and manipulative types, best exemplified by his performance in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, so this might well be why he's landed the role in the MCU.
GHAUR
In Deviant society, much of the power belongs to priest-lords like Ghaur, who help determine the fate of their kind by killing off the most horribly mutated Deviants in order to get them out of the gene pool. The priest-lords also act as advisers to the Deviant leader. This was the role of Ghaur, but he was unsatisfied with his position, so he chose to put someone on the throne who he thought he could control. With Kro as his pawn, Ghaur initiated a conflict with the Eternals and became a threat to the entire Marvel Universe when he seized control of a Celestial's body. Ghaur returned as the main villain of the 1989 Marvel Comics crossover event, "Atlantis Attacks", which saw the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and many more come together to stop him from bringing back the serpent god, Set.
Ghaur has proven to be a formidable adversary for both the Eternals and the Marvel Universe. So with the Deviants confirmed to be in the movie, it makes sense that Ghaur could be the one pulling the strings in whatever conflict Ikaris and the others are faced with in The Eternals.
Black Widow (2020) release date: May 01, 2020
Eternals (2020) release date: Nov 06, 2020
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) release date: Feb 12, 2021
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2021) release date: May 07, 2021
Thor: Love and Thunder (2021) release date: Nov 05, 2021
Black Panther 2 (2022) release date: May 06, 2022
