Marvel’s Eternals originally had a much darker ending

2021 has been a big year for Marvel shows and movies. While some of them smashed box office records and wowed critics, others received a more mixed reception. Take Eternals, which…I don’t want to say it was a flop, but it was an odd one. Eternals is epic in vision and scope, but there was just something about it that didn’t quite click.

For all that, the movie is still required viewing for any MCU aficionado and sets up some elements that are likely to be important to the broader Phase 4 story, such as how planets are harvested to birth Celestials and the introduction of Blade (Mahershala Ali).

Eternals ended on some big cliffhangers. Sersi, Kingo, and Phastos are swept off Earth by the Celestial Arishem to be judged for saving the planet (and thereby dooming the Celestial growing inside it). Meanwhile, in space, Thena, Makari, and Druig search for other Eternals…only to come face-to-face with Eros, the younger brother of the dreaded Thanos.

Eternals originally had a bleaker ending

As it turns out though, the film originally had a much different, “really bleak” ending. Speaking with Empire Online, director Chloe Zhao spilled the beans on her original vision for the final scenes.

“It used to end with everybody back on the ship, minds erased and just going on to another planet, like The Twilight Zone,” Zhao said. “I remember when it goes to black, everyone was like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ And also, it’s the MCU, and you want to be excited for what’s next. I didn’t hate it, because I’m used to films that are more melancholy. But I don’t think it went down well with audiences.”

That certainly sounds like it would have been a gut punch of an ending. It’s hard to imagine what it would have actually felt like to get to the end of Eternals‘ two-and-a-half hour run time only to be hit with such a crazy twist.

Fear not though: according to Zhao this change of ending wasn’t due to studio interference or anything, just a natural part of the film-making process.

"I have never made a film where the ending is what I wrote! You find it in the edit. Editing is a third of the filmmaking process, and when you show it to people, that’s when you find the ending. I don’t think I’ve made a single film where the opening and ending stay the same as the script, just because the scenes are fluid as we shoot.”"

Chloe Zhao lobbied for Harry Styles to play Eros

Another very interesting bit of information that Zhao dropped was how much she pushed to introduce Eros to the MCU — and for Harry Styles to portray him. Eros is another Eternal and the younger brother of Thanos, the Mad Titan who snapped away half the universe in Avengers: Infinity War.

Originally, Eros was included in that very bleak ending. “Long story short, with that depressing ending, at some point he was going to be one of the Eternals on that ship. And that didn’t quite work out,” Zhao said. “But I had been wanting to bring Eros into the MCU. So I kept mentioning it to Kevin [Feige] at every chance I had in the hallway, because I love the idea of Eros being another Eternal, another Ajak. He’s an Eternal, and he was stationed on Titan – 10 of them were, just like the 10 Eternals on Earth, assuming Titan is also a host planet at some point. Now, if you think about that, what influence could Eros have had on the inhabitants of Titan, the way Ajak has influenced people on Earth? And how that has affected Thanos?”

"If you go to the comics, there’s some quite beautiful, heartbreaking influence Eros has had on Thanos. And how much does Thanos know? I love him as a character. It makes my imagination go crazy thinking, ‘Why does Thanos think this way? Why is he worried about overpopulation and destroying his planet?’ Think about the emergence – does Eros know about it? Maybe if he’s an advisor, the way Ajak advised kings and queens on Earth? It gets my imagination going. For me, the backstory of Eros is that he deserted, he said, “I’m not doing this anymore.” So he somehow got that sphere, which you saw in his hand, and he ran off and made Pip the troll. They’re like Han Solo and Chewie. Arishem’s been looking for him, and he’s just been a space outlaw. That’s the character I had in my mind."

Hearing Zhao talk about the relationship between Eros and Thanos certainly makes me want to see more of it. If there were Eternals on Titan, the planet where Thanos’ reign of terror began, how did that conflict look from their side? I’ll just speak for myself here, but that almost sounds more compelling than the actual Eternals movie we got.

And according to the Oscar-winning director, there was only one actor who could have brought the charming scoundrel Eros to life. “I never said once to Kevin, ‘Here’s the character. Let’s find an actor.’ For me, it was a package deal. It’s got to be Harry [Styles]. That’s how I pitched it to Kevin.”

What do you think? Would you have preferred the original, bleak ending that was planned for Eternals?

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