Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Marvels
Summary
- The Marvels missed the opportunity to address a glaring plot hole in the MCU by not referencing the dead Celestial in the Earth’s surface.
- The lack of acknowledgment of the Celestial’s presence undermines the gravity of such a significant event in the MCU.
- Including a shot of the dead Celestial in The Marvels would have reminded audiences of its importance and helped maintain continuity in the storyline.
Despite underwhelming initial box office performance, The Marvels is in the top half of the best MCU movies quite easily, but it missed a huge opportunity to fix a glaring Marvel plot hole. Nia Dacosta’s sequel, which strongly addresses accusations that Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel has lacked character development, is roaring good fun, and impressively avoids being sunk by the weight of 32 movies worth of Marvel lore.
Since the Eternals’ ending, Earth has had the dead body of Tiamut the Celestial poking out of the Earth’s surface in the Indian Ocean. In ordinary circumstances, that might be cause for concern, or even vague interest, but the MCU has conspicuously ignored the fact for more than 2 years. To think that the only reference so far has been a background news headline gag in She-Hulk is, at this point, something of a joke. The Marvels, released almost exactly 2 years after The Eternals could easily have referenced the Celestial, solving the plot hole of mass ignorance, and frustratingly, there was a very easy way to do it.
The Marvels Had A Unique Way To Solve The MCU’s Celestial Plot Hole
It would have been so simple…
Thanks to The Marvels focus on Nick Fury’s SABER space station situated just outside Earth’s atmosphere, the sequel features something most Earth-bound MCU projects simply cannot: shots of Earth from space. While the station is positioned above North America (given the entrance to the space elevator is in New Jersey to pick up Kamala Khan’s family), the opportunity to finally establish that the Celestial still matters was right there.
With so many establishing shots of Earth, having just one of the dead Celestial would have been incredibly straightforward. And more importantly, it would have been a much-needed reminder that the MCU hasn’t simply forgotten that there’s a giant robot god carcass poking out of the Earth’s surface. Showing it without referencing it would have gone a long way to breaking what is now the ultimate elephant in the room.
Why The Eternals’ Plot Hole Is So Glaring
Nobody mention the giant dead robot…
Back in the Infinity Saga, for a long time, Asgard’s fake Infinity Gauntlet was the problem nobody wanted to talk about. The introduction of Thanos’ quest for the Infinity Stones made the fact that Odin seemingly had a complete Gauntlet in his vault particularly confusing. It was only when Thor: Ragnarok directly addressed the plot hole caused by 2011’s Thor Easter egg that an answer was made canon. In the long history of the MCU, this remains one of the only on-screen clarifications of a legitimate narrative mistake. For all the bemusement around the fake Infinity Gauntlet, the Eternals‘ Celestial fall-out is on a higher plane.
Eternals
Eternals is the 25th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is part of its fourth phase. Over 500 years ago, when the ten Eternals complete the task given to them by the Celestial Arishem to wipe out the invasive alien species known as Deviants that roam the earth, the group decides to go their separate ways as they find themselves at odds with how to continue their interactions with humanity as they grow and learn. Blending into society, the Eternals continue to live their lives in the modern day until the Deviants emerge again. When one of the Eternals is supposedly slain by a deviant, events are set in motion that will reunite them once again to discover why the Deviants have returned and what the true intentions of the Celestial have been for all these millennia.
- Release Date
- November 5, 2021
- Director
- Chloé Zhao
- Cast
- Angelina Jolie, Lia McHugh, Haaz Sleiman, Salma Hayek Pinault, Dong-seok Ma, Zain Al Rafeea, Harish Patel, Richard Madden, Brian Tyree Henry, Jashaun St. John, Lauren Ridloff, Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani, Ozer Ercan
- Runtime
- 157 minutes
For the emergence of any giant mass from the Earth’s core to have precisely zero ramifications is utterly ludicrous. Even accounting for the idea of MCU citizens being desensitized by the many extraordinary events in their lives, Earth should have been rocked by seismic activity. The Avengers left New York in a mess in order to save the world in 2012 and it sparked a complete zeitgeist shift that changed the very fabric of political life. By ignoring the Celestial, the MCU is unwittingly making the statement that a giant robot changing the integrity of a planet is not worthy of note.
By ignoring the Celestial, the MCU is unwittingly making the statement that a giant robot changing the integrity of a planet is not worthy of note.
Yes, the Celestial may come back into play either in the potential Eternals 2 movie or (as widely rumored) in another upcoming MCU movie, but even then, there will have to be a Thor: Ragnarok-like readjustment to qualify why it only matters at that moment. Having The Marvels show that the studio has not forgotten the storyline in even the slightest of ways would have helped that agenda massively.