The Eternals did not assist the Avengers in their fight against Thanos for this reason.
It seems unreal that the Eternals were willing for half of all life in the universe to disappear, however, this theory would explain everything.
If something was clear to us from the first Eternals preview, it is that the power of these beings is unimaginable.
Although that first preview offers us clarity regarding these beings , multiple questions also arise. Of all of them, perhaps the one that echoes the most in our heads is the most logical of all: why, if the Eternals are so powerful, didn’t they help the Avengers in their fight against Thanos, the supervillain who was about to extinguish all of them? the Galaxy?
While we could attribute something to his philosophy of letting humanity make its own mistakes, it doesn’t make much sense that the Eternals were willing to have half of all life in the universe disappear.
However, there is a fairly coherent theory that will explain why the Eternals did not want, or rather, could not, join the cause of the Avengers .
This hypothesis has to do with a plot point from Neil Gaiman and John Romita’s 2006 comic series of the same name. In this story, the Eternals have been living on Earth with their memories erased, living like ordinary human beings. It is not until one of them, Ikaris ( Richard Madden ), begins to remember his past and undertakes a search to find the others, whom he tries to convince them that they are immortal with superpowers.
Gaiman commented on the trailer we saw this week and touched on his career, saying:
“I saw this and was shocked by the way the fires that Jack Kirby lit passed from one creator to another, and they continue to burn. I’m glad I was able to touch the flame that Jack lit over the Eternals and pass it on. “
Their story would provide director Chloé Zhao with a great excuse as to why they hadn’t appeared before and why the trailer could hint that the characters have been living “fake” lives.
In the comics, it was Thena, the character played by Angelina Jolie in the movie, who married a human and had a child with him. Instead, it seems that it will be Phastos ( Brian Tyree Henry ) who will have married a human and who will have his own child. Although, in Gaiman’s comic, Thena’s husband was murdered, so hopefully that won’t happen with Phastos, who will be the first openly gay superhero in the MCU .
Plus we have Kingo ( Kumail Nanjiani ), who has been living out his days on Earth as a Bollywood superstar and Sersi, ( Gemma Chan ) is an art curator at a museum ( any nod to Wonder Woman from the DCEU? ).
The point is that embracing this theory would have given the writers a chance to play with more adaptations of Gaiman’s comic and the movie’s characters , which could also tell us who caused their memory erasure.
The person responsible for erasing the memories of the Eternals in the comic was one of their own, Sprite ( Lia McHugh ), a man (in the comics) who took the form of an eleven-year-old boy, who was never allowed to grow up or being seen as an adult by his own peers despite being millions of years old.
Using his illusion powers amplified by a sleeping Celestial, he turned human while clearing the minds of the other Eternals . Thus, Sprite was allowed to grow while essentially giving his peers a taste of humanity, something Sprite has come to appreciate immensely and that his peers should as well.
Whether McHugh’s Sprite ultimately ends up being the one responsible for everyone losing their memories is anyone’s guess. Still, Marvel Studios loves to turn things around by adapting characters and stories to the screen to mislead comic book fans.
If losing his memories ends up being the case in the movie, then it is highly likely that one of the Eternals, even if it is not Sprite, is the culprit. This would explain why the Eternals have not prevented the Earth from being nearly destroyed multiple times.