'Eternals' Trailer: Marvel Studios Continues Phase 4 With Another Killer Cast

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicks off soon with the long-awaited Black Widow movie, and it will be followed later this year by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and then by Eternals, a movie with a gigantic scope and one of the most eclectic casts Marvel Studios has ever assembled. Check out the first trailer below, which gives us our first major look at what to expect when this space-faring superhero adventure arrives in theaters.

Eternals is directed by Chloe Zhao (The Rider), and will focus on characters like Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Thena (Angelina Jolie), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Druig (Barry Keoghan), and Ajak (Salma Hayek), who is a mother figure for the team. It also stars Game of Thrones' Kit Harington as Dane Whitman, AKA Black Knight, a hero who inherits his evil uncle's estate, obtains a mystical sword, and decides to use his newfound powers for good instead of evil. The Eternals have been on Earth for 35,000 years – much longer than any of the other superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Eternals first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics back in 1976 as a creation of famed comic book artist and creator Jack Kirby. In Kirby's stories, The Celestials (an advanced alien race that has been referenced multiple times in the Marvel Cinematic Universe already) visited Earth five million years ago and performed genetic experiments on early forms of life, paving the way for mutants to exist. During their experiments, they created two new races: The Eternals and the Deviants, who eventually grew to become bitter enemies. The Eternals are essentially immortal, living for millennia and possessing superhuman strength and the powers of flight, teleportation, shooting blasts of heat and energy from their hands, and mind control.

"We like the idea of introducing an ensemble, doing an ensemble movie from the start, as opposed to building up as we did with the first Avengers," Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige said previously. "More like Guardians, not tonally, but in terms of introducing a new group of people...Jack Kirby did an immense, amazing epic with Eternals that spans tens of thousands of years, and that's also something we haven't really done, which is why that among many other things post-Endgame, we find appealing."

Since the scope of this movie is so huge, I'm curious about the extent to which Marvel is going to retcon previous MCU events to involve the Eternals. If they've been around for thousands of years, perhaps they were heavily involved behind the scenes in major moments that we've seen already. In Avengers: Endgame and the upcoming Loki series, Marvel have shown that they're obviously willing to play with the idea of characters influencing events through time. But just how far will they take that concept?

We'll find out when Eternals blasts into theaters on November 5, 2021.