A new, full-length trailer for Marvel's Eternals has arrived and while it does include tantalizing teases of the mountainous Celestials, an intro to this unfairly stacked cast, and those on-location shots that sent Marvel execs into a coma, it still doesn't quite specify the threat the ageless crew of superhumans is facing here. Thanks to Salma Hayek's Ajak, we know the sudden return of half of the Earth's population caused something called "The Emergence", and because the Eternals are involved, that means their archenemies the Deviants aren't far behind. If that's a lot of capital-letter comic book names for ya, let's dive into just who the Deviants are, and why they're most likely the main villains of Chloe Zhao's Marvel movie.
Several thousand years ago, the all-powerful cosmic gods known as Celestials started tinkering with the earliest life on Earth. Their more successful experiments resulted in the Eternals, evolutionarily advanced humanoids tasked with protecting the planet using their wide array of superpowers. However, the Celestials also kind of...seriously effed up, simultaneously mutating another offshoot of humans with destabilized DNA, creating Deviants, a monstrous race of evolutionary mistakes with a serious ax to grind against their more angelic counterparts. Both the Eternals and the Deviants first appeared all the way back in July 1976, in the pages of Eternals #1 by writer/artist Jack Kirby, which explains why literally everything about them looks and feels trippy as hell. Across their comic book history, the two factions have been in conflict for centuries—humanity often mistaking Eternals for gods, the Deviants as folklore creatures like ogres and trolls—which is where we meet them in Zhao's film. "We were instructed not to interfere with any human conflict unless Deviants were involved," Gemma Chan's Sersi says in the trailer, as way of explanation for the Eternals' Endgame absence.
The trailer doesn't pinpoint a main, named antagonist stirring up all this chaos, but there is a very pointed shot of a Deviant holding Thena (Angelina Jolie) captive, telling her: "You can't protect any of them." You know, this guy:
The best theory based on the characters' comic book history is that this specific Deviant is Kro, general of the Deviants. Created by Kirby, Kro is unique among his people in that his mutation grants him near-immortality, giving him more in common, longevity-wise, with the Eternals. (There's also a direct, personal connection between Kro and Thena; in some stories, they're secret lovers.) Having to hide his true nature from his people, Kro spent hundreds of years constantly changing his identity—at one point, humanity mistook him for the literal devil—which also meant changing his appearance. One of those appearances was this, which, hell yeah:
All of this is to say that, in the end, the real villain of Eternals will almost certainly be a member of their own team, Druig, because that character is played by Barry Keoghan. His ominous energy is basically a spoiler all by itself.
Eternals hits theaters on November 5, 2021.