If You Thought Eternals" Ending Made No Sense, 2024"s Last MCU Release Made The Dead Celestial Plot Hole Look Like Nothing

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Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for What If...? Season 3Though Marvel’s Eternals have returned in the MCU after 3 years (sort of), thanks to the final superhero release of 2024, the superhero team’s on-screen story so far has been about absence. Even the events of Eternals - their own movie released to uneven critical reactions and an underwhelming box office take - was defined by them just sort of not participating in history’s events.
It was somewhat fitting, then that Eternals’ ending dropped two huge cliffhangers and Marvel promptly did absolutely nothing with them. In 2025, we’ll finally see the dead Celestial come back into play thanks to Captain America: Brave New World, of course, but the outcome of the Celestial Arishem’s judgement is completely unknown. And as for Eternals’ post-credits scenes setting up both Blade and Harry Styles’ Eros? The less said about those, the better.
In an ironic twist, though, the dead Celestial always demanded further scrutiny. Not just in terms of the fallout or the silliness of the world seemingly ignoring its presence, but also on a more fundamental level. And now, thanks to a new MCU release at the tail end of 2024, there’s even more reason to talk about it.
Eternals' Ending Ignored Science In The Silliest Way Giant Robot Bursting Through The Earth's Crust? Absolutely No Problem, Apparently

Judging a comic book movie by real world standards of science is probably a foolish thing, but that was sort of the MCU"s thing for a long while: supernatural elements were consciously put on ice as superpowers were given science-fiction (rather than science-fantasy) explanations. And even in a multiverse of wizards, aliens, and monsters, some science facts are immutable. Like what happens when something bursts through the crust of a planet like a terrifying, magical baby chicken.
But not if you believe Eternals. The entire movie is pointed towards the catastrophic impact on Earth if the Emergence happened and baby Celestial Tiamut was allowed to break out of the core. Imminent, immediate, painful annihilation was very much on the table. But before the Eternals" intervention, Tiamut famously got part of the way out, and... absolutely nothing happened. No tsunamis, no Earthquakes, no shifts in climate or the Magnetic Field: just a big hand and a head poking out like someone trapped fighting a badly fitting sweater for eternity.
Considering the MCU spent an entire phase picking over the shockwaves - cultural, politically, and personally - of Thanos" snap in Avengers: Infinity War and its reversal in Endgame, life twanged back into normalcy shockingly fast after Eternals. The ignorance of Tiamut"s corpse then became a symptom of something more broadly annoying, but the memes took the meaning away. I"m still not over it, and now the wounds have been reopened because we"ve just found out what would have happened if the Eternals had failed.
What If Season 3 Says "Hey, Dead Celestial, Hold My Beer" The Emergence Wouldn't Even Have Wiped Humanity Out, Apparently Close Marvel"s What If...? season 3 episode 5 tackles the multiversal possibility of an Earth where Tiamut emerged, and Earth was destroyed by the Emergence. And rather than showing the total annihilation promised in Eternals, the animated show preposterously reveals that Earth"s population partly survived their planet literally exploding into small pieces. Now, I don"t know if you"ve ever read anything about celestial bodies exploding, but the result tends to be dust and a very definitive end of all life.
But not in What If...? Apparently, the rules of this part of the universe mean that people were just jettisoned off into space on the fragments of the planet that exploded apart, creating a sort of asteroid field still held together by gravity and still, somehow, with an atmosphere. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but I"m struggling with this one: it"s not a superhero with a new power, or a gender-swapped character, or a mash-up of other MCU figures, it"s the idea that a planet could be destroyed and it wouldn"t actually matter that much.

Related All 11 Celestials In The MCU So Far A mysterious cosmic race, the Celestials inhabit powerful roles in both the MCU and Marvel Comics canon, though only a few have appeared in movies.
Posts 1 Instead, the real problem for Earth"s survivors is Mysterio, returning after last being seen in Spider-Man: Far From Home, who takes advantage of the complete collapse of governments to rule the fragments as a despot. The post-apolcayptic element of the episode is down more to his rule: the rebels who defy him - including Ironheart - only struggle because they don"t fall in line, rather than being massively inconvenienced by the Celestial who ripped their world apart. We know this, because the people who accept Mysterio"s control apparently just get on with their lives and continue to go to work.
On some obviously barely affected fragments, Stark Industries remained intact enough for Mysterio to take over and rule the world using the repurposed Iron Legion, infrastructure remained intact, society... was fine. North America stayed intact, despitSo really, the point here is that the Emergence wouldn"t have actually been the mass extinction event Eternals claimed, and What If...? makes the complete lack of major ramifications for the planet after the Celestial popped out look minor in comparison. That’s quite impressive when you think about it.

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6/10 30 8.7/10 What If...? What If… ? is an animated anthology series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which features fan-favorite characters, including Peggy Carter, T’Challa, Doctor Strange, Killmonger, Thor, and more. The new series, directed by Bryan Andrews with AC Bradley as head writer, features signature MCU action with a curious twist. The show sees Uatu the Watcher, an omnipotent being that observes the events of multiple universes from afar as they unfold, unable to interfere. However, things shift when an entity peers beyond the veil, jeopardizing the multiverse.
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*Availability in US Release Date August 11, 2021 Franchise(s) Marvel Cinematic Universe Seasons 3 Writers Ashley Bradley , Matthew Chauncey Showrunner Ashley Bradley New episodes of What If...? release every day on Disney+ until December 29

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