After a year-long delay, Eternals has finally arrived for fans worldwide. The movie is set to introduce an entirely new group of superheroes to the MCU in the same vein as Guardians of the Galaxy did back in 2014.
The film has an all-star cast, with names like Richard Madden and Angelina Jolie. On top of that, the roster of main characters is amazingly diverse, and organically so—the team's composition was aimed to represent a wide range of what everyone across the world would look like.
Getting audiences acquainted and close with ten entirely new characters is certainly no easy feat, and it's probably not one Marvel took on lightly. As difficult as that may seem, it's even harder to imagine that at one point in time, the film had a dozen main Eternals - and one of them even had a Thor connection.
Eternals Nearly Had A Thor Connection
In an appearance on Deadline's Hero Nation Podcast, Eternals screenplay writers Ryan and Kaz Firpo sat down to discuss the film. During the interview, the two commented on how there used to be even more Eternals featured in the movie's roster.
According to Kaz Firpo, "once upon a time, there were twelve Eternals." Those twelve were chosen from a binder given to the writers at the beginning of the writing process that contained "literally hundreds of Eternals:"
"There was once upon a time where there were twelve Eternals, and two of them didn't make the cut... there were two Eternals that we loved dearly. They made it to the cutting room floor... there were literally hundreds of Eternals. We were given a binder when we first started this process, Ryan and I just sat down and flipped through the pages and picked the ones who we thought could best reflect the world, whose powers were the most interesting and compelling, and that really was our journey from the beginning. This was a movie about family. And we said this is a found family... and we wanted to make sure that all over the world that people see themselves in this movie for sure."
But who were the two that were cut? Ryan Firpo was able to reveal that "one of them was Vampiro":
"... from the beginning, I think that they... just liked the idea of having a dozen. It's a nice number, and so they were kind of pushing that. And we were saying 'that's quite a lot of people that we've never met before.'... but they were just like let's try it, and so we did it for one draft, and the very first thing they were like 'okay, let's only have ten'... One of them was Vampiro, who was a favorite of producer Nate Moore..."
Vampiro is just as unknown as the other Eternals that feature in the movie, perhaps maybe more so. After being introduced in 1979's Thor comic, the character made a career for himself as a professional wrestler, up until one of his opponents was a secret Deviant.
This encounter led to him crossing paths with Thor, who helped the Eternal beat his enemy. Despite his name and appearance (he has fangs), it is currently unknown if Vampiro acts like a normal vampire.
Next Time, Vampiro. Maybe Eternals 2?
Biographical information about Vampiro is quite scarce. There's no doubt that Marvel's take on the character would be almost wholly original. That said, they would likely keep the wrestling background so as to have him stick out differently than the rest, in a similar fashion to how Kingo is a Bollywood actor.
When it comes to the character's connection to Thor, it's a slim one—about as small as his name is to any facet of his actual personality or powerset.
While the Eternals as a group of characters are, and have always been, obscure, Ryan and Kaz Kirpo definitely went with the more notable of the pack. Most of the characters featured in the film had some substantial roles to play throughout the comics, certainly bigger than one wrestling match and an Asgardian team-up.
If Vampiro almost made it into this first movie, however, then he's likely one of the first candidates for whenever more Eternals are introduced to the MCU.
Eternals is now playing in theaters worldwide.
