She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has no shortage of references to the larger MCU. The Tatiana Maslany-led series didn't fail in showcasing these Easter eggs in Episode 1, opening with a sneaky reference to Hayley Atwell's Agent Carter series. The installment also featured callbacks to previous MCU movies, such as The Incredible Hulk, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Thor: Ragnarok.
Warning - the rest of this article contains spoilers for She-Hulk Episode 2.
She-Hulk Episode 2 took the MCU references to the next level. The latest installment revealed a hilarious joke tied to Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye while also acknowledging the events of Shang-Chi in a hilarious fashion. Not only that, but the episode also teased Hulk's exciting future.
Interestingly, She-Hulk also managed to address one of the most asked questions about the MCU via a sneaky Easter egg.
She-Hulk Features an Eternals Easter Egg
She-Hulk Episode 2 finally addressed the question of whether or not the MCU will acknowledge Eternals' ending.
To recap, the Eternals led by Gemma Chan's Sersi managed to stop Tiamut's "Emergence," thus saving Earth. However, there is one problem. Although the team managed to prevent this catastrophe from happening, the Celestial's head is still poking out of the ocean.
At the 5:57 mark of She-Hulk's latest episode, Tatiana Maslany's Jennifer Walters is looking for jobs on her laptop after being fired. On the side of her screen, a headline comes up, saying “Why there is a giant statue of a man sticking out of the ocean” as a related article. Clearly, this is a reference to Tiamut's head poking out of the ocean at the end of Eternals.
Interestingly, another headline on the same page seems to be a sneaky reference to a certain mutant.
This Eternals Easter egg marks the first time that the film's game-changing ending has been acknowledged.
MCU fans have been calling out Marvel Studios to reference Eternals' ending for quite some time now, since it has seemingly had zero impact on the MCU up to this point after five projects since the sci-fi epic (excluding She-Hulk).
A related post from the Marvel subreddit further doubled down on the issue, expressing confusion as to how a large-scale event could be ignored so easily in-universe:
"for the love of God. can something in the MCU PLEASE reference that this HAPPENED!?!?!"
Other Reddit users offered some explanations for the lack of attention brought to the Celestial:
u/rphill02 was previously optimistic that Marvel will include a reference to Eternals' ending "eventually:"
"Give it time. It's relatively new to the timeline. I'm sure they will eventually."
u/hibernating-hobo hilariously pointed out that this has to be the "third weirdest thing" to happen "this week" in the MCU, claiming that people are "just like, whatevs:"
"That’s like the third weirdest thing to happen this week in the mcu, I think people are just like, whatevs."
u/MercoMultimedia agreed, discussing how much the MCU public has had to deal with in such a short time, potentially leading them to become desensitized to superhero events:
"The amount of rapid fire shit that has happened to the world of the MCU in the space of a few years, they probably saw that, threw up their hands in exasperation, then went back to business as usual.
A few years ago, a giant purple alien disintegrated half of all life, but then everyone came back thanks to time travel.
Of course there is now petrified remains of a giant space baby sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean, because that is now a typical Tuesday around here"
u/snakeoilsage pitched a scene of how the MCU should reference Tiamut's head:
"I just hope we see one scene, just one, where an alien invasion scout arrives to judge if Earth is worthy of invading and pillaging.
He pauses in orbit, and sees there's a dead Celestial, killed in the literal womb.
And he turns the fuck around and nope's the fuck out."
Which Other MCU Projects Will Reference Eternals' Ending?
It seems that Marvel Studios listened to fan complaints on why Eternals' ending is not referenced in other MCU projects.
It's possible that it was the studio's intention to showcase the callback in She-Hulk, mainly due to its fourth-wall-breaking approach. As a result of the complaints, this sneaky yet simple Eternals Easter egg could be placed at the last minute, giving a temporary resolution to fans.
Still, there's a strong chance that this reference could serve as the launchpad for something bigger that is tied to Tiamut's head sticking out in the ocean. Given that it was already covered by its in-universe media, it is expected that more Marvel heroes will be curious as to why such an event happened in the first place.
She-Hulk may end up referencing the event again as a throwaway joke in future episodes. Other shows such as Secret Invasion, which Disney+ confirmed as a "crossover event," could address how the government is responding to this catastrophe, and a scene that potentially shows Skrulls taking over Tiamut's head could be revealed as well.
A notable project that makes sense to address this ocean-related mayhem is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever due to Namor's inclusion. Namor could reference the Celestial's head through dialogue, or it could be used as one of the reasons why the underwater nation decided to bring war to the surface dwellers.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law's first two episodes are now streaming on Disney+.
