Warning - This article contains spoilers from Eternals.
Chloé Zhao's addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally arrived in the form of Eternals. The superhero family of immortal heroes brought all-star names such as Angelina Jolie and Kumail Nanjiani to the MCU.
More so than any recent Marvel Studios film, this project had quite a few faces for audiences to meet and get to know from scratch—a drastic shift from the days of Infinity War and Endgame.
In the post-credits scene of the movie, Eternals went ahead and gave viewers another new face to get acquainted with: Eros, brother to the Mad Titan, Thanos. Not only that but he's played by yet another big-name actor: Harry Styles.
With a character as big as Eros, was there ever a version of the film in which he played a bigger role? Maybe he was the Ikaris in Sersi's storyline?
As a matter of fact, Richard Madden's Eternal is one of the main reasons Starfox didn't make the cut.
Was Eros Ever a Part of the Whole Story?
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Direct, Eternals screenplay writers Ryan and Kaz Firpo discussed the inclusion of Eros in the post-credits scene of the film.
As for whether or not the character ever appeared in the pre-credits part of the movie, Ryan Firpo stated that at the beginning of the process, “[Eros was] definitely a card that went up on the board to be in the main movie:”
“You know, when we first started doing our pitch, we basically just had all these cards of, let's say about 40 different Eternals, and we started kinda picking out the ones that we liked. And [Eros] is definitely a card that went up on the board to be in the main movie.”
So why didn’t he make it? The Firpo cousins eventually agreed “to concentrate on Sersi and Ikaris’ love story,” and Ryan noted that “if there’s Ikaris, there can’t really be Eros too:”
“But we eventually decided that we really wanted to concentrate on Sersi and Ikaris’ love story, and we just thought in the broader group dynamics, if there’s Ikaris, there can’t really be Eros too, because it feels like they’re just kinda stepping on each other’s toes.”
There doesn’t seem like a world exists where Eros never made it in the film at all. Ryan said that he was “the perfect coda character to introduce, especially because he has that connection to Thanos:”
“But we knew he was a great character who could potentially be our portal into the bigger world; bigger community of Eternals that lives out in the Cosmos. So eventually, we realized that he’s the perfect coda character to introduce, especially because he has that connection to Thanos as well. So I would say that he was never involved in the main story, but always from very early on, there was the idea of introducing him in the post-credits.”
The Eros & Ikaris Clash
It's easy to see why the Firpo cousins made the call the way they did. Starfox is basically a player in the comics—after all, his powers can stimulate the pleasure centers of one's brain.
So there's no doubt that Harry Styles would have tried to approach Gemma Chan's Sersi pretty much the moment they arrived on Earth; though it likely would have been much subtler and quicker than Ikaris' slow descent.
Watching the two squabble would have been fun, though maybe not so much for them. Honing in on the broken family angle was a great choice at the end of the day, and giving Ikaris' the space they did really paid off.
At least fans know Eternals 2's Styles will be off the charts.
Eternals is now playing in theaters worldwide.
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