Marvel Studios just brought back a powerful Guardians of the Galaxy villain, and the return played out in X-Men ’97 Season 2. The animated series premiered on Disney+ on July 1 with the X-Men scattered across time, including a group led by Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto that remains trapped in ancient Egypt. That storyline pits a young En Sabah Nur, the mutant destined to become Apocalypse, against the tyrannical Pharaoh Rama-Tut, a Variant of Kang the Conqueror who rules the era with technology pulled from the far future.
Episode 3’s end credits revealed the returning villain as Eson, a Celestial who appeared in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie in 2014. Xavier hears the cosmic being’s voice during a telepathic trip inside a captive’s mind, and Matthew Waterson, who also voices Magneto, receives the credit for the role. The moment marks Eson’s first appearance in a Marvel Studios story in a dozen years and deepens the show’s ties to Marvel’s larger cosmic mythology.
The scene unfolds late in the episode, after En Sabah Nur’s forces capture General Logos, Rama-Tut’s second-in-command. Under interrogation, Logos admits the pharaoh wants a lost temple raised by divine beings from the stars, a place holding enough power to turn him into a god. When the general refuses to say more, Xavier slips into his mind to find the temple’s location himself.
Inside that mindscape, the professor wanders a ruined desert toward a colossal sphinx while a voice unlike anything human greets him with the warning, "He is where the end begins." The episode never shows the speaker, only that thunderous presence echoing through Logos' broken memories.
Eson’s only prior film appearance came during the Collector’s lesson on the Infinity Stones. In a brief hologram, the towering Celestial, known in Marvel lore as Eson the Searcher, pressed a staff charged with the Power Stone into a planet’s surface, erasing its population in seconds.
That clip remains one of the clearest early demonstrations of an Infinity Stone’s raw power. Marvel fans have probably seen Eson in real life. He also took on main villain duty in the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind coaster at EPCOT, Disney's theme park.
Marvel also teased a Celestial presence before the season even began. A figure resembling Arishem from Eternals appears beside Apocalypse in the Legends episode the studio released days ahead of the premiere, an early sign that these ancient beings would factor into the new story.
Will Marvel Studios Bring More Celestials Into the MCU?
Rama-Tut’s obsession with the temple points toward a much deeper involvement of the Celestials in Season 2. In the comics, En Sabah Nur owes his godlike power to Celestial technology, which he discovers in Egypt and fuses with his own body to become nearly unstoppable.
If the series follows that origin, the temple of the star gods is almost certainly where that technology waits, which would make Eson’s voice a setup for something bigger rather than a throwaway Easter egg. Six episodes remain before the finale on August 12, so there's plenty of room for a full Celestial to step out of the shadows.
The bigger question is what this comeback means outside animation. Eternals ended with Arishem seizing Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo while vowing to return and judge Earth, a cliffhanger no Marvel Studios project has touched in nearly five years.
Avengers: Secret Wars offers the most natural stage for that reckoning given its Multiverse-level stakes. Also, any eventual live-action X-Men reboot that adapts Apocalypse would find it hard to ignore the Celestial connection this cartoon is now spelling out. Reviving Eson keeps the door open for more Celestial presence and shows the studio still has a keen interest in its space gods.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
