Gays! Sex! Diversity! Marvel’s Desperate Attempts to Make ‘The Eternals’ Relevant

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There is a chance that some of the scenes in the upcoming Marvel film Eternals could get censored when screened in some countries. The film contains the MCU’s first openly gay hero, Phastos played by Brian Tyree Henry and while some overseas markets have restrictions against showing homosexuals content, Marvel Studios and director Chloé Zhao are working hard to prevent that from happening.

Zhao told IndieWire: “I don’t know all the details but I do believe discussions were had and there’s a big desire from Marvel and myself — we talked about this — to not change the cut of the movie. Fingers crossed.” She also told the site that Phastos’ being gay was already written into the story prior to her joining the film. She described the character as, “someone who only sees humanity as a whole and believes that technology’s going to solve the problem. Obviously, he lost faith in us for some very tough things that we’ve done. And then he had to stop looking at us as a whole and look at one person he falls in love with, and one child, to regain the face of humanity. It’s like us turning on the news and thinking it’s completely hopeless and then going home, looking at our lover and our child and going like, ‘Well actually this is worth fighting for.’”

The other controversial thing in the upcoming Eternals film is that it will feature the first sex scene in the MCU. The brief scene will include two major characters though it hasn’t been revealed which two characters. Director Chloé Zhao also discussed the scene with IndieWire:

“From that moment to what you see on-screen there was definitely a lot of discussion about how to do it. But I think the desire to do something different is a very natural desire for where Marvel Studios is right now. I think it’s like Westerns coming into the revisionist period of the ’70s. I think it’s happening to superhero films — or at least we’re on the edge of that. And so these scenes just started to happen naturally.”

It’s expected that the scene will be very brief and not explicit, but we know that the scene was already part of the story before Zhao signed on, so Marvel was already heading in this direction. Zhao also said, “For us to be able to show two people who love each other, not just emotionally and intellectually but also physically, and to have a sex scene that will be seen by a lot of people that shows their love and compassion and gentleness — I think it’s a really beautiful thing.”

The potential characters that could be in the scene might include Sersi (Gemma Chan) and either her former lover Ikaris (Richard Madden) or her new love Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington). Another option would be Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and his husband played by Haaz Sleiman. 

Does anyone really care about any of this? I expect it will one of Marvel’s dullest efforts in years. I guess we’ll find out when Eternals opens on November 5th.

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