Eternals Easter egg totally changes a pivotal Avengers: Age of Ultron scene

With What If…? Season 1 nearing its end, it’s time for Marvel fans to start preparing themselves for the arrival of Eternals. The long-awaited Marvel Cinematic Universe film is set to be Marvel Studios’ next 2021 title. It will introduce audiences to its titular heroes — a group of immortal beings who first arrived on Earth thousands of years ago.

The Eternals aren’t the only notable figures set to make their MCU debuts in the upcoming film, though, with their ancient enemies, the Deviants, also set to play a significant role in the superhero flick. One new MCU fan theory argues that Marvel may have foreshadowed the Deviants’ so-called “emergence” on Earth a little over six years ago too.

Thor’s Vision — One keen-eyed Marvel fan recently spotted an odd similarity between several shots in the most recent Eternals trailer and the vision that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) receives in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. To be more clear: the Redditor noted just how similar the shot of a comet/asteroid/alien(?) crash-landing on Earth in the Eternals trailer (see above) is to an apocalyptic shot of a very similar object landing on Earth in Thor’s Age of Ultron vision (see below).

Later in the film, after Thor helps bring Vision (Paul Bettany) to life, the God of Thunder opens up to his friends about what he’s seen. “I’ve had a vision,” he says. “A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life.”

At the time, he’s referring to the Mind Stone and the rest of the Infinity Stones. But his choice of words — namely, the reference to a “whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life” — calls to mind a particular shot from the recent Eternals trailer. In specific, we’re talking about the brief shot that happens around the trailer’s 28-second mark, in which a mass of land is seen tumbling and falling into the raging waters of the sea.

All of this forces us to wonder: Is it possible Thor was warned about the Deviants in 2015?

The Deviants’ Arrival — In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor’s vision is presented as a warning of what’s to come when Thanos makes his inevitable attack on Earth. Thor interprets it that way, and, understandably, so have Marvel fans. However, given the similarities between the previously mentioned moments in Age of Ultron and Eternals, it’s worth considering the possibility that the threats teased in Thor’s vision aren’t just Ultron, the Infinity Stones, and Thanos.

Not only do the two catastrophic moments shown in the Eternals trailer feel highly reminiscent of Thor’s vision, but it’d also make sense that the God of Thunder might have been warned about the Deviants, considering everything we know about them right now.

That is to say; the latest Eternals trailer presents the Deviants as a legitimately apocalyptic, planetary threat — a group of beings so powerful that their arrival forces the Eternals to come out of hiding for the first time in centuries. So, assuming they’re as dangerous as Marvel wants us to believe them to be, it’d make sense for the Deviants to be included in a vision about the Infinity Stones, Ultron, and Thanos.

The final Eternals trailer also goes out of its way to frame the Deviants’ “emergence” on Earth as a direct result of the Avengers using the Infinity Stones to bring half the universe’s population back to life. With that in mind, it certainly doesn’t seem unlikely that, during the same vision in which he was made aware of the Infinity Stones, Thor might have also been warned about the Deviants. That seems especially likely if the use of the Infinity Stones in Avengers: Endgame really is what causes the Deviants’ arrival in Eternals.

The Inverse Analysis — Avengers: Endgame proved, once and for all, just how good Marvel Studios is at setting up story points only to reveal the pay-offs to those narrative seeds years later. So it’s definitely possible that this presumed connection between Eternals and Avengers: Age of Ultron was done intentionally. It’s also — and this is worth saying — possible that it’s just a coincidence.

Hopefully, we’ll get to find out which one it really is when Eternals hits the big screen in just a few short months.

Eternals arrives in theaters on November 5, 2021.